In the earlier blog, we discussed various digital marketing channels that best suits your business. In this blog we will look at social media marketing in detail, we will discover social media tools in depth and find what is trending and what it needs for your business to take the best out of social media. Now to understand Social Media Marketing, we must first understand what Social Media is.
What is social media?
We use the term Social Media a lot these days. The usage of the term is usually restricted to the social networking sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat where we post our experiences, photographs, opinions, etc. for our friends, family, acquaintances and anyone else to see, share or comment. But then, Google dictionary says that Social Media is “Websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking”. Therefore which also brings in sites like Wikipedia, Reddit, Quora, Digg where only creation and sharing of content happens and thus making the term Social Media puzzling.
Let’s simplify the term by defining Social Media separately. Social denotes interaction with people to share or exchange formal or informal information. And Media refers to the mode of communication this exchange of information happens, like newspapers, television, and in this generation, it is the internet. Therefore we can say that Social Media is the forum that internet provides us go through various sites where we can interact with each other, share and communicate information.
‘Where to start?’
One of the biggest challenges people have while marketing their business through social is ‘where to start?’ How to effectively use their time and how do all the social media tools work together.
4 simple steps to Social Media Success
- Find Interested People: Find people interested in your products or services with the help of search tools from Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram.
- Give/ Deliver Quality Content: Provide content not commercials. Utilize various content priority platforms like e-magazines to write and post blogs, creative about your brand and everything concerning about your business which the reader will find useful.
- Capture their information: direct your clientele to your lead capture page on your website which offers them high perceived value and ethical bribe for giving you their name and email
- Stay in touch so that you can sell them stuff: send emails, newsletters with information about you.
A very crucial step one must understand about social media tools is that you do not make money with social media. You make money by doing business with people that know like and trust you. Thus marketing with Social media tools will get you increased brand recognition, improved brand loyalty, better opportunities to convert and higher conversion rates.
Going Viral
The power of social media is such that your business can reach a billion people in just a few hours! There are three important essentials for your campaign to go viral, the messenger, the message and the environment.
The messenger comes in three kinds, the market mavens, social hubs and salespeople. Market mavens are the people who are constantly on the pulse of every information shred on the net. They are the first to read, watch, review and transmit to their immediate social network. Social hubs are individuals with a huge number of social connections and followers, they are the influencers. And the third, the salesperson are those who receive the information from market maven, magnify it by adding relevant inputs making it powerful & impressive before transmitting to the social hubs to get it trending.
The message needs to be sufficiently interesting and striking to hit the right chord and should carry the potential to be passed on to others to spur virality. Three basic concepts should be kept in mind while creating information that aspires to go viral; first is the image, content must tell a story that is emotionally charged. Second, share ‘how to’, tips & expertise, any kind information that reader feels is important and is given out for free. And thirdly, the information must have an element from what’s currently concerning, as it will help the information to be shared widely and swiftly.
The environment is all about the timing, context, the motive behind, emotional connects, location, and sensitivity. All the right elements at the right time can lead to great results.
Conclusion
Rest is on how you target your audience, select the right social media platform, boost visibility with advertising, use social media analytics and seek media attention. Creating information which you aim to reach a large audience is challenging and needs a lot of hard work. But nothing is impossible.
