Social media marketing revolutionized the way brands behave and interact with their audiences. The likes of Facebook and YouTube attract more than three billion daily active users, thus attracting almost half of the global population.
It is not only a major opportunity for brands to engage with target audiences but also a genuine business necessity. After all, not having well-crafted accounts on social networks is like not having a website. It’s a digital ID of your company, so the only real question is which platforms to use in the attempt to build stronger relationships with your customers.
In this post, we are going to discuss the traits and benefits of social media marketing and point out the most important networks you should use to promote the brand. Let’s begin!
The Basics of Social Media Marketing
If you want to make use of social networks to the fullest extent, then you need to understand the basics of the process and learn how to recognize its major features.
By definition, social media marketing is a form of Internet marketing that utilizes social networking websites as a marketing tool. A simpler way to put it is to say that social media marketers plan and design quality content with the goal to impress the followers and spread the word about the brand.
The whole concept is relatively new, but it quickly grew to become an irreplaceable marketing tool for all sorts of businesses. Lots of studies prove the power of social media marketing, but let’s check out only a few of those:
- More than 50 million small businesses currently use Facebook Pages to connect with their customers.
- A typical user spends more than two hours on social media every day.
- Almost 55% of people use social platforms to research products.
- Over 70% of consumers who’ve had a good social media service experience with a brand are likely to recommend it to others.
- As much as 93% of marketers cite more exposure for their business as the number one benefit of social media marketing.
All these stats prove an enormous potential of social media marketing, but we want to discuss some of its major benefits in the next chapter.
The Pros of Using Social Media Marketing
You can probably identify a lot of pros of social media marketing, but we believe you might be missing out on some features. This is why we decided to present to you the benefits of being active on all of the main social media platforms:
- Raise brand awareness: The first advantage of using social media for marketing purposes is quite obvious. With billions of users active globally, social networks allow you to raise brand awareness quickly and effortlessly.
- Promote the brand cheaply: It’s hard to find a digital marketing channel as cost-effective as social media. You can create an account on every major platform free of charge and even choose not to spend a dime on content promotion. But even if you do invest in social media marketing, it won’t cost you too much and the results will be excellent. In fact, even promoting content directly by the website or when you buy Tiktok likes is pretty cheap compared to most advertising options.
- Build audience relationships: Social networks are developed primarily as communication tools, so you can use them to strengthen audience relationships long-term. As you keep interacting with the fans, you can turn most of them into loyal supporters and even brand advocates.
- Boost engagement: Of course, you cannot build relationships without a fair share of social engagement. Take advantage of social networks to ask questions, post comments, and answer users’ inquiries – it will make the audience feel acknowledged and appreciated.
- Increase website traffic: You can use social media marketing to redirect fans to the website and increase traffic. It can help you to skyrocket conversion rates, while you can also expect search engines to recognize the new trend and award you with higher rankings.
- Improve customer satisfaction: If you stay agile and keep answering customers’ questions promptly, rest assured it will improve the overall satisfaction rate of your audience.
- Target consumers extremely precisely: Social media platforms developed superior advertising tools that enable businesses to target consumers extremely precisely. Using digital ads, you can target users and place messages based on all sorts of factors, including demographic traits, interests, online behavior, and many more.
- Grow brand authority: With everything we’ve mentioned so far, it is clear that social media marketing can help you to grow brand authority in the long run. You should publish top-notch content consistently and it will make the audience respect you and the business you are representing.
Popular Social Networks You Have to Make Use of
We’ve covered the most important features and advantages of social media marketing, but there is still one more question left to answer: Which networks make the biggest influence on consumers? There are dozens of social platforms to choose from, but we picked six channels that promise to give you the best results. Here they are:
1. Facebook
It’s not difficult to figure out what makes Facebook the most important social media marketing platform out there. It is a genuine giant with more than two billion users, which means that over a quarter of the global population is contributing to the Facebook community.
You can use this channel to publish all sorts of content. There are no limits here since you can take advantage of textual posts, images, videos, live streaming services, instant messaging, and many more. Regardless of the business and the style of your brand, Facebook is a must in social media marketing.
2. Instagram
Do you know that Instagram is the fastest-growing social platform worldwide? It’s a huge result given the fact that the network already attracts more than a billion users from all over the globe. What makes Instagram such an important marketing tool?
First of all, it is perfect for product-oriented companies because it focuses on visual content such as videos and images. It is a great opportunity to present your offers and explain what makes it so valuable.
Secondly, Instagram attracts mainly younger audiences. A report reveals that 64% of 18 to 29 year olds use Instagram, thus making it by far the best channel for businesses targeting younger customers.
3. YouTube
YouTube is not only the biggest video-sharing community but also the second-largest search engine in the world, right behind Google. As such, it represents a mandatory feature for digital marketers who want to showcase their products or services.
Keep in mind that 72% of people prefer video over text when learning about a product or service. In such circumstances, you don’t have to be a digital marketing guru to understand the importance of YouTube for brand promotion.
4. Twitter
The fourth entry on our list is not as popular as any of the first three platforms, but it serves a highly specific purpose. Namely, more than 320 million people and organizations use Twitter to share news and discuss the latest trends in all fields of life and business.
If you have any novelties to share with the target audience, it will spread like wildfire on Twitter. Besides that, you can use the network to research buyer personas and analyze the biggest niche competitors.
5. Snapchat
Snapchat is yet another network that mainly focuses on younger users who want to consume as much content as possible as quickly as possible. Almost 80% of 18 to 24 year olds are active on Snapchat, which means that you can reach out to younger audiences almost instantly.
The main benefits of this platform come with the notion of authenticity and the lack of competition. Too many brands focus on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram only, so you can step in and exploit Snapchat to win over the target audience.
6. LinkedIn
The last spot is reserved for LinkedIn, also known as the king of B2B marketing. The platform gathers over 500 million professionals and it makes a precious resource for marketers who are trying to approach senior managers and business executives in highly specific industries. Most of famous people uses online assignment help.
Conclusion
Social networks completely changed the digital marketing realm and gave one more communication channel to agile brands willing to establish closer connections with their audiences. However, social media marketing requires a lot of work and forces marketers to approach each platform with a different content plan. In this post, we discussed the following topics:
- The basics of social media marketing
- Major facts, stats, and benefits of social platforms
- The most popular social networks to use for brand building purposes
Do you already use social platforms to interact with customers? Which channels do you consider to be most relevant here? Feel free to share your thoughts in comments – we would love to hear about your experiences with social media marketing!
