Why is social media marketing important?
Social media marketing is a strategy that involves using social media platforms to promote products, services, or brands. Social media marketing encompasses various activities aimed at engaging and interacting with a target audience on social networks to increase brand awareness, drive traffic to websites, generate leads, and ultimately boost sales. Overall, social media marketing is about leveraging the power of social networks to connect with target audiences, build brand awareness, and achieve marketing objectives.
Social media marketing has become necessary for all modern businesses that wish to connect with customers where they are – online. Other social media marketing benefits include the following:
1. Social media marketing increases brand awareness.
According to Statista, there were over 4.59 billion people on social media in 2022. That means 4.59 billion opportunities to get your brand in front of new customers. Social media increases brand awareness through engagement. You’re increasing brand awareness if you create a business page for your company and engage with other social media posts. Social media can also increase your website’s traffic through posts, shares, and comments.
Social media marketing is one of the best word-of-mouth tools out there,” said Jon Lee, CMO at ana tomy. “All you need to do is get your audience to share to their friends, and if you plan your campaign content correctly, you can do that.”
2. Social media marketing boosts lead generation and conversion.
Promoting and sharing content on social media is a great way to generate more sales leads and successful lead conversions because you’re actively promoting content to people who have already indicated interest.
Facebook and Instagram have also added a shopping feature that allows social media users to buy directly from a business without leaving the app. This feature helps businesses easily close sales by reducing customer friction and making purchasing easy and convenient.
Social commerce is a powerful growing force, with sales expected to reach $2.9 trillion by 2026, according to Statista.
3. Social media marketing builds personal relationships with customers.
Customers’ desire for genuine interaction is a huge driver of social media marketing’s popularity. Before social media, customers felt distant and detached from brands. Social media lets brands and businesses connect directly with customers, giving them a more human touch. Companies can participate in social media trends, chat with customers, and share their human side. And also by redirecting them at your site like this.
4. Social media marketing helps businesses analyze the competition.
If you’re on social media, chances are, your competitors are also there. Social media gives businesses a unique opportunity to see what competitors are doing and what’s working for them – and to learn from their mistakes.
Pay attention to competitors’ social media marketing campaigns, how they interact with customers, and how they promote their products or services. This lets you ensure your campaigns are unique to your brand.
“Starting with a competitive analysis may help you discover some holes in your competition’s strategy and show you channels they may be missing out on,” said Jason Myers, senior vice president of public relations & social media marketing at The Content Factory.
5. Social media marketing gives businesses more brand authority.
A regularly updated online presence goes a long way toward establishing your business as a brand authority. Additionally, regular customer interaction shows you’re committed to your customers and care about their satisfaction. Social media makes it easier to resolve customer issues, and since your commitment is visible, prospective customers will feel more comfortable doing business with you.
Let’s have a final to make the best use of social media marketing
With over half the world’s population on social media, it is no longer an option for companies to have an online presence – it is a necessity. Businesses both big and small utilize social media to grow their online presence, gain followers and connect with their audiences. However, the sheer number of platforms available and their different uses can make building your online brand feel like a daunting task. But even if you are just getting started or are a pro at this, there is always room for improvement. So here are 5 simple tips to up your social media game and successfully in Marketing.
1. Create a Strategy
Each platform needs its strategy. Every platform is different in some way and it is important to understand what works best to create targeted content and generate engagement.
Some questions to consider are:
- Why am I using this platform?
- Who is my target audience?
- What brand message am I trying to push?
- What content works best on this platform?
- How can I make my content unique
2. Be Consistent
While posting consistency depends on the platform, posting content regularly is always a good rule of thumb to follow. Also tying into a social media strategy, creating a content calendar for each platform is another way to keep things on track. This calendar will lay out what kind of content to post over a long period.
Regardless of your business size and what platform you are using, be conscious of keeping these aspects consistent:
- Brand image
- Brand message
- Posting frequency
- Hashtags
And if your business is just getting started on social media, sometimes quality is better than quantity. Don’t stretch yourself too thin. Dedicate to posting good content on 1-2 platforms, instead of being inconsistent across 5 platforms.
3. Create Engaging & Interesting Content
With social media feeds and timelines being saturated by millions of people, it is important to stand out from the crowd by creating good content.
So what is good content? While that term is subjective and depends on the platform, here are some general tips for good content creation:
- Anything that is considered newsworthy is a good idea to generate content around. The pillars of newsworthiness are timeliness, proximity, conflict and controversy, human interest, and relevance.
- Static images should have a clear visual and not include a lot of words (that is what the caption is for).
- Using gifs or videos is excellent – the movement attracts the audience’s attention and is more interesting to look at than just an image.
- Include your staff! It is a great way for your audience to get to know the faces behind the brand.
- Use storytelling as a way to engage the audience and develop a brand voice.
- It is a creative way to convey your message without seeming like you are trying to sell a product
- Current digital and societal trends are important to stay relevant, but always make sure that it aligns with your brand.
4. Engagement
Engaging with your followers is important in building a community and feeling more personable. Ways to do this include:
- Liking and responding to comments
- Live streaming
- Creating polls and quizzes
- Post content that starts
5. Track and Analyze Metrics
Diving deep into social media analytics is one of the most important steps to do when building your brand online. Thankfully, most social media apps already track your metrics, as long as it is a business account. With the data and statistics, you can effectively analyze your strategy and continue to drive performance.