We’re in the period of digital era. And in this era, businesses are rapidly adapting to the upcoming trends of Digital Marketing. This has made their global expansion quite easy.
Social Media is one of the primary tools that has helped businesses do wonders on the Internet. Amongst the numerous digital marketing practices used, social media easily emerges as the winner.
A research report by Google claims that more than 75% of businesses have recruited dedicated teams for their social media campaigns. It claimed that by 2021 i.e. the current year, the global investment on social media marketing would reach 350 Cr.
In this blog of Sampark Infoways, we will discuss what is social media, top social media platforms for marketers and how to create strong social media marketing strategies and social media marketing campaigns.
Table of Contents
What is Social Media?
Any digital tool that helps internet users to rapidly create and share content with their and other public efficiently, in real-time is known as Social media. It comprises of a large range of websites and apps.
This communication tool started with computers, in form of websites and gradually over the course of years transitioned into highly-optimized mobile and web-apps.
Social media gave us the ability to share photos, opinions, and events in real-time to our friends and families. It truly has changed the way we live and the way we do business online.
The best part about social media is that anybody with internet access can sign up and create his/her account. With that account, they can share whatever content they choose to, and the content they share reaches anyone who visits their page or profile
Different social media platforms are designed for unique purposes like Twitter, specializes in sharing links and short text messages. Others, like Instagram, is designed to optimize the sharing of photos and videos.
Top 6 social media sites in India
The world of social media is very competitive. But there are platforms few who have maintained their authority over the past 10 years. Some of them are-
Instagram is a free social media platform designed and optimized for sharing photos and videos. Since its inception and the after its acquisition by Facebook, Instagram has become a popular way to connect with friends, family, celebrities, thought leaders, brands, and more.
Instagram has over a billion registered accounts as of now. It has become an undeniable part of our daily lives and routine.
Turn your head around and you’ll see everyone is on Instagram nowadays, from small businesses to big enterprises, news agencies to cultural organizations, celebrities, artists, actors, athletes, photographers, and musicians, and not to mention the newly formed bunch of influencers that have come in its wake.
Everyone who creates an Instagram account maintains access to his/her profile and news feed.
When somebody posts a photo/video on Instagram, it displays on his/her profile. Other users who follow that account see its posts in their feed. Likewise, that somebody sees posts from other users he/she follows.
Instagram for business allows brands to create their account, develop a community of followers, post about their offerings and advertise them to a large non-following audience for generating brand awareness, qualified leads and website traffic.
Also Read: How to get 1k followers in a month
Facebook is a social media platform where users from across the planet can post their updates, comments, share photographs/videos, and post links to news or other interesting articles on the web, chat with their friends or even call or video call them.
The content is shared is made publicly accessible to all Facebook users, or it can be shared only amongst a select group of friends/family, or with a single person.
Facebook is user-friendly and open to everyone social media platform. Even the least tech-savvy people can create their account and start posting on Facebook.
Although it began as a way to maintain contact or reconnect with long-lost friends, it spontaneously became the most preferred choice of businesses to closely target an audience and display ads directly to the users who most likely to need their products or services.
Also Read: The Facebook Pixel: What It Is and How to Use It
LinkedIn is free as well as paid social networking platform that lays emphasis on professional networking and career development.
Internet users can use LinkedIn to show their resume, search for jobs, and build up their professional reputation by sharing updates and interacting with other professionals of different industries and positions.
Although it is free, but there exists a subscription version called LinkedIn Premium that provides some extra features like LinkedIn learning classes, company seminars, as well as insights into who’s searching for and viewing your profile.
LinkedIn offers business account options for brands and companies who want to amplify their presence of LinkedIn and in turn on the Internet. It can help business owners in learning more about their as well as various industries.
It also helps them to reach their desired audience through LinkedIn ads which can be highly targeted.
