Social Media Marketing for Businesses
Social media marketing suits businesses of all sizes. However, there's a lot businesses should think about before creating their social media account. Yes, it's very easy to open an account and start making posts. But for marketing on social media to actually help you achieve your business goals, you need to spend some time making a plan.
What Is Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing, or SMM, is a type of marketing that involves content creation and content sharing on social media networks. It’s used by brands to build awareness, and sell products or services online.
Social media marketing includes regular posts. These can be:
videos
images
texts
links
infographics
and other forms of content
This is done to drive audience engagement, as well as promote your business through paid social media advertising.
To help you get started with social media marketing below are some starter social media marketing tips. You can use them to build online presence for your business. With these tips, you can start to develop your own social media marketing strategy.
Before you begin making social media posts, consider your business’s objectives. Namely:
What are your organisation's vision and mission?
How should your brand be perceived online?
How does your brand differentiate itself from competitors?
What revenue and profitability is your business targeting?
What non-financial goals are you trying to achieve?
How will your business grow?
Then think of your marketing objectives.
First, think of the quantitative marketing objectives:
What's your website target traffic?
What is your lead volume per month?
Conversion rate?
It may seem like starting a business account on social media without answering these questions may not be such a bad idea. But if you want to drive sales you need to be clear in your mind of the outcomes you aspire to. So, having concise answers to these questions is crucial for success.
Here are some additional questions to ask when defining your social media marketing strategy:
What level of brand awareness do you want to achieve?
How will your customers perceive your brand and its products/services?
Your key buyer personas (what their goals are, why they want to buy from you)
Your business type should inform and drive your social media marketing strategy.
Example of a clothing company doing social media marketing on Instagram
For example, an online shop can get a lot of value from using Instagram for business. A B2B or marketing company might gain more value from using Linkedin.