Today, marketers tilted their eyes toward social media considering it the best medium to effectively communicate and interact with their customers. The increased focus of brands on it is constantly providing meaning to online professionalism.

These online applications, platforms, and media are facilitating interactions, collaborations, and the sharing of content mainly by tweeting, blogging, networking, etc.

Social media marketing is surpassing traditional advertising in demonstrating ever-increasing success.

Social media marketing is not merely about hitting the top of the feeds, or on the front page of any social website.  It is a process to establish brand authority, influence, and reputation among prospective customers, readers, or supporters.

As marketers are an extremely busy breed among all the teams involved in business, they have limited time for social media marketing.  Due to this time constraint, they need to focus on and put all their efforts into the fastest-growing social network relevant to their product or services.

Irrespective of the growth level of some selective social media networks, it is equally important to understand that not all networks are effective for every business.  Selection of networks for your marketing needs requires first figuring out the demographics, type of audience, the best time to reach your target audience, relevancy of your brand personality, etc.

Benefits of SMM

The e-commerce industry is largely dependent on SMM and appreciates its fallouts on brand awareness and promotion.  It offers four distinct advantages:

• A window to generate exposure to the products/services to their prospective customers while listening to their grievances and suggestions;
• An opportunity to identify influencers, who in turn can become brand evangelists; and
• It is nearly free of cost as compared to other ways of marketing
• Most of the available tools for SMM can be customized for specific needs.

SMM helps in:

• Increasing traffic to the website;
• Attracting new subscribers;
• Listening to customers’ feedback
• Identifying the demands of customers
• Building new business partnerships and leads;
• Improving search engine rankings;
• Increasing sales of products and services;
• finding where potential customers are hanging out;

What SMM is not

• It is not about selling it is more about interacting.
• SMM is not a mass advertising strategy.
• It is not a standalone tool for marketing.
• SMM cannot give results overnight.

Social Media Marketing Strategy

• Because of the low attention span due to the multitasking phenomenon SMM calls for carefully designed advertising methods. Advertisement on social media needs to be innovative and interesting to hold the imagination and attention of the prospects.

 

• A call to action is an important aspect of the advertisement. The message you are trying to convey must also provoke the prospect to take action accordingly.  The message should have a link directing the reader to the appropriate page to take action with the least effort.

 

• It can also be used to improve customer loyalty and retention by providing the best customer support services.

 

• If SMM is used intelligently, can also be used to ward off any negative publicity, but overdoing it may aggravate the situation.

 

• Before implementing the SMM strategy the market needs to be analyzed for the effectiveness of any specific brand.

The Relevance of Social Media in Marketing

Social media marketing is using it to display the products or services to those who are not aware of the availability and provide easy access to the company.  Social Media helps businesses in establishing brand personality and develop relationships that they otherwise may never achieve.

Social media while giving marketers a voice served as another customer outreach medium resulting in a positive impact on sales.  With the increased usage for business purposes, social media has become a committed engagement channel spreading the message to prospects in a conversational way.

Role of Social Media in marketing

Social media is now increasingly becoming an ingrained aspect of all areas of business including intra-company communication.  It plays an important role in marketing – here are a few roles of it in marketing:

• It can be used to provide an identity for the companies and the products or services that they offer.

 

• It is an effective channel to create relationships with prospective customers who might not be aware of the existence of the company or know about its products or service.

 

• Besides giving the opportunity to share their personality, social media channels help in attracting people to follow the company resulting in increased sales and brand advocacy.

 

• Social media can be used to provide a platform for interaction that consumers look for.

Conclusion

You cannot ignore social media for individuals or your business these days.  If you are engaged in an online business, it is impossible to separate social media from your overall marketing plan.  The social media conversation is extending its reach into all industries, homes, and small and large organizations. Irrespective of the size of your business, SMM is a baseline requirement.

Today, every business needs to adopt social media religiously in its overall marketing plans.

Are you seriously implementing SMM in your business?