Social Media Marketing (SMM): Proven Guide For Beginners
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This blog post will cover everything you need to know about Social Media Marketing. You will learn the meaning, need and the best strategies to master Social Media.
I will teach you How to Use Social Media to Increase your Brand Reach, Generate Leads, and Boost Sales. Also, make sure you stay till the end to not miss any important information.
Before Starting, let us discuss some of the recent stats of social media. This will help you to take more leverage of social media.
Here are the quick facts and figures for different social media platforms.
- There are more than 3.5 billion active users on Social Media. The number is still increasing.
- Facebook still has 2.32 billion active users but the reach has declined. This is because of increasing users.
- On average, people are spending more than 3 hours per day on Social Media.
- Tiktok and LinkedIn have the Highest Reach amongst all at Present.
- 91% of Users are Using their mobile phone for social media.
These were some of the current stats for Social Media. Now, It’s time to discuss the ways of How you can take benefit of Users.
Since this is the perfect time to take your business online because you can turn your visitors or audience into Loyal Customers.
Now, let’s move on to the topic for which you are here.
What Is Social Media Marketing?
Social Media Marketing (SMM) is marketing your brand on different Social Media Platforms by leveraging active users. Social Media can help you in interacting with the audience, collecting leads, driving traffic, and a lot of other growth prospects for a business.
Since you have a chance to reach a wide audience of 3.5 billion people, it becomes essential to use social media. In this post, we are going to discuss everything about “Social Media Marketing.”
But, mostly we use the platforms listed above.
Need For Social Media Marketing
Social Media has seen significant growth over the past decade.
Here, you can see the substantial growth of social media users. In 2010, there were only 0.97 billion users and now in 2020, 3.08 Billion users.
If you are still don’t want to take your business on social media, then you might lack behind your competitors.
Also, the best part is that you don’t have to pay for Marketing until you are using Paid Ads to promote. If you are using the right methodology of promoting the content, then you can reach out to your customers for FREE.
We’ll discuss them later in this post.
Now, let’s move to our other topic.
How Can Social Media Marketing Help You And Your Business?
It takes time and effort to grow on Social Media. From a Businessman’s perspective, you have to make sure that you are getting enough returns out of it.
So keeping the advantages in mind, let me give you an overview of What Benefits you’ll get after taking your brand on Social Media.
1. Brand Awareness
This is one of the most crucial factors for which most of the brands establish themselves on different platforms. Social media lets you expose your brand towards a lot of potential customers.
It helps you in taking an overview of the potential audience you can grab out of the platforms. But this is only possible when you are successful in choosing the right platform for your business.
Once you figure out the potential audience it becomes really easy to reach out to them. We’ll be learning to find the potential audience later in this article.
2. Collecting Leads
In the digital world, leads are one of the greatest assets one can have. If your business fails to collect leads, you will fail in your business.
Leads are your future customers. Once you start acquiring leads, you can convert them into customers with a perfect marketing skill.
Social Media gives you a great advantage of acquiring leads of the potential customers and later convert them into the happy customers.
The best ways to collect leads from social media are Contents, Giveaways, Freebies, etc. You can create a wonderful landing page and add a lead magnet to grab customer information.
3. Increase Website Traffic
The main motive of any website is to drive Traffic because helps you get sales out of your business.
Social Media helps you in driving traffic to your website. You can use both Free and Paid Methods to drive traffic. The only difference is that it’s easy to drive traffic with paid ads. On the other hand, you have to work hard for driving Free Traffic.
4. Increasing Sales and Growth
Every business wants to grow in terms of customer base and sales volume. Social Media can be a reliable source for driving Traffic and Converting them into sales.
But for the conversion, it takes a perfect marketing strategy. Once you master the art of driving traffic and converting those traffic into customers. You can easily grow your business.
5. Customer Feedback
Feedback helps to build trust amongst the potential customers. You can use your current customer’s feedback and use it as testimonials.
This sends a trust signal to other audience which can be a great factor for conversion. A most common way to collect Feedback is by creating a Facebook Page of your brand.
You can also use Facebook for getting feedback on your brand.
Process For Successful Social Media Marketing
Social Media Marketing is not an overnight game, it takes time and effort both. You have to Make sure that the reasons for your presence is fulfilled.
Once you’ll understand the complete game of social media marketing, you can skyrocket your business. And trust me, social media has given a lot of exposure to tons of businesses and brands.
This plan is specially designed for beginners who are new to marketing on social media.
Now, we’ll be discussing the process of Social Media Marketing.
1. Planning
For great success, it takes a lot of effort in crafting a perfect plan. For a great plan, here are some of the questions. Take a pen and paper and write answers.
What is the need for Social Media for your Business? Before you move into social media, it is really important to decide the need for social media for your business. The answer can be anything. But as per my thoughts, your answer would be the following.
- I want to expand my business.
- My brand needs customer Reviews.
- I want to drive traffic to my website/blog.
- My business needs the lead of other potential customers.
These are just the examples, the answers would vary from business to business.
Selecting the Best Platforms? This is another important decision for Social Media Marketing. You must plan your target platforms. The interests of users are different on different platforms. If you will not select the exact platform, you might end up losing your time, money, and efforts.
What Audience do You want to Target? It’s better to pre-describe the audience you want to target. It helps in creating a plan according to the age group of your customers. Also, while creating Ads, you can target a custom audience to save your time and money.
For example, you have an e-commerce store. You want to drive traffic and sales from different social media platforms. For an e-commerce brand, the best platforms would be Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and in some cases Snapchat too. This is because the audience of these platforms is generally interested in buying products.
There is no point in showcasing your products on LinkedIn and Twitter because you will not get any sales.
2. Setting up the Account
After creating a full-proof plan for your business, it’s time to create accounts on the selective Social Media Channels. Create an official account for your business. Here is a list of things to keep in mind while creating an account.
- Always use your brand’s name as the username.
- Try not to include numbers and symbols.
- Keep your Username short and simple.
Once you have created an account, it’s time to enter information in your bio.
A bio should be attractive enough to hold an eye. This makes a user follow the account instantly. Also, make sure that you don’t add any useless information. Just add what you do and what people will get out of following you.
Adding a WoW factor increases the chance of following the account. This can be a deal for your followers, etc.
3. Content Strategy
After setting up your account, it’s time to make a Content Strategy. Social Media can be used for messaging, posting photos, videos, and sometimes writing articles too.
Once you finalize the platform, your content matters for attracting people to your account. You can use a lot of tools for creating content. I have added a complete section for Social Media Marketing tools, you can check it out.
Most shared content has the following things, try to add these things to your posts.
- Graphics
- Informative Text (Facts and Figures)
- Entertainment Factor
These three things help to hold the audience for a long time.
4. Publishing Timing
Being a marketer, timing to publishing matters a lot. If you are not posting at the appropriate time, you might lose a lot of potential viewers.
According to a study by TrackMaven, the best time to post on social media are:
- Twitter: 5 p.m. EST, Thursday
- Facebook: 8 p.m. EST, Thursday
- LinkedIn: 9 a.m. EST, Wednesday
- Instagram: 7 p.m. EST, Friday
- Pinterest: 1 a.m. EST, Friday
These are the perfect time to post on different social media platforms. Doing this not only gets you a great exposure but also high engagement rates.
At this time, the study has found that users are most active. You can plan your content and publish it at the appropriate time.
5. Engaging with the Audience
Engagement plays an important role in building up your brand. And, by engagement, I don’t mean that you only reply to comments on your posts. You actually have to create engaging content so that people really engage.
This helps to create a good relationship with your customers. Also, make sure that you don’t reply to them rudely. The best replies are either given in a professional or sarcastic way. Don’t use cursing words this will hurt your brand’s image.
The best way to create engaging content is by posting Creative stories and posts. Create content that automatically creates urges for people to comment and reply to the posts.
Also, If you are using Instagram, use the help of Stories by adding up the questions and rating filters. This shows the interest of people in your brand. You can later target them for sales.
6. Optimizing Future Content
Content optimization is essential for a Social Media Account. Social Media is all about experimenting with different things and seeking growth. Always experiment with things with your content; this helps you to grow your audience.
Optimization can be based on your Content ( Posts, Stories, Videos, etc.) or Hashtags. Always keep a check on what’s working for your audience. You can also ask your audience for the suggestion. This is the best way to get content ideas. Look for what your audience wants from you.
What are the Best Social Media Platforms for Marketing?
At present, there are tons of Social Media Platforms but the choice depends on business to business. Here is the list of most used Social Media Platforms.
- Active Users: More than 2.45 Billion
- Average Time Spent: 58.5 Minutes
- More than 80 Million Small Businesses
- Competition: High
- Suitable For: Getting Feedbacks, Audience Engagements, mainly it’s for B2C (Business to consumers)
- Active Users: More than 1 billion Users
- Average Time Spent: 28 Minutes
- 130 Million Users Tap On Shopping Posts Each Month
- Competition: Medium
- Suitable For: Business (both small and big), Ecommerce sites, Suitable for B2C (Business to Consumers)
- Active Users: More than 330 Million
- Average Time Spent: 3.39 Minutes
- 500 million tweets are sent Each Day
- More than 40% of people are Happy to Purchase after watching it on Twitter.
