A high volume of traffic on social networks means that a business can communicate with its customers easily and without any delay, that is why is so important to take care of your business’ SMM, we will see what is social media marketing, its objectives are, and why is so vital for businesses.
SMM: What is it and how it works?
Social Media Marketing or SMM is a type of marketing that is based on social networks to promote products or services.
What SMM does?:
- Text content posting.
- Videos and photos posting and distribution.
- Ads.
- Audience and engagement analysis.
- Strategies optimization.
What’s the difference between SMM and Traditional Marketing?
Social Media Marketing, just like traditional marketing, is based on attracting the target audience’s attention and being able to communicate with them. The main difference between them is the channels they use and how they distribute their message.
- Traditional Marketing only works outside the digital space, using printed material, press, television advertising, radio advertising, flyers, and road banners. – these are the printed press, radio, television, flyers, and banners on the roads.
- Social Media Marketing is all about the digital world and social media networks. You can use the same methodology as traditional marketing on SMM, such as articles, Ads campaigns, promotional campaigns through banners, imagery, and more. Nevertheless, its effectiveness is easier to track as social networks provide the tools for you to analyze is your campaigns and strategies are actually working.
How is SMM different from advertising on Google?
The goal of putting ads on Google is to attract users through the search engine to your website. In other words, you’re paying Google to put your website on the first results, all according to what the user’s searching for. Nevertheless, this is being done with people who already know what they’re looking for.
Marketing and Social Media Marketing in general are made for people who do not know what they want, they’re cold clients. That’s why a Social Media Ad is made to help the user understand what they need and force the creation of a demand.
Social Networks, what are they?
As stated by the Global Web Index, in 2021, more than 55% of the population worldwide had an account on at least one of the most popular social media networks:
- Facebook (with 2.85 billion users).
- Instagram (with 1.16 billion users).
- LinkedIn (with 500 million users).
- VK (mostly a Russian social network with 72 million users).
- TikTok ( from 900 million to 1 billion users).
- Telegram (500 million users).
- Pinterest (500 million users).
- Twitter (192 million users).
- YouTube (2 billion users).
Social Media Networks are one of the best traffic sources, each of them having its own characteristics. An Ad Campaign that has been working great in one, may fail when implementing it in another. This is why an SMM specialist must adapt the content for other social networks, always thinking and prioritizing their target audience.
There are a lot of reasons why a business must have a social media account, like the following:
- More Target Audience Reach.
- Accessibility to Marketing Tools
- Information sources about their customers’ needs and interests.
- The possibility to set up an Online Store and take advantage of the online purchasing era.
SMM goals and objectives
Social Media Marketing is about getting sales, and maybe increasing the branding’s digital presence, but mainly sales. Social Media Networks are great for attracting new and old customers to buy. A good way to measure if you’re having success in your SMM strategies is to check if you’re achieving a few of these:
- Increasing your website traffic.
- Informing your customers about products and promotions.
- Your business is showing up in the search results.
- More people are discovering you, increasing your brand awareness.
- Reputation Management: Check for mention of your business, look for negative comments or feedback, and try to fix the issues, that increase your reputation as most people will use/buy your products or services based on the feedback available.
- Performing cross-marketing. This is using another company’s marketing to your advantage, holding competitions, reposting them, and more.
- Tracking competitors: As having a private social media account for a business is not possible, you can research your competitors’ strategies, see how their audience reacts, and optimize it.
- Attracting new customers: New customers won’t come buying right away, you need to show them quality content, giving it a “good vibe” and demonstrating that your product/services are as good as the content you’re posting.
- Brand Engagement Increase: Social media networks will help you increase loyalty as your customers and audience will send DM, comment, and share your post. If you interact with them you will be able to make them feel special.
- Customer Support: Social Networks also help your company provide direct customer support.
Social Media Marketing: Basic Tools
SMM Specialists use content and advertising as the most basic tools, but there are also ather methods they utilize:
- Community management: Community Managers focus on content strategies and interacting with the audience.
- Bloggers: They use blogs on their niche to promote their services, hiring writers to write an article about the product or the service they’re offering. It attracts niche traffic.
- Viral content: This is basically making content that will become viral and will attract a lot of traffic, a good example of this is the TikTok challenges
- Analysis and Monitoring: Most social networks have analytics tools for the SMM specialist to study how their strategies are working. This is vital for a specialist to have success.
What’s an SMM Manager?
A Social Media Marketing Manager is a specialist who will plan and perform marketing and content strategies on the business’s social media accounts, promoting the services or products through advertising campaigns or conducting specialized content strategies. A few of the things they do are:
- Content planning and posting.
- Ad campaigns.
- Audience interaction.
- Content analysis and success studies.