What Is Social Media Marketing?
A significant phenomenon since its inception, social media has since taken the world by storm and established a permanent position in our every day lives. In its early days, social media was used primarily by individuals as an extension of their private lives, as a way to share their experiences with their network or to connect with like-minded people or groups. However, these days, not only is social media used as a personal tool but it has also become one of the critical ways for businesses to communicate, market and reach both existing and new audiences.
Whether it be Facebook, Instagram or YouTube, different businesses have learnt to tailor their content to their ideal platforms to ensure that their audiences engage at the highest possible rate. Whether a company chooses to have a 6-week campaign or a monthly social media content calendar that changes depending on the company’s goals, social media has become a significant factor that helps to expand awareness, grow a business and also develop more personal relationships with audiences.
What is Social Media?
Social media, whether it is organically grown or pushed to the forefront of the competition through paid campaigns, is a form of digital marketing. In a way, one can say that organic social is almost like having a hands-on portfolio, or the twenty-first century version of a business card and communication deck. However, it can also be used to create active engagement from the desired audience, and to turn that engagement into real-life profit. Finally, social media can also be used as a customer service tool, where enquiries or complaints can be effectively managed with a quick turnaround rate through commenting and direct messages.
Celebrities, like Kylie Jenner, have successfully utilised their social media presence into a business in its own right, where promoting places, products, and her brand ‘influencing’ many of her followers to purchase from her posts. This makes her profile one of the most successful business accounts online. While we may not all have the same reach as the Kardashians, there are plenty of ways that you, as a hospitality, lifestyle or FMCG business, can use Instagram to your advantage.
SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
The key to successful social media marketing is to treat it with as much importance as any other traditional marketing strategy. That is, firstly understanding your brand from top to toe and your desired audience, then deciding upon the required outcome and then creating a plan to reach that outcome. Keep in mind that as social media is an ever-changing, dynamic form of communication, social media marketing may actually require a more detailed plan of action than other forms of marketing. It’s also important that you do your research to see which social media platforms your target market most frequently use, and tailor your plan to the features and functions or that platform.
As social media continues to become more prominent in many business ventures and new platforms emerge, social media marketing will open up opportunities that have previously been inaccessible through traditional marketing. For this. reason, it’s important to stay up to date with all the latest social media developments and work with a modern, digitally fluent team. For a more detailed look into the different aspects of social media marketing, have a browse through our other insights.
Want to leave your social media marketing strategy to the experts? Get in touch with us today!