What is SMM (Social Media Marketing)?

SMM (Social Media Marketing) uses social platforms as channels to promote a brand, increase the target audience, drive traffic to the site and increase sales. Social networks are the backbone of SMM.

Why is social media so important for business?

Social media marketing SMM is the easiest way to reach a large audience. Currently, half of the world’s population, 3.8 billion people, use social media. Moreover, this number is constantly growing – since 2019, the number of users has grown by 9.2%.

Social platforms are essential to building a brand reputation. According to Hootsuite, 52% of online businesses are found on social media. This is where most people learn about new brands.

In 2019, Internet users spent about 2 hours and 24 minutes daily on social networks. In 2020, this time already increased by 1.4%. Therefore, social media platforms open up great opportunities to attract a broad audience and build long-term relationships.

According to Oberlo, 54% of users search for products on social media before making a purchase. This means that the buyer’s journey increasingly begins with social media websites like Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms. In this regard, the influence of social networks on sales is growing every year.

Benefits of social media platforms

1. Increasing brand awareness
2. Traffic growth
3. Fast and easy promotion of content
4. Regular interaction with the target audience
5. Industry, market, and competitor research

In addition to access to a social media audience of millions and close interaction with customers. Here are the main ones.

1. Increasing brand awareness

According to statistics, 71% of customers who have had a positive experience with a brand on a social network recommend the company to their family and friends. Therefore, it is important to create accounts on different social platforms to reach as many potential buyers as possible. Use those communication channels where your target audience is.

2. Traffic growth

While many social media platform allows brands to sell their products without going to a website or landing page, they are still considered a great way to drive traffic. For example, 11% of all mobile website traffic is generated by social platforms.

3. Fast and easy promotion of content

If you use content marketing to promote your business, social media will help you reach your target audience. People always share helpful and interesting information with their friends on social networks. Often, users are not limited to one platform, which contributes to the growth of your target audience.

Social media marketing is a great way to inform customers about special offers. Social networks help quickly and cheaply educate the target audience about promotions and sweepstakes. However, most users prefer to receive promotional messages by email.

4. Regular interaction with the target audience

With half of the world’s population using social media for almost three hours a day, SMM is the best way to engage with your audience. After all, the brand is already where your customers spend their time.

Moreover, social media marketing is an effective marketing channel for getting feedback. You can analyze reviews, likes, repost comments, and other metrics. Suppose your customers have had a bad buying experience. In that case, they are more likely to let you know via social media than email or phone. This allows you to respond in time and retain a specific client and attract others.

5. Industry, market, and competitor research

Social media gives you the ability to track customer satisfaction, trends, and the activities of your competitors. Analysis of the latest industry news provides additional content ideas. For example, you can get a new topic to discuss with your followers.

And tracking the activities of competitors is helpful to improve your product and improve your SMM strategy.

Goals of social media marketing

With the help of SMM, you can achieve different goals – it all depends on your marketing strategy. Here are the most popular ones:

• increasing the level of involvement;
• sales and lead generation ;
• customer retention ;
• increase in website traffic;
• expansion of the target audience;
• collecting feedback;
• negative feedback management;
• tracking trends and competitors;
• increasing brand awareness;
• consumer demand research.

Clearly define your goals to develop an effective SMM strategy and create relevant content for your target audience.

Social Media Marketing Tools

Ten years ago, social media was a small marketing area, so it was easy to manage it manually. Today, brand promotion through social platforms is a complex process that requires the use of many additional social media advertising tools that marketers use to solve various problems:

• monitor brand mentions in social networks;
• create and plan posts;
• build communication with users;
• analyze the results.

This article can learn more about valuable tools for SMM, their application, key features, and prices.

Social Media KPIs

1. Engagement metrics
2. Reach rates
3. Conversion rates

KPIs, or key performance indicators, play an essential role in marketing, sales, and social media marketing. These metrics help measure the effectiveness of a marketing strategy.

Social media analytics has gone far beyond counting the number of likes, shares, comments, and subscriptions. Statistics provides many different indicators and allows you to analyze exactly how the SMM strategy affects the sales and promotion of the company.

For example, the Statistics tab of a Facebook page has a list of sections that helps you track likes, reach, page views, user actions, and more. Below you can see subscriber analytics.

Depending on the goals they help to measure, KPIs can be conditionally divided into three groups: engagement, reach, and conversions. Let’s look at the primary metrics for analyzing the effectiveness of a company’s promotion on social networks.

1. Engagement metrics

Engagement metrics help measure the number of users who interact with a company’s posts. Based on likes, shares, and comments, you can learn other metrics to get a more detailed picture:

• The average engagement rate shows the ratio of user reactions to the number of subscribers. You can calculate this indicator for both one post and all publications for a certain period.
• The spread rate or growth rate (Amplification rate) shows how often users repost.
• The virality level helps to understand what content goes viral.

2. Reach rates

If you’ve seen a social media stats report before, you’ve probably seen its reach. You can measure reach both among the subscribers of the page and among other social media network users. There are several types of coverage:

• Organic is reached without paying for promotion and advertising;
• Paid – coverage received when connecting advertising;
• Viral coverage – unique impressions that are received thanks to reposts.

