Social Media Marketing can help your business to grow very quickly, increase the notoriety of your brand among those who follow you, increase your contacts and conversions.
But what is it that makes it so important?
There are a lot of marketing strategies, first developed in the offline world, that have been then adapted to the online world.
However, Social Media Marketing has something that none of the other strategies have.
Do you already imagine what it is?
The relationship with people.
People are the most important resource for your business.
Without people you can't have customers and without customers you can't have sales.
That's why Social Media Marketing is so valuable. It has been designed specifically to establish and cultivate relationships with people.
If you correctly apply the strategies of Social Media Marketing, you can have a huge catchment area.
Are you ready to find out how to do it?
Let's start now!
What is Social Media Marketing?
Social Media Marketing is nothing more than the creation of content for the promotion of your business, your products or services on all social media platforms.
Some social platforms are better suited for inspirational content, such as Instagram, others for sale, such as Facebook, and still others are more used in the professional world by companies, such as LinkedIn.
Each social media has been created with a very different purpose. So, you'll have to choose the right social platform for yourself and create your own content.
This will make them hit the user with the content they're waiting for, making reactions and shares skyrocket.
The power of Social Media Marketing is also this: in a short time your content can become viral, be shared by a large number of users and make your brand known to many new people.
Don't make the mistake of thinking that social media are only suitable for those who want to have fun or browse in the lives of others.
Social media is an invaluable tool even for those who want to do business.
The characteristics of Social Media Marketing
Social Media Marketing has many peculiarities that must be taken into account:
Generating leads and increasing conversions
Increase brand awareness
Monitoring of competition
Let's see one by one now.
1. Generates leads and increases conversions
As already mentioned, social networks are the perfect ground to generate new leads in a very simple and fast way.
You can create content with images that impress users, videos that stimulate empathy, you can link to offers on your website, launch contests with prizes, create paid advertising campaigns.
Creativity has no limits when it comes to social media.
2. Increase brand awareness
The website is something very professional, that you can use as a showcase to show your products or services, but it is on social media that you have to show your true identity.
Today, competition is fierce in almost all areas. What differentiates you is your personality.
Start working with Social Media Marketing on your brand's peculiarities, strengths and playing with personal branding. In this way people can get to know your business in depth and fall in love with it.
3. Control the competition
On social media, always keep an eye on your competitors.
See what offers they launch, how they communicate and how they manage their relationship with their users.
Then try to do better!
Keeping competitors under control is an indispensable strategy for anyone who has a business and certainly does not fail in Social Media Marketing.
The difference between Social Media Marketing and Digital Marketing
Internet, social, digital... what a mess!
Once there was only one way to do marketing, today there are so many options to choose from.
Let's get some clarity on the new ways of doing marketing that have arisen in the global landscape in recent years. As you can guess, Social Media Marketing and Digital Marketing are two linked concepts.
But not the same!
Social Media Marketing is closely related to social platforms. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and so on.
Each platform has been conceived with precise characteristics, with a specific style of communication and with a different focus. Social Media Marketing studies the peculiarities of social media to make the most of them.
Digital Marketing, on the other hand, is a broader concept. It includes all the marketing strategies that can be applied on the Internet.
This includes Ads, advertising, SEO care, email marketing and many other activities related to the online world.
Platforms used in Social Media Marketing
Where are the people?
Social Media Marketing takes advantage of the existing platforms for meeting and sharing between users.
On this point we want to reveal a little secret.
Do not focus solely and exclusively on the name of this type of marketing, because it could be misleading.
There are other platforms that have entered into the life of all of us and that can be a kind of social.
Chats.
Think about WhatsApp. Today you can share stories just like on Instagram.
What's the difference?
Social platforms
Now that we understand that Social Media Marketing works on social platforms, let's find out which ones are essential to ensure excellent visibility.
As far as social media in the strict sense of the term is concerned, new ones are emerging every day. The very young are using platforms with names that you probably haven't heard of yet.
However, we always consider the Social Media Marketing strategy applied to a business.
We will therefore probe the social media giants on which you absolutely must be present to ensure your business the success it deserves.
