Social media has gained a lot of prominence over the years. The trends in social media are changing each year. Every communication or interaction in the online world is mostly initiated via social media networking channels. In fact, these networks have become an inevitable part of our lives. Once there was Orkut, then came to Facebook followed by Twitter, Instagram, and others. Some of these are mostly preferred for personal purposes, while ones like LinkedIn support professional and business needs.
However, we can see that Facebook has gained a lot of prominence in supporting businesses with their marketing. With effective marketing strategies for small business, huge growth in online sales can be seen. It is evident that with proper usage of social media in digital marketing can bring very good results for your business. If sources are to be believed, more than 3 billion people use the internet and from that, more than 2 billion use social media. This means more than 65% of people who are online use social media.
We can see that the use of social media has increased to more than 70% in the past decade. When social media is properly strategized and all parameters are induced appropriately, businesses have greater chances of exposure. This ensures more visitors, engagement, conversion, and finally retention. Social media offers companies with consumer insights that will help them to build a brand impression that will last in the long run.
Let’s check the social media marketing plans.
Promoting Businesses Using Social Media
You know about SEO through which you can increase traffic to your website, online sales, user engagement, etc with an effective SEO strategy. Here we discuss how we can use social media for the same purpose. Social media offers a large array of features to businesses when used and strategized appropriately to attract customers. It also helps them to generate much-needed brand awareness. This will automatically generate people’s curiosity and they will turn into your followers. Mostly, youngsters between the age group 18 to 24 are more interested to find about brands and stick to these brands if they love them. You can end up having a wide array of followers if your brand succeeds in impressing them.
With social media, you can easily find out who your customers are, what they need and how can you fulfill their requirements, which is exactly what is customer based marketing strategy. All you have to do is from the present list of your followers, you need to examine their interests – what they are interested in seeing, what are they not interested in seeing, while also analyzing what they love most about your brand.
You can always use tools, such as Hootsuite Insights, to find out more about the presence of your business online. How well it has managed to influence people. You can always find out who follows or mentions your organization, and also track the number of times your company gets mentioned. It will also help to understand where these are being mentioned. Finally, all this data would contribute to enhancing and strengthening your brand’s presence online.
These days, most social media sites have already done their research well. They know what each of their people wants. Hence, they have laid out marketing strategies that businesses need to follow when advertising online using these networking sites. Social media sites, such as LinkedIn, have strategies to streamline people on the basis of various parameters. Some of these parameters include age, gender, location, etc.
While social media sites, such as FB, are using Facebook ads, which are targeted on the basis of the location, behavior patterns, interests, and connections. You can always track this data in real time. This will help you to understand what is trending and what you need to do. The number of shares likes and follows will impact your website’s position in the search results. With social media, you can direct consumers to your site. But it also will drive people who are doing Google or searches on search engines. When your content gets more likes or shares, the more is its chances of visibility within the search results.
As there are a large number of businesses competing everywhere, it would be always ideal to get some information or insights into their performance by keeping a tab or by following them. Many of the top companies use digital marketing for business growth. It will give you an idea of how they interact with their customers. How well do the customers rate their brands? What do the customers love them most for and what do the customers don’t like with them? This will help you to plan accordingly for yours.
Importance of Social Media in Digital Marketing
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Strategies and Marketing
As we have already discussed, social media has become an inseparable part of marketing. So whenever you plan business online, social media is mandatory. You get a glimpse of what people are looking for on social media. This is great from a marketing perspective. This will be a great source on the decisions people make online regularly, helping you plan accordingly. All you have to do is then categorize and organize them on the basis of their interests and you have the key to their hearts. Here is a guide on digital marketing for small business.
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Reputation Management
Social media has always been an influencer. So when a business has a social media presence, it will play all sorts of roles in controlling the business’s reputation. Here, you have an option to engage with your people directly or they reach out to you with their questions or queries. Some might reach you with their suggestions or complaints if any. On social media, it is important that you always have an idea of what is going on, as this helps to manage a business’s reputation online. It could help in managing negative comments, and increasing the positive ones for the best.
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Engaging and Retaining Relationships
On social media, you have a competitive advantage. It will allow you to reach out to new people, build, and maintain relationships. Over social media, you can always track and understand your customers, if you provide them with valuable and appropriate information. This will also help you understand what your people think about your business if you track their comments and reactions on your products and services.
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Sales
Increasing sales from your website is your foremost strategy online. When customers reach out to you on social media, they are here looking for more information about your brand, products, and services. You need to use content marketing strategies to appropriately voice and advertise products and services. This will help customers to relate to your products. You need to sell without creating a picture that you are actually selling. Through social media, customers can understand more about your business and reach you via search engines.
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Affordable
A number of online marketing tools are expensive and need investment. But social media is available for free. Where else can you showcase your products for free? This is the place where people come daily. So your products and services would be noticed with ease. Based on your users’ needs, reach out to them, connect with them, learn and understand what interests them most, help them solve their concerns, and finally always respond to their feedbacks. This will help you to improvise from your end, thereby helping you make money with zero investment.
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Business and Brand
Do you think your customers trust you? If they trust you, they will always remain loyal to you. This is what your business needs the most. So for businesses that have already built a foothold, customers are bound to always reach out to such businesses. Regardless of whether you are trying to create a new or building a voice from scratch, or trying to make your existing presence known, social media will take you far and wide. It is seen that for the brands that people see over social media, people are more likely to recognize and connect to these.
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Conversions
For all the posts that you share, update or comment, there are always more possibilities of transforming leads into prospects. If you receive a reaction, it automatically generates conversion. Sometimes, not all of your reactions would be able to create conversions. But it would always help to increase conversion. Check this useful guide on website conversion rate optimization.
Social media has an important role to play in any company’s marketing strategies. Social media takes you to a huge population out there. But there are also other advantages of using social media. It will always bring you information about your competitors and their interaction with their people. It will also give you an understanding of what your customers are looking for and help you provide them with they need.
Would you like us to help you with a digital strategy or social media? Have you ever analyzed how your social media strategies are performing? Always seek expert help. Only a professionally experienced individual or business can help you with developing a great strategy for your business online.
Acodez is a leading digital marketing agency in India offering all kinds of digital marketing services which includes, SEO, SMM, SEM, Inbound marketing, etc. We are also a web development company giving solutions to businesses in India and abroad. Our broad experience of having worked on numerous projects has helped us know the requirements of the clients and providing the best services to them. For more information, contact us today.
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Good presentation, Thanks