What is Social Media Marketing?
Social Media Marketing is a marketing strategy using Social media sites. It is the process of gaining attention and traffic to a website through social media. It includes creating and sharing content through social media that attracts people. Social media marketing is an important marketing strategy utilized by almost all companies today. The emergence of social media changed the face of marketing. The effective use of social media in marketing can boost your popularity to a large extend. It will help you to earn more profit in a less expensive way. Here we are discussing some social media sites that can be used in marketing.
Social Media Used in Marketing
Some important social media sites used in marketing are :
- Google+
- YouTube
- Yelp
- Foursquare etc.
Twitter is an online social networking site that has a large number of users worldwide. It was created in March 2006 and launched in July 2006. It is estimated that as of March 2016 Twitter has more than 310 Million monthly active users. Millions of Tweets are being posted on Twitter per day. Twitter allows sharing of short messages of 140 characters length known as Tweets. These Tweets can include text, hashtags, images, GIFs, Emoji, videos, or links to other websites.
Twitter allows companies to post their updates as Tweets. This Tweets will appear on followers’ timelines. People can like these tweets and they can Retweet these tweets to share with their followers. Twitter can also be used for providing customer support. Many companies use this platform to provide 24×7 customer services. This will increase the loyalty and trust value of the company.
Advertising with Twitter
Twitter also provides paid advertising. We can use paid advertising for the following purposes. They are:
- Tweet Engagements
- Website Clicks or Conversions
- App Installs or App Re-Engagements
- Video Views
- Followers
- Leads on Twitter
Steps in Creating a Twitter Campaign :
We should select the country and language before selecting the campaign. After that, we can select the campaigns we need. After selecting the campaign we can create our campaign. There are four steps in creating the campaign.
Step 1: In this step, you can set the name of your campaign. You can also add the website which we intended to promote and set the relevant categories related to your business.
Step 2: Using this step you can choose your audience. You can select the audience based on their location, gender, interests, etc.
Step 3: In this step, you have to select your budget. You can select the amount for which you are organizing this campaign and the method for paying.
Step 4: In these steps, you can create the tweets that you want to use for the campaign. You can choose the existing tweets or create new ones.
These are the four basic steps of creating a paid Twitter campaign. After completing these tasks you can successfully launch your campaign. These ads will appear on followers’ timelines as promoted tweets.
Facebook is also an online community site like Twitter. It is one of the important sites which is used in Social Media Marketing. Facebook was launched on 4th February 2004. Facebook provides features similar to Twitter. Fb allows the posting longer descriptions than the short tweets of Twitter. It also allows sharing of photos videos, testimonials, etc. People can like these posts and share them or tag them and they can also comment on these posts. When we advertise using Fb we should create a Facebook page. The commonly repeated mistake, in this case, is that people create a profile instead of a page. Please remember that a profile is not meant for marketing. For marketing purposes, we must create a page, not a profile.
Facebook also provides paid advertising like Twitter. Its advertising can be used to promote our page and to increase our popularity more efficiently and provides paid advertising for different purposes. Using Facebook advertising we can send more people to our website, increase the conversions on the website, boost or promote the pages, increase the installation of your app and enhance the engagement in your app, etc.
For more information about Facebook advertising please read the article Facebook Page Creation and Advertising.
Google+
Google+ was launched in June 2011 and it is an addition to providing pages and some features of Facebook, is also able to integrate with the Google search engine. Google Adwords, Google maps, etc. can also be integrated with Google+. It allows the creation of different interest-based communities. We can create different circles such as friends, family, colleagues, etc. Images, posts, events updates, etc. can be shared with the different Google+ communities and groups.
It allows targeted advertising and location-based marketing and promotions and navigation services. Such promotional activities are introduced with the development of Google Personalized Search and other location-based search services. Google+ Collections allows you to categorize your updates by topic. Such categorized collections will help your followers quickly find updates for the topics they’re interested in. You can also induce people to share your updates if they like it and it will act as a recommendation for your brand or company. Thus you can gain more popularity and trust among others and this will help you to establish yourself. Through your Google Plus profile you can share content and news about your business. This will drive more traffic to your business.
LinkedIn is a professional business-related networking site. It allows companies to create professional profiles for themselves and for the companies. You can create a LinkedIn page for a company using your personal profile. These pages will allow business owners to promote their products or services and be able to interact with their customers. The use of widgets helps the members to promote their various social networking activities, such as Twitter streams or blog entries of their product pages, onto their LinkedIn profile page.
