Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms to reach, communicate and connect with an audience – existing and potential. There are numerous social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tik Tok, Pinterest and so on, which can be used for a business depending on the needs, goals and audience.
Social media marketing is a popular form of marketing because it has a wide reach and is much cheaper than traditional forms of advertising. Therefore, it provides much value for money for businesses of all sizes, amongst other benefits which we will outline below.
Promoting your product
This is one of the main reasons that social media marketing is so popular. It provides multiple platforms to promote your product and a very large audience. By promoting your content, you inherently promote your product. It is good practice to research what works best on the platform, what kind of content your audience enjoys and the optimal times to publish your content. Be sure to include a catchy caption, an image and mix it up.
Growing brand awareness
The more recognisable a brand is, the higher the chance a consumer will purchase it. Brand awareness is linked to recognition and trustworthiness, meaning that if people are aware of and recognise your brand, in time they will trust your brand and will therefore buy from it. Consumers buy from a brand they recognise and so growing brand awareness is important in reaching and getting in front of more people quickly and easily. And because social media doesn’t sleep, you can always be in front of your current and future audience. An important note is to always ensure the visual elements of your brand are well represented and that you don’t flood the timeline’ (excessively publishing content which then drowns out other content on people’s feeds) as this can be off-putting as it comes across as forced. In such instances it is detrimental rather than positive as people will just unfollow your pages and you will lose out on making lasting connections with your audience.
Building customer loyalty
Building a loyal customer base is something that takes time. Social media allows a business to connect and interact with customers in real-time. This also means that grievances can be attended to and corrected promptly. Customers will follow and interact with brands they enjoy and if customers follow you, they are more likely to choose you over your competition, so ensure you have content that your target audience will be interested in. Along with this, customer service and having a quality product will assist in converting your customers into loyal ones.
Increasing traffic to your blog or website
Social media marketing is a great way to direct traffic to your website or your blog. In most instances, organic traffic will not come from search engines alone and so using social media platforms allows for a good boost. When planning your strategy be sure to consider what you post, how often you post and what times you post as all these things can increase or decrease the efficiency, reach and engagement of your content. Planning ahead and following a schedule (most of the time) will ensure you are prepared and will also give you time to edit your content to help improve your SEO.
Link building
Link building is the process of increasing the number and quality of inbound links to your website. Inbound links are links from other websites to your own. It is important as it improves your SEO and ranking. Sharing content related to your blog will expose it to your followers and if they are in a similar industry and write similar content, they can link it back to your original post as a source. When search engines pick up on these inbound links to your content, they will rank you higher.
Social media marketing is a great way for businesses to promote their products as well as grow brand awareness and build customer loyalty. Along with this, it can be used to improve SEO and ranking by creating opportunities for link building as well as redirecting traffic to a website or blog. These are just a few of the benefits of social media marketing which is why it is so popular with businesses of all sizes. Regardless of your budget, it can be efficient with positive effects. Contact us for a social media marketing strategy and to handle your social profiles. We have flexible and customised social media packages for all major platforms.
