For a business, having a Social Media Marketing is essential for increasing brand awareness, reaching your target audience, and driving sales. For businesses focused on community and individual customers, this makes social media a powerful platform for connecting directly with an audience to build brand awareness and brand loyalty. Social media is also an effective platform for lead generation. Social media is now an important part of an inbound marketing strategy. 

Social Media is all about your customer and how you can help them. If you’re successful on social media, you’ll have an opportunity to interact with your customers one-on-one depend your relationships, and earn their trust. Even when they’re not on your site or in your store.

Ask yourself what social media channels they’re on and whether they want to interact with you there. Then map your customer’s pain points and figure out the kind of content you can create to help to solve your customers’ problem when they need it. 

Once you understand your customers’ needs, you can start to figure out how to connect with them and develop your online brand personality.

Social media marketing is a long-term commitment. So be sure you have the resources to maintain it. The most important thing to remember is go where your customer are. Don’t make to come to you.

For small businesses focused on community and individual customers, this makes social media a powerful platform for connecting directly with an audience to build brand awareness and brand loyalty. Even better, social media is also an effective platform for lead generation. You can create the content and resources that will provide added value to your prospects and customers, all the while nurturing their brand affinity. When users click on your content or offer, they are actively looking for it or opting in to receive updates by following your business. Because these people have already opted in, they’re likelier to convert than a random person seeing an ad or offer unrelated to what they need.

 So many different social media channels can be tough for a small business to get started. They Key is Figuring out which platforms your customers are on and then creating the type of content they can’t get anywhere else. Let’s take a look at the main social networks and what each of them offers.

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Facebook:

Active Monthly Users: 2.5 billion users

Facebook is the new face of mass media, and that’s why so many companies use it. Some of leading industries on Facebook include financial Services, Ecommerce, Retails, Gaming, Entertainment, Media, Telecom, Technology, Consumer Goods and Automotive Industries. To share photos, advertise, host contests, publish news and live-stream video. Just remember, Facebook is pay-to-pay platform. Organic posts, that are your regular updates, won’t get seen by too many people without paid promotion. To get the most out of Facebook ads, start small and be specific about the audience you’re trying to reach and their interest. Then, add in a budget and timeframe. Once you see the results, you can adjust your creative & spend. 

Instagram:

Active Monthly Users: 1.2 billion users

Eye-catching visuals & inspiring creativity. 63% of users are between ages of 18 to 34.

 Instagram, a mobile-friendly app that’s part of the Facebook family, is a photo and video sharing site. Keep your images creative and non-commercial. And add in relevant hashtags for wider reach. You can also partner with Instagram influencers to help build awareness for your brand.  Instagram offers a variety of ad options, including shopping ads to encourage your customers to buy. One of Instagram most popular features is stories, short photos and video clips that work well for behind the scenes content, fun and playful images. Think of stories as a quick burst of energy your customer can enjoy.

Twitter:

Active Monthly Users: 330 million users

If your business is related to entertainment, sports, politics or marketing you stand to earn tremendous engagement on Twitter. Twitter’s where we go to find out the latest information and news in real time. Many businesses also use it as their primary customer service platform. Make sure your tweets include photos and video so they stand out in the feed. Use hashtags more sparingly on twitter than you would on Instagram and don’t forget live-stream video, especially if you’re planning a launch or a special event. 

LinkedIn:

Active Monthly Users: 310 million users

If you are looking for decision makers who have power to hire your company, stock your product or partner with you, LinkedIn is place to be.  It’s a place for business people to connect, network and find jobs and share updates. Publish thought leadership pieces on LinkedIn and promote them through your company LinkedIn page. Consider trying out LinkedIn’s live-stream video for business announcements and news.  

YouTube:

Active Monthly Users: over 2 billion users

Most brands use YouTube to showcase company videos. If you’re using it as a home for your videos, be sure to organize your channel and optimizing it with your branding and description of your video in the more section to help it show up in search. And consider partnering with YouTube Influencers to extend your product’s reach.

Pinterest:

Active Monthly Users: 431 million users

 People visit Pinterest to find aspirational images about fashion, decor, lifestyle, beauty and entertainment. One of the main benefits of Pinterest is the images you use point back to the source. So it can be a good driver of traffic to your website. And Pinterest offers visual search which surfaces images related to what your customer are looking for and promoted pins to help your brand get discovered at the right moment of intent.     

Snapchat:

Active Monthly Users: 428 million users

Snapchat’s a messaging app where users share disappearing texts, images and videos that are often enhanced by filter and emoji.  Everything on Snapchat disappears. Snapchat created stories format. They also popularized those fun, augmented reality lenses so users an add lots of personality to their snaps. If your customers are young, you may want to try Snapchat. 

Use Social Media to listen to your customer

To better understand the perspective customers and where the challenges and opportunities lie, you need to pay attention to the conversations your audience is having.

Listening is a key part of research.  The first step in doing this is listening to the conversations your customers and prospects are having, understanding what they’re looking for, the problems they need to solve, and where your business can help.   

Pillars of Social Media Marketing

1.       Your Customer

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and map their day to understand the best times and channels to reach and help them solve a problem. And be sure your social media content is consistent with your brand personality so customers get a clear picture of your company wherever they are.

2      Your resources

Social media isn’t free. Even if you’re posting updates and photos to social network or having a staff member produce and upload short video, all of that takes away from the time your employee could be doing something else related to your business. You’ve got to balance your resources.

3.           Budget

You’ll need to put money aside to create social ads and promote or boost your best-performing posts.   

4.       Develop Social Media Plan

Social media, like other marketing initiatives requires energy, planning and resources. 

 When it comes to adding social media to your marketing mix, every business has to figure out the right mix of social and traditional programs that work best for your customer. It takes time to grow your social network, and you may not see the result overnight. 

Use Social Media Management Platform 

A social media management platform simplifies the way you can manage your social media marketing programs.  I like using a Hootsuite. With Hootsuite, you can organize your Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn profiles. So they’re all accessible from one place. From there you can schedule updates, post to one or multiple social networks, respond to customers, conduct social listening, and see what’s going on with your feeds, all from a single dashboard. 

A strong social presence is vital in achieving digital success, but maintaining an active presence while also running your business is a big task. Creating content, monitoring your competition, staying engaged with your community; the to-do list just keeps growing. But that’s where we come in—with our Expert Social Media Marketing Services in your corner, you can get back to what you do best, and we’ll take care of the rest. Let us help you find what truly resonates with your audience and keep you connected even on the busiest of days. Our social media team is skilled in the art of follower engagement, social listening, and relationship building. Contact us on bhushanwable@gmail.com, +91 8796090783 (WhatsApp) or visit Social Media Marketing – SEO-Experts