Many companies also use Linked In for the purpose of employee recruitment. Due to the spread of spam mails through different job portals, now companies opt to recruit their employees using trusted networks such as LinkedIn. Companies have voiced a preference for the amount of information that can be obtained from a LinkedIn profile, versus a limited email. LinkedIn also provides paid campaigns like Facebook and Twitter.
Instagram was launched in October 2010. It is a social networking service that enables its users to share photos, videos either publicly or privately. It also allows sharing photos or videos through other social networking platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc. In addition to this, the users can also follow other users’ feeds. Instagram will take over social media marketing soon. The user engagement rate of Instagram was 15 times higher than that of Facebook and 25 times higher than that of Twitter. Instagram provides a platform for companies through which they can reach customers in a rich visual environment. Using this platform the user and the company can communicate publicly and directly.
Instagram app is now used by many companies to boost their visual marketing strategy. Companies see Instagram as the most potential platform to attract their customers especially the younger target groups. Instagram can be accessed using both smartphones and the internet. Thus it will help the companies to expand their brand exposure to the maximum extent. Instagram also inspires people to collect and share the pictures of their favorite brand and thus creating a user-induced sharing which gives more popularity for the brands.
Pinterest is also an image-sharing site that was launched in October 2012. You can save and share photos using Pinterest. You can create boards based on your interest and post photos on these boards. The photos which are known as Pins can be arranged on different boards based on different categories. You can also invite other people with common interests to pin photos on your boards and can save or repin photos on other people’s boards. You should pin images that attract the attention of people.
Pinterest provides you an opportunity to reach your audience through a visually attractive medium. You can use this medium to market your products and also to sell your products. You can sell your products through Pinterest my including Buyable Pins. Buyable pins let people buy your products through Pinterest itself. There won’t be a need for people to leave Pinterest to buy your products.
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing app that was created in February 2005 and bought by Google in November 2006. Here the advertisements are done in a way to suit the target audience. YouTube provides video-based marketing. Here users can view, share, upload videos, and can also comment on videos. Companies use YouTube to grow their audience by creating videos that attract users.
In YouTube, the ads that appear will be in sync with the content of the video requested. So it will increase the chance for a user to get attracted towards a product related to the content he searches for. YouTube provides promotional activities such as sponsoring a video. Paid campaigns can also be organized on YouTube.
Vine
Vine is also a video-sharing service. It provides a short-form video sharing service that provides sharing of six-second-long looping video clips. It was founded in June 2012 and Twitter acquired it in October 2012. The videos uploaded on the vine can also be shared using other social media such as Facebook. The videos can be organized into different groups based on different themes. Vine app is also available for users to view and to browse for videos.
Using vine companies can create short videos about their products and services. This will help your audience to get more information about your products. You can also inspire your audience to share their own videos about their experience with your product. Thus you can get more attraction and attention among your audience. You can reach your audience more easily and educate them in an entertaining way.
Yelp
Yelp was founded in 2004. It is a place where your businesses can be listed based on your location. Here the businesses are searchable by their locations. Businesses owners can create profiles for their businesses. They can also post and share information such as the business location, contact information, pictures, and service information. Yelp keeps pages devoted to different locations and different business categories. Users can see these pages and they can write reviews about the businesses and about the products. They can also rate the businesses using a one to the five-star rating system.
Yelp is also available as an app and added features for customers to order and purchase things online, book rooms in hotels, make an appointment at a spa, etc. Yelp made it possible for business owners to respond to the reviews of the users in public or private. Businesses can also post about the events that they organize or about the special deals they provide.
Foursquare
Like Yelp Foursquare also works based on the location. It provides a location-based listing of businesses. The service was created in late 2008 and launched in 2009. Foursquare provides suggestions based on a user’s current location. Using Foursquare the user can search for restaurants, nightlife spots, shops, and other places of interest in their surrounding area. It also provides an opportunity for users to add reviews and rate the businesses.
Social Media Marketing is the Present and Future of marketing. As a marketer, we should know which are the media that could bring us the traffic. Social Media Marketing can bring you great popularity and will help you to keep pace with the changes that happen in the world. If you are a marketer you should use social media sites if you want to sustain yourself in the marketing field.
