The Ultimate Guide To Social Media Marketing For Business (2020)

Social media marketing (SMM) is the usage of social platforms as marketing channels that help brands reach out to their target audience and promote the brand. Social media platforms can be used in different ways: paid ads, influencer marketing, content marketing, etc. Every website has its own rules. Social media marketing, or SMM, is a form of internet marketing that involves creating and sharing content on social media networks in order to achieve your marketing and branding goals.

REASONS OF SOCIAL MARKETING:

1. Increase Brand Recognition & Trust
2. Increase Visibility in Google
3. Increase Website Sales Conversion Rates
4. Increase Customer Retention & Referrals
5. Establish More Partnerships
6. Diversify Your Marketing

Social Media Marketing Goals:

Here are some questions to ask when defining your social media marketing goals:

• What are you hoping to achieve through social media marketing?
• Who is your target audience?
• Where would your target audience hang out and how would they use social media?
• What message do you want to send to your audience with social media marketing?

Benefits of Social Media Marketing:

Social media marketing has proved itself to become an effective source of communication, allowing companies to reach their customers at their place, while also advertising their brands and expanding their customer community.

Following are the social media marketing benefits:

• Improved audience insights
• Great for sharing content
• Become an influence in your industry
• Increase traffic
• Enhance SEO rankings
• Cost-effective
• Learn about your audience
• Target audiences more effectively
• Find new customers and expand your audience
• Instant feedback
• Generate leads

Social Media Marketing For Business:

Social media is an essential piece of your business marketing strategy. Social platforms help you connect with your customers, increase awareness about your brand, and boost your leads and sales. If people don’t know about your business, they can’t become your customers. Social media boosts your visibility among potential customers, letting you reach a wide audience by using a large amount of time and effort. Social media also helps brands stand out on the crowded digital landscape.

Summary of Social Media Demographics:

1. Eery age group is using social media
2. Eery income level is using social media
3. Eery education level is using social media
4. Eery location (rural, suburban, urban) is using social media
5. And finally, they are likely logging in eery single day.

Social Media Marketing for Small Business:

When it comes to social media marketing for small business, having a strong and a clear strategy is the first step towards finding success. Every small business needs customers. Without qualified customers, it would be hard for any type of business (big or small) to survive in the long run. When you use social media marketing for small business, you can easily reach out to your target audience and build a long-lasting relationship with them. This is a highly effective way to build a brand that people trust while getting more bang for your buck.

When compared to traditional marketing techniques, with social media marketing for small business, you have a higher chance of getting a positive return on investment. Being a small business owner, you should see social media as a robust tool that can help build strong awareness, increase the number of sales and build a real customer base.

Some things to consider:

There is no one-size-fits-all situation here. Each channel works differently. Social  media allows you to communicate in real time and boost your organization’s visibility and credibility.

Facebook – Everybody is on Facebook, so you don’t actually have a choice here. Read this to get inspired: How to get your first 10,000 fans on Facebook. Note: Since that article was written, the page has now more than 45,000 fans.

Pinterest – It’s growing rapidly and can send a lot of traffic to a website so this is your next choice, provided that you have something visual related to your business that you can share on Pinterest.

Twitter – millions of users, easy to maintain and good way to engage with your customers. Together with the previous 3, this is your priority list.

LinkedIn – Mainly for business professionals, more difficult to use, advertising is expensive. You can create your presence on LinkedIn, but if you are short of time, I suggest you start using LinkedIn for your personal profile and then when you grow your business profiles on the other networks, you can utilize LinkedIn for your business as well.

Small businesses have a real shortage of time and resources. If you are creating and posting updates by yourself, you need something that saves your time and energy and works as a boost to your creativity.

Social Media Audit:

A social media audit also gives you knowledge of the areas that you need to improve on. Which in turn helps your business survive and grow.

• Gather your data.
• Ask some key questions.
• Determine top performing posts.
• Do a brand check
• Compare yourself to competitors.
• Look at influencer.
• Compare to revenue, leads and conversion target.

Social Media Content and Beyond:

• Ephemeral Content Will Keep Gaining Popularity.
• Niche Social Platforms Will Perform Well.
• Instagram Will Remove Likes.
• Social Commerce Will Expand.
• Video Content Will Dominate.
• Social commerce will expand.
• Technology Adoption Will Be at an All-Time High
• Influencer Marketing Will Continue to Soar
• Higher Adoption of Augmented Reality
• Increase in the Use of Social Media for Customer Service.
• More Brands Will Incorporate Social Listening into Their Strategies
• User-Generated Content Will Continue to Be Popular
• The Rise of Social Media Communities

Social media is a dynamic and competitive space and these trends can help you ace your social media game. So, keep abreast of the latest developments around these themes and use these for your social media initiatives.