What Is Social Media Marketing?
Social Media Marketing is the use of social media to build a brand, increase sales, and drive traffic to a website. Social media are the platforms on which users build social networks and share information. Furthermore, social media marketing (SMM) provides marketers with a way to track the success of their efforts and identify even more ways to engage with existing customers and reach new ones.
Why Is Social Media Marketing So Powerful?
In three core marketing areas: connection, interaction, and customer data, social media marketing (SMM) is far more powerful than any other marketing strategy.
Connection: Social media not only allows businesses to connect with their customers in ways previously impossible, but it also provides an extraordinary range of channels for connecting with the target audience—from video platforms (like YouTube) to social networking sites (like Facebook) to microblogging services (like Twitter).
Interaction: Through social media interactions-whether direct communication or passive businesses can leverage free advertising opportunities from electronic word-of-mouth recommendations between existing and potential customers. The positive contagion effect of eWOM is not only an important driver of consumer behavior, but the fact that these interactions occur on social networks makes them measurable as well. Using social media marketing (SMM) campaigns, businesses can measure their “social equity”-a term for return on investment (ROI).
Customer Data:
Boosting marketing outcomes with social media marketing (SMM) relies on another key resource: customer data. Rather than being overwhelmed by big data’s 3Vs (volume, variety, and velocity), SMM tools utilize customer data and turn it into actionable market analysis-or even crowdsource new strategies based on that data.
How Social Media Marketing Works?
The rise of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram transformed not only how we connect with each other, but also how businesses can influence consumer behavior—from creating engaging content to extracting demographic, geographic, and personal information that helps messaging resonate.
SMM Action Plan:
It is more effective to target your social media marketing (SMM) strategy. The following action plan is recommended by Hootsuite, a leading provider of social media management software:
- Ensure SMM goals are aligned with business objectives.
- Get to know your target customer (age, location, income, job title, industry, interests).
- Examine your competition’s successes and failures (competitive analysis).
- Review your current SMM (failures and successes).
- Create a calendar for SMM content delivery.
- Create best-in-class content.
- Track performance and adjust SMM strategy as needed.
