What Is Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing refers to the process of gaining traffic or attention through social media sites.
Social media itself is a catch-all term for sites that may provide radically different social actions. For instance, Twitter is a social site designed to let people share short messages or “updates” with others. Facebook, in contrast is a full-blown social networking site that allows for sharing updates, photos, joining events and a variety of other activities.
Social media often feeds into the discovery of new content such as news stories, and “discovery” is a search activity. Social media can also help build links that in turn support into SEO efforts. Many people also perform searches at social media sites to find social media content. Social connections may also impact the relevancy of some search results, either within a social media network or at a ‘mainstream’ search engine.
Facebook is big. As the largest social network in the world, it has more than 2.23 billion active users. Do you have idea how many users log in to Facebook daily 62%.
Facebook was unknown a decade ago but billions of people are using it today.
And perhaps more importantly, with that momentum, do you think there will be anything that will stop it? Will it go from billions of active users to millions or even thousands over the next decade? Probably not. Facebook is here to stay.
And with such a large user base, ignoring Facebook really isn’t an option for most marketers. You can bet your ideal market is using Facebook nearly every day. The question is: how do you target all of those users with your marketing?
The good news is that the Facebook advertising platform allows to target by location, demographics, and interests.
How Can You Market on Facebook?
Facebook has three tools (pages, ads, and groups) that can be used by anyone. Each of these options has its own purpose, and they can be combined for greater reach.
Pages
Facebook pages are similar to profiles, but for businesses, organizations, and public figures. Users can “Like” a page, which means they’ll automatically receive updates from that page in their news feed. Users also have the option to “Like” a page but not follow it. (Users also can follow some profiles.)
While profiles require a mutual relationship between friends, pages can be liked by anyone, without a requirement for the page creator to accept a fan. They also don’t have a restriction on the number of friends/fans they can have (unlike profiles, which are limited to 5,000 friends).
Advantages: Pages are free and easy to set up.
Ads
Facebook offers a fantastic targeted advertising platform. You can create ads targeted at specific geographic areas, ages, education levels, and even the types of devices used for browsing.
LinkedIn isn’t just for professionals and job seekers. Sure, millions of professionals use LinkedIn every day to grow their networks and their careers, but did you know you can use LinkedIn to grow your business, too? From making connections to generating leads, establishing partnerships and creating better brand awareness, LinkedIn makes an invaluable addition to your digital marketing strategy.
At its core, LinkedIn is a professional social network. It’s all about career development, professional connections, industry discussions and other types of business-related activities. It’s not like other social media marketing platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter or Instagram; there, businesses have direct access to consumers that they can easily market to with status updates, images and other casual posts.
Moreover, unlike LinkedIn, brand followers on these other social networks already expect or are at least aware that companies use the platforms to sell their products and services. This is definitely not the case on LinkedIn, where blatantly pushing your business, spamming and obvious hard selling is highly frowned upon. Because the network consists of a totally different audience, LinkedIn marketing requires a different type of approach to get the results you want.
Instagram is a social media marketing platform used for growing brand awareness and introducing products. 70% of Instagram users have spent time looking up a brand on the platform. Instagram allows you to promote your brand and product in a friendly, authentic way without directly selling to your customers.
Okay, so you’re officially fired up about Instagram but maybe you’re unsure about how to get started. No problem! We understand that a visual, in-the-moment platform like Instagram can be a little intimidating at first. That’s why we’ve created the ultimate Instagram marketing guide.
- Instagram has 700 million monthly active users.
- Over 95 million photos and videos are shared on Instagram every day.
- More than 75% of Instagram’s user base consists of people living outside the U.S.
What is Twitter?
Twitter is an information network made up of 280-character messages called Tweets. Millions of people, organizations, and businesses use it to discover and share new information.
- It has approximately 307 million active users who send around 500 Million tweets per day. Immediate connections
- No apps or groups, just conversation
- No barriers to engage in relationships
- It’s a great way to get to know people!
What can Twitter do for my organization?
- Provide a way to receive feedback
- Direct traffic to your project
- Provide information about your work
- Connect you to your target audiences
- Raise awareness about your campaigns
How is Twitter different than Facebook?
- More immediate
- More “newsy”
- More concise
- Better for finding out information about you
- Fewer barriers to entry
YouTube
YouTube has massive traffic and viewers which only validates the fact that video marketing is a growing trend.
- In fact, in the last few years at least 80% of all internet traffic was video.
- Video is where the web is going. The move toward video has reached critical mass, a tipping point where the momentum will swing and things will all start to speed up.
- For online and offline Business owners and internet marketers, YouTube Marketing is an essential strategy to take advantage of the web’s massive shift toward video.
Also read How to make money from Facebook