Basics of Social Media Marketing

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"Don't use social media to impress people; use it to impact people."

- Dave Willis, Author and Speaker

Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms to connect with your audience to build your brand, increase sales, and drive website traffic. This involves publishing great content on your social media profiles, listening to and engaging your followers, analyzing your results, and running social media advertisements.

The major social media platforms (at the moment) are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, and Snapchat.

Social Media Marketing Guide Definitions

• Content: Content is whatever you post on social media. It can be a Facebook status update, a video on Instagram, a Tweet, and so on. 

• Context: Gary Vaynerchuk said, “Content is king, but context is God.” For instance, you might have a great joke, but if you place it somewhere inside a 3,000-word blog post, very few people are likely to see it. On Twitter, however, that same joke as a tweet might crush it. So make your content context engaging and interesting.

• Hashtags: By now one probably knows that hashtags are a very common tool that people use to add meta information on almost all social media channels. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest all use hashtags to let one describe the topic of one's content or mark it as part of current trends.

• Shares: Shares are the currency of the social media world. When people engage and interact with one’s content, that’s good. But when they share it, that is the time to celebrate. A great social media tool to measure shares and the overall impact of content. The more shares, the more people love your content. Shares are the best form of engagement that people can have.

• Engagement: This is a general term referring to how people interact with the content that one produces. It can be a like, a reaction, a comment, or a share. All of these are good, but the shares are where it’s at.

Core Pillars of Social Media Marketing

• Strategy

A sound social media marketing strategy is the backbone of your social media presence. Without a strategy, you’re wasting time, unlikely to achieve your goals, and will most likely struggle to reach your target audience.

Plan and Publish

Social media is a powerful tool, but you can’t just go out there and start publishing content without a plan behind it.

When you’re planning content make sure that you:

• Know your audience: You need to know the demographic of your audience in order to connect with them.

• Focus on quality: The quality of content is just as important as the quantity.

• Consider your brand: Keeping in line with your brand values is crucial.

• Listening and Engagement
• Plan your content and above all, actually engage with your audience. Your feedback might not always be positive; but, if you don’t make changes, neither will the tone of your responses. 

Analytics

The success of any social media marketing campaign depends on analytics for tracking and collecting data. Without this information, you can’t:

• understand user behavior
• refine your strategy
• find which platform works best for your brand
• discover the best times to post
• analyze your competitors

 Advertising

The three main types of social media advertising are:

1. Organic: Content that picks up views naturally and you don’t pay for.
2. Paid: Content that an organization sponsors and therefore costs money to post.
3. Earned: Content that has been given freely in the form of shares, likes, and comments

Different Types of Social Media Marketing

Aside from the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, social media marketing takes many different forms, such as:

• content marketing/content creating
• advertising/sponsorship
• influencer marketing
• social media management/community management
• paid media
• building your following
• contributing to forums
• Reviews
• Advertising

1. Facebook: Facebook is the biggest social media platform. It offers marketers some of the robust most data and the most precisely targeted ads. Facebook Ads walks you through the process, so even the newest social media marketers may be able to succeed on the platform.
2. Instagram: Instagram is and was always about pictures, and its video function is pretty popular too. Out of all of the big networks, Instagram has the highest engagement rate. You can also release short or long-form videos and share Instagram stories. Both formats do well for brands. Tools like In Video can help you create and edit professional videos that increase engagement and reach more people.
3. YouTube: This social network has changed the way we consume video since it has made it easy (streaming is super fast) and free, and it gives us a way to express our opinions instantly (thanks to comments).Almost 5 billion videos are watched on YouTube every single day.  Pro tip: Use other social media channels to drive your followers to YouTube by giving excerpts, snippets, and previews of your videos. The little, bite-sized teasers will spark curiosity and make people want to see the whole thing.
4. LinkedIn: LinkedIn’s growth never exploded as much as Facebook’s, but they’ve been around for 18 years and have grown to over 774+ million members. On LinkedIn, it’s all about being professional. The casual writing style that’s used on some blogs doesn’t work as well on LinkedIn. People are there for one thing only: business.
5. Reddit: Reddit’s slogan claims that they are the “front page of the Internet,” and they aren’t very far off. With 1.5 billion visits from May 2019 to May 2020, Reddit might just live up to its description.
6. Snapchat: Snapchat has 293 million daily active users. While the majority of those are women (about 61 percent), men on the platform have one thing in common: they’re young. In fact, 69 percent of teens use Snapchat.
7. Pinterest: Pinterest is the number one social media platform for marketers who want to target women. 60 percent of their monthly active users are female.You can think of Pinterest as a giant digital scrapbook. Due to the nature of the pinboards, Pinterest is also one of the only platforms where images look best when you display them vertically. Keep in mind that your pics need special formatting to look good on Pinterest.
8. Quora: Quora is unique from other social media platforms as it’s strictly based on the questions and answers. Now, you might think “People ask questions and get answers on Facebook and Twitter all the time. Why use Quora?”

There are two reasons: -

1. The answers on other sites are sometimes not answers at all, personal stories, and, far too often, just plain mean.
2. People on Quora can establish authority without having to explain their qualifications over and over.

For instance, on Facebook, someone in a cat group may ask how to fix a mistake they made while cutting their own hair. While some folks may give kind, helpful responses, chances are they’ll also get a lot of rude answers about their “poor decision-making skills.”

Tips to Grow and Engage your Audience on Social Media

• Social Media Marketing In 5 Minutes | What Is Social Media Marketing? [For Beginners].
• How to Start Social Media Marketing (4 ESSENTIAL Tips for Beginners).
• What Is Social Media Marketing? (And Why Does It Matter?!).

A sound social media marketing strategy is the backbone of your social media presence. Without a strategy, you’re wasting time, unlikely to achieve your goals, and will most likely struggle to reach your target audience.

• creating a social media strategy with a concrete goal in mind know why you are posting on social media and what you want to achieve by doing so
• choosing the right social media channels for your company or industry 
• experimenting with different content types such as live video or GIFs
• keeping track of current trends in your industry and adapting your marketing strategy accordingly, but don’t copy what other companies are doing; great advertising campaigns integrate something new! 
• holding contests and inviting user-generated content 
• sharing useful content, starting conversations and writing actionable content to inspire people to click through, read more, or even download your free brochure or mobile app. 

Links To Some Important Videos:

https://youtu.be/I2pwcAVonKI
https://youtu.be/-tdFvJLw2UQ
https://youtu.be/489yr8CnyTw

References:

https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/social-media-quotes
https://neilpatel.com/what-is-social-media-marketing/

Compiled and Edited by

Priyanshi Bhardwaj
Batch of 2023
B.A. (Hons.) Journalism
Lady Shri Ram College for Women, New Delhi