Now, let’s see what reach metrics you can use as KPIs:

• Post outreach – shows the percentage of people who saw the publication. This metric helps you know how many followers and new users see your posts.
• Audience growth rate – enables you to track the growth rate of your page based on the growth of subscribers.
• Share of voice or Social share of the vote (SSoV) – shows the percentage of mentions of your brand about words of competitors. The indicator is calculated based on data for a certain period.

3. Conversion rates

Your content may have good organic reach and engagement, but how will it benefit your small businesses? To find out, analyze such indicators as:

• Conversion rate is a metric that shows how many people converted to customers through your post.
• Click-through rate or CTR is an indicator that displays the number of users who have responded to your CTA.

How to create an SMM (Social Media Marketing) strategy?

Effective social media marketing is impossible without a well-thought-out social media strategy. Below we have prepared the main points of its development:

1. Determine the goals of promotion in social networks. Make social media marketing a part of your company’s overall marketing strategy. Combine social networks with email and other communication channels.
2. Analyze your target audience. Develop a portrait of the buyer, and study the pains and desires of customers. This will help you create relevant content and offers.
3. Choose key social networks. Not all social platforms are right for your business. Use the ones that are popular among your target audience.
4. Define brand language. How you interact with customers determines how they perceive your brand.
5. Develop a content plan for SMM. Create several types of content, namely promotional, entertaining and informative. Balance posts of different styles according to the interests of your audience.
6. Set KPIs to measure success. Remember, they need to be measurable and strictly aligned with your social media marketing goals.

7 SMM tips for beginners

1. Create an engaging content plan for each platform
2. Post regularly and often
3. Use hashtags to increase brand awareness
4. Use visuals to increase brand engagement
5. Experiment with different content formats
6. Interact with your audience
7. Entertain your followers

Ready to get into SMM but don’t know where to start? Check out the tips to get the results you want.

1. Create an engaging content plan for each platform

Prepare a content plan at least a month in advance to use it effectively. Consider different approaches for each social network. Your content plans may differ in the frequency of publications and the format of posts; most importantly, they should keep the audience engaged and attract them to interaction.

To optimize account management, use special auto-posting services. They will help you plan posts and publish them without your participation. They will also allow you to track the performance of all social networks in one place.

2. Post regularly and often.

The basic rule of successful social media marketing is to post regularly. This allows you to maintain audience engagement and organic reach. Frequency also matters. Brands that publish new content once or twice a day attract twice as many users as brands that post multiple times a week.

To keep your posting frequency high, try using existing content. For example, transform blog posts or landing pages into info graphics or create helpful checklists based on them.

3. Use hashtags to increase brand awareness.

When used correctly, hashtags help your content appear in search results, build brand awareness, and build a community. Keep track of popular hashtags in your industry and ensure they haven’t been used before. Analyze how hashtags work for your audience.

Along with using existing hashtags, try creating your own. Below you see an example of a bed linen company. Creating your own hashtags allows you to keep track of what your followers and customers say about you and your products.

4. Use visuals to increase engagement.

Using pictures and videos on social media is a must. Approximately 80% of marketers are already using them. Users like this kind of content and are more willing to share it with others. For example, tweets with images or other visual elements are 1.5 times more likely to be retweeted than posts without them.

One of the most compelling types of visual content is video. According to statistics, 87% of online marketers use video content to promote. You can create videos without a budget and involve a team of professionals. Try making animated videos with free services, record your working day on your smartphone, or use content created by other users.

5. Experiment with different content formats

Each social network offers different content formats. For example, on Facebook, you can post long posts, medium and short text notes, stories, and 360 videos. Instagram allows you to post stories, photos, and quick and long videos on IGTV.

Approximately 62% of companies noted that Instagram stories motivate subscribers to write direct. Meanwhile, only 12.2% of brands use IGTV. Try different features and content formats that social networks offer you, track the results, and use those that work well for your company. For example, National Geographic uses 360 videos.

6. Interact with your audience

Interaction with the audience is the main task of social media marketing. Monitor comments and discussions regularly, always answer questions from your followers, and never delete negative reviews and reviews.

If your customer is unhappy with a purchase, do your best to change the experience and improve their current and future knowledge. Your goal is not only to apologize but also to help the client solve the problem, as some online store does.

7. Entertain your followers

Finding funny and exciting content is the main reason people use social media. Posting with humor can increase the engagement of your audience. However, be careful; jokes should be funny but at the same time polite, relevant, and well-dosed. Entertaining posts should make up about 20% of publications.

Conclusion

We hope you enjoyed our blog about SMM. Social Media Marketing (or SMM) is in the world of marketing. With an expansive process and an influential presence, it has amassed a lot of buzz over the past few years. To learn more about SMM and its meaning for businesses and industry, visit our website at . If you are unfamiliar with SMM or have any questions or concerns, please get in touch with us at . Thank you for reading; we would love to hear from you!