The first social platform can only be Facebook.
For many years it has been the undisputed social media in the world. Today, it stands up to the Instagram, even though they are completely different social platforms.
For what purpose can you use Facebook?
Compared to all other social media, it's perfect for sales. On Facebook, people look for information, read, follow brands.
Since the algorithm changed, the main tool to get visibility on Facebook has become that of sponsored campaigns.
Doing Facebook Advertising is not as simple as it might seem. That's why it's one of the main activities of Social Media Marketing.
For each campaign you need to identify the right target, geographical location, interests but, becoming very good at creating campaigns, you'll see how many contacts you'll get.
In addition to the objective interaction, it is also very interesting to generate contacts through registration forms.
In this case, you can create a social campaign in which users have to leave their data that you can then reuse for more traditional marketing actions.
Instagram is today the second social media used in the world.
t's very different from Facebook, you must have noticed. So even your approach must be completely different if you want to do Social Media marketing on this social media.First of all, the masters are the multimedia content. Both single photos and carousels are the main content to create for this social media.
Remember, however, that to advertise posts on Instagram effectively you must pay close attention to quality. Don't underestimate the fact that they are simply photos.
The higher the quality of your content, the more users will perceive the quality of your brand.
Social Media Marketing, in fact, takes care of choosing the best content to publish on each platform.
More and more popular on Instagram are the videos: emotional, empathic, captivating.
Videos are able to capture the user's attention like no other content.
Here, too, to do Social Media Marketing correctly, take particular care of quality, also using a video maker.
Videos must be short, intense and dynamic.
In short, they must keep users glued together and make them fall in love with your brand, your products or your services.
By now all the best known brands have taken root in this social media, so you have to be there too.
People no longer go looking for businesses on search engines. Now they choose social media directly to get an immediate idea of what they are facing, especially through photos.
We come to the social media par excellence dedicated to the professional environment and the world of work. In your strategy of Social Media Marketing can not miss.
It was created by giving users the opportunity to subscribe for free to create a list of contacts in the workplace.
LinkedIn contacts have a different value than Facebook friends or Instagram followers.
It should be a network of people considered trustworthy and competent in the world of work. It is a perfect tool for jobseekers but also for companies.
On LinkedIn, in fact, came the possibility of creating company pages.
Within these pages you can insert the history of the brand, you can add the available job positions, the team and, of course, the content.
Use the social media LinkedIn to create more technical content that helps you establish yourself as an extremely competent professional in your field.
How can we not mention Twitter in our Social Media Marketing strategy?
Twitter is one of the first social media sites to be created, dating back to 2006. It seems that it has been overshadowed by its competitors, but it hasn't.
Many users prefer it for its immediacy and ease of use. Moreover, it is the social of the news.
News, short messages, thoughts, this is what populates it. Each user can publish several tweets a day on the social network.
Twitter can be very useful in your Social Media Marketing strategy to show your followers that you are active in your niche. And, in addition to that, you can use social tweets to make yourself useful. Share pearls of knowledge of your field, converse with people, give opinions.
We said at the beginning that the power of Social Media Marketing lies in the relationship with people.
Twitter is still a perfect social media to achieve this goal because multimedia content is almost secondary.
What counts here are the opinions.
Social media with more American than Italian success. However, it can be really useful for those who want to find inspiration with quality images and videos. So, roll up your sleeves and immediately discover all the secrets of Pinterest.
Similar in some ways to the social Facebook and Instagram, it takes up some of their principles but offers them in a very special way.
Pinterest also relies on sharing photos, images, graphics and videos. The name comes from the fact that you can pin a photo to save it among your favorites.
Pin it down, translated.
On the social media Pinterest is very interesting the possibility to create bulletin boards on the most diverse topics that then people can follow to keep up to date.
So, even in this case, you can become a reference point in your niche.
But, beware!
Are you ready to discover the best part?
The contents of Pinterest appear in Google's search.
This means that not only are they perfect for building relationships with people directly on social media, but you can also use them to position yourself on search engines.
See how Social Media Marketing and