What Is Social Media Marketing? And Its Importance

Social media marketing is the way of creating a robust social media marketing strategy to connect with your audience, build your brand, increase sales, and drive website traffic. It is not about Facebook ads, but it is a lengthy process where you need to check on the type of content you publish, sharing content, and following continuous social media analytics.

Enough has been said about social media, but there are still lots that are still confused about how social media posts can act as a game-changer to the target audiences and generate leads for small businesses.

Most of us use social media as entertainment; it is not about you and me; instead, more than 1 billion people worldwide started using social media back in 2005. Imagine getting those high-end users to your business just with a strong social media marketing plan.

So we decided to develop a complete guide that will simplify social media marketing for those trying to develop successful marketing strategies. But before we move on to social media marketing, here is a quick guide about different social media platforms that can help you build a brand on social media.

• Facebook: There are 7.8 billion people across the world, and one in four uses Facebook. Imagine the density of the population using Facebook, so you can never imagine ignoring Facebook. You need to regularly update your status on Facebook and frequently interact with your potential customers to get their trust and ultimately increase your sales. You can also set your targeted audience as per your preferences.
• Instagram: Though a newer social media channel, but it has gained a huge number of users in a very limited time span. If the products or services you sell have some direct connection with the youth of any country, then Instagram is the perfect place to be present to target a relevant audience.
• Twitter: Most of the recognized personalities use this platform to tweet their views. So you can obviously use this platform to tweet about your business to get your business famous among recognized famous. You should at least be active on Twitter to have a strong social media presence.
• YouTube: Widely used video marketing platform is the best way to gain users' attention with an engaging video. Make the videos with a fun factor to engross more users as most of the users are present for entertainment. Advertise your brand with the spice of entertainment to engage more users in your business.
• LinkedIn: On the professional front, most of the users uses LinkedIn to target the relevant audience. Most of the LinkedIn users are either employers, employees, or business owners. So you can target the relevant class here and get the much-awaited traffic to build up your brand's recognition.
• Blogger: When you opt for blog posts, you should be obviously present on Blogger and post the same on Quora to deliver the associated information to the relevant audience with a link on your website to drive direct traffic on your website.
• Whatsapp: Most used messaging app can be used to target the audience of a particular location and send them messages related to your business. You can promote the products, services, and offers here to get their attention to your business. They will convert if they are satisfied with your way of dealing.

These are some of the most recognized social media which you should use to market your business with relevant content on social media. Now, when you must have an idea about social media platforms, you should now create a social media account and give tough competition to your competitors in online marketing as well.

But we want to warn you about the difference between digital marketing and social media marketing. To get the detailed information go through ou blog " How social media marketing differs from digital marketing?"

Why is social media marketing important?

Consciously or subconsciously, we all know, somehow, social media has become an inevitable part of our lives. We cannot ignore the fact that we also opt for business purchases from social media when it comes to us. The same goes with your business as well; you should be highly active on social media to boost your online presence and ultimately, sales.

Here are some of the importance of social media that we should use for marketing.

• Wide coverage: Just sitting at home, you get to cover the audience from varied demographics as per your targeted audience. When you opt for traditional marketing, you need a salesperson who will move door to door to convince the customer to purchase the product because of its quality. It is not the case here, here all you need is a social media marketer who knows your business niche and potential customers. That's it; you will start getting leads without much hassle from your home with the help of a strong social media grip.
• Relevant audience: Here, you have the option to filter your audience based on locality, age group, gender, profession, and whatnot. What more do you expect, you can easily target the audiences who can conveniently become your customer. For instance, if you have a book shop, you can target people who are students in the age group between 13-21 years from the specific locality you want to sell your product.
• Better customer service: You can directly interact with your customers and ask for their feedback to improve the quality of products or services further. If the customers are satisfied, the reviews will help you get more customers as it builds trust among new clients that the products are genuine and trustworthy.
• Social listening: You get to hear what your audience wants to say and accordingly communicate with them to further improve the service from your side. Alongside you can also clear the doubts that your clients may have. You can run a poll on the audience choice of the products and many and in this way you can listen to your audience through social media.
• Analytics: Get real-time updates about the engagements, reach, and clicks on the posts. Though Facebook gives accurate information about all the mentioned information, you can use analytics tools for a clearer picture and improve your marketing strategy to reach more audiences. When you do traditional marketing, you cannot track or target your audience. So with modern amenities, you should also turn modern and blend your traditional and digital marketing techniques.
• Cost-effective: As compared to traditional marketing techniques, social media marketing is more budget-friendly, which makes it convenient for small business owners to advertise the products or services that too at a minimum budget. Just imagine you can run a Facebook Ad for just $1 per day and get your audience to view your updates on a regular basis.