- Suitable For: Both B2B (Business to Business) and B2C (Business to Consumer)
Create Your Account on Twitter
- Active users: More than 675 Million
- Best Reach of all Platforms, 21X more exposure to the posts
- 30 million companies are on LinkedIn
- Suitable For: B2B( Business to Business), Easy to get clients and business exposure
Create Your Account on LinkedIn
TikTok
- Active Users: 500 Million Users
- Most Downloaded App in the World
- Mostly Users are from 18 to 24
- Reach: Great, and easy Competition
- Suitable For: Creating Content Around Business and Getting Exposure.
Snapchat
- Active Users: 210 Million Users
- Over 210 Million Snaps are Created Daily
- Four out of Ten people Discover Brands
- Reach: Good
- Suitable For: Small Businesses and product launch
- Active Users: 335 Million Users
- Third Largest Social Media Network
- Great For Driving Traffic To Blogs
- Reach: Great
- Suitable For: Sharing Content
Create an Account On Pinterest
I hope these data might have helped you in choosing the best platform for your business. These are the most used Social Media platforms. There are messaging platforms also, like Messenger, Whatsapp, Skype, Telegram, etc.
Here are the Resources for you to get started with Social Media Marketing.
Best Tools For Social Media Marketing
Tools can really help you in creating and posting content. I think tools can be the investments you can make out for your business. It really helps you in saving a lot of time.
Here is a list of Tools I personally suggest for those who want to Start Social Media Marketing.
1. Canva
Canva is my favorite tool for creating content. In-fact all the photos or infographics on this blog are made out of Canva. It offers both Free and Premium Version. As a beginner, the Free version works well.
It’s really easy to start making content on Canva. You can click here to Create a Canva account.
2. SemRush
Semrush is a great tool for competitor analysis. If you really want to analyze what your competitor is posting on Social Media, whether it’s a Simple Post or a Paid Ads. You can search for it all. Also, If you are a beginner in blogging or affiliate marketing, I highly recommend you to buy this tool.
You can get a FREE 7-Days Trial Here.
3. LeadPages
Leadpages is another great tool to create a landing page and collect leads. You can share your page’s link with your audience. This is a must-have tool if you are looking forward to collecting leads from your potential customers.
Try Leadpages for 14 Days FREE.
4. BuzzSumo
You can use this tool to find out the most shared content on Social Media. If you are planning to take your business in the long-term, then I highly recommend you to get this tool. This tool will help you in getting a lot of content ideas for your posts.
5. Meet Edgar
MeetEdgar is a great tool for scheduling and deleting old content from your social media account. You can set-up automation for your social media platforms and make your work a lot easier.
Frequently Asked Questions
How social media marketing affects business?
You can leverage billions of social media users and convert them into your lifelong customers. Also, in the present time, you can literally launch and scale any type of business with the help of social media. I have personally seen a lot of businesses growing just because of Social Media. I hope this tells you the reasons, why social media marketing is necessary.
How social media marketing has changed?
Over the past decade, social media has seen substantial growth. This is the reason why it’s changed. Earlies it was easy to scale your social media account but now, the competition has increased so much. You literally have to work harder to prove your brands among all. By any chance, if you fail to make your brand reach social media, you’ll not grow.
Is social media marketing worth it?
Definitely Yes, Social media has helped tons of brands to grow. Even, you can target customers from one place to another place. Targeting helps you to reach out to your customers even better than traditional marketing methods. You can check the benefits of social media marketing above.
Is social media marketing without ads possible?
Yes, you can definitely grow your account without paid ads. But It will take a lot of time and effort. Money does it all that you can’t do on your own. Also, it’s quite tough to reach out to your customers organically because of the tough competition in marketing.
Should I Hire an Agency or someone for Social Media Marketing?
I think it’s completely your choice. If you don’t have any knowledge of What social media marketing is, then you can hire someone who can do all the work for you. With the above post, you must have understood the importance of SMM. Now, it’s your decision ??
Conclusion
So, this was the complete guide to start social media marketing and grow your business. Also, this guide works for both individuals and businesses. It totally depends on How you will use it. For further queries, you can contact me on Instagram (@vansh.5352). Please share it if you feel the content is worth sharing.
Do let me know about this article in the comment section.
Thank You