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Youtube
YouTube is a free as well as paid video streaming/sharing platform that makes it easy for users to watch and share videos online. One can create and upload his/her own videos in order to share with others.
Since its inception in 2005, YouTube is today’s one of the most popular video streaming and social media platforms on the Web, with users watching over 6 billion hours of video every month.
Youtube for businesses is a very lucrative option to consider. On youtube through google ads, businesses can advertise their products/services on its search results page or in in-stream videos.
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Snapchat
Snapchat is a specially designed and optimized mobile app made for mobile operating systems – Android and iOS. It is run by its co-founder Evan Spiegel.
One primary concept of the mobile app is that any picture/video or text someone sends – by default it is displayed to the receiver for only a short period of time before it becomes inaccessible.
This temporary nature of the app helps to encourage a more natural flow of conversation.
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Pinterest
Pinterest is a social media and visual discovery platform that helps users find ideas for recipes, skincare, workout, art, home and style inspiration, and more.
With millions and millions of Pins (Bookmarks that users utilize to save content they love on Pinterest. They can be images, videos or products) on Pinterest, one can always find ideas to ignite his/her inspiration. Discover Pins and be saved to boards to keep one’s ideas organized and easy to find.
Pinterest can be used for business too. Pinterest is the most appropriate place for you to showcase your brand and offerings to a highly engaged, targeted marketplace that’s ready to spend.
There are more than 20 Cr+ monthly Pinterest users all over the world, all looking for to share helpful, inspiring ideas on the platform. These stats indicate that there’s a large audience with a powerful spending power waiting to be introduced to your business.
What is social media marketing?
Social media marketing refers to utilization and harnessing the abilities of social media platforms to connect with your audience in order to develop your brand, drive traffic to your website, increase leads and sales.
This includes posting amazing content on your social media profiles, responding to and actively engaging your followers, examining your results, and running social media advertisement campaigns.
What is social media marketing strategy?
A social media marketing strategy is a text document that defines a business’s social media goals, the approaches it must take to achieve them and the metrics it will track to measure the progress.
A good social media marketing strategy also lists a business’ existing and to-be-formed social media accounts along with objectives specific to each platform it’s active on.
A good social media marketing strategy also defines the roles and responsibilities of a business’ in-house team and outlines its reporting cadence.
Let’s now discuss how to formulate a good social media marketing strategy.
Find out who is your target audience
The main reasons why people worldwide connect on social media platforms is to network and generate business. To state some stats, Facebook has 245+ Cr users, Instagram 100 Cr+, and Twitter has 36 Cr+ users. With such a large and diversified range of audiences, the possibilities to connect, engage, and eventually convert is massive. Hence, brands and their marketing professional must find out who exactly is their target audience before they ideate and launch their campaign.
Determine your Marketing Objective
Brands and marketing professionals need to clearly comprehend the goal of their marketing efforts before formulating a social media marketing strategy. They should outline the expected results from the campaign and ways to monitor its efficiency. Most common goals include driving more traffic to the website, transforming leads into sales, boosting brand awareness, developing new leads, and selling products and services.
Choose suitable social media platforms and use them for specific purpose
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and at times Pinterest are the hottest zones for networking and business. How do we know that? Well, we analyzed all these platforms and understood their significance and niche.
Brands too need to understand these platforms and determine ones most suitable for their business. To help easy decision making, brand should consider these factors- Niche audience, Audience demographics, Features, Active users.
Scrutinize your efforts
Keep monitoring the key metrics of your campaign to hold on to successful strategies and to fix weaker tactics. This will helps you to improve your efforts at generating new leads, boosting brand recognition, and awareness.
Concluding words
With this knowledge, you can start formulating suitably optimized social media marketing strategies and campaigns that will help your business and brand to achieve its objectives.
If you wish to have performance-oriented social media marketing strategies crossing milestones for your business, Sampark Infoways- a results-focused digital marketing agency in Raipur is the best bet for you. Visit our website to know more about us and our services.
