Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms to connect with your audience to build your brand, increase sales, and drive website traffic. This involves publishing great content on your social media profiles, listening to and engaging your followers, analyzing your results, and running social media advertisements.
The major social media platforms (at the moment) are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, and Snapchat.
Most small businesses are careful about what type of marketing strategies they invest in. When you have a limited marketing budget, it’s important that you spend it wisely to get the most for your money. Marketing through social media is one of the most versatile and cost-effective strategies that small businesses can use to reach their target audience and boost sales over time. That’s why 97% of marketers are using social media to reach their audiences.
Using Social Media to Grow Your Brand Awareness
- Create Brand Recognition
Gaining brand recognition is one of any business’ most important marketing goals. Social media has a benefit over traditional media because it can get your brand in front of people much more quickly and easily. Furthermore, it gets audience looking at brand even when they aren’t thinking about a particular brand or product. It allows easy brand building.
- Generate a Conversation Around Your Brand
A strong social media marketing strategy will generate conversation about a brand, products, and partners. Potential users and current users can share their experiences and reviews on social media platform.
- Tell the Brand’s Story
Using social media is a great way to share one’s brand’s mission and share stories. Effective stories can have a great impact on one’s brand’s image. They can be simple or extensive depending on what you think will be most effective.
- Gather Data from Audience Research to Improve
Audience research is similar to social listening. It searches the keywords the audience will be using, but it’s more focused on your specific product. One can use social media to gather this information.
- Provide Exceptional Customer Service That Keeps Your Followers Happy
Customers now expect companies to handle their requests through social media. A strong investment in customer service can build meaningful relationships between the company and their customers. And with social media, the challenge of customer service remains as demanding as it had before.
- It’s (Mostly) FREE
It’s free to create social media profiles and post organic content. For some, that may be enough, and the quality of the content may promote the content on its own.
- Use #Hashtags to Increase Your Reach
The hashtag is a powerful tool that can connect a group of like-minded individuals through social media. It’s a simple way to greatly increase your reach.
Dr. Pratima Rajput
Associate Professor, RBIMS (MBA Department)