Now when we have read about the importance of social media marketing, I would recommend you to read " Does marketing on social media works" to get a clearer picture of how adversely it can impact your business if you are not into social media marketing.

Now comes the turn to understand the benefits of social media marketing. Here are some of the benefits of social media that will surely drive you crazy to start social media marketing at the earliest.

• Consistently attain new audiences for your business: When you are on social media, you always get new opportunities to communicate with your potential customers. Whenever you are on social media, you always have open doors for new audiences to interact with you and your business.
• Build a stronger relationship with customers: When you interact with your audience, you get trust from your audience. Also, when you continuously communicate with your customers and ask for their feedback to make sure to build a strong and healthy customer relationship with them.
• Generate more leads and conversions: With new audiences coming up daily, and you obviously generate more leads and conversions for your brand and ultimately boost your online presence.
• Stay ahead of your competitors: If you are on social media, you are a step ahead of your competitors. It might be possible that your competitors may or may not be on social networking platforms which gives you a bonus point to gain more audience.
• Helps in raising brand awareness: Whenever the viewers will see your business post on a regular basis, they will start recognizing your brand, and this way, your brand will have better brand recognition. So with social media, you can create brand awareness among your targeted audience to reach newer heights of success in a limited time span.

After understanding the methods we want you to learn the process that you must follow to see the visible results from social media marketing, else every effort goes in vain.

The process to follow while initiating social media marketing.

It is a five-step process that will lead your business to success. You need to follow the process step by step to get results. Due to immense competition, to survive here, you need to be very active and conscious to amend your moves as per the latest trends that follow.

• Strategy: Before you start publishing, the first thing that you need to do is to find what your goal is. Once you know what you want from social media, you need to choose the platforms you want to focus on. You also need to sort out the type of content you want to publish. Thus before moving on to publishing, you need to create a proper strategy to initiate marketing.
• Planning and publishing: Publishing on social media is just like posting on a personal account, but before you publish, you need to do proper planning to check what your audience might like. You are not using social media for entertainment purposes instead to target those potential customers so you must know their likes and dislikes. Now when you have done proper research and development, you can now publish your content on social media.
• Listening and engagement: Now, when you are active on social media, different persons will communicate about your brand. If it is something good, you must appreciate it, and if it is something negative, you must offer support before it impacts your brand name. You always need to monitor the comments, tags, and discussions related to your brand to improve business growth.
• Analytics and reporting: Whether you are posting or engaging on social media, your business is somehow growing. You need to track the report of your business growth in comparison to the last month and accordingly change the strategy as and when required.
• Advertising: Finally you should opt for paid advertisements where you target your audience as per your business. You can also retarget customers who are genuinely interested in your business. Social media advertising is so powerful that you can filter your preference on locality, age, gender, etc.

From this blog, you must have understood the urgency to hire a social media marketing company, who will look after your business to help it expand. DotCreative is the leading Social media marketing company in Kolkata that works dedicatedly to make your dream come true.

After reading the complete blog, you must have cleared all your doubt but still if you do have some questions you can go through our blog"Most common questions related to Social Media Marketing." Still, if you have some queries, you can contact us on 7980358244 or email us at [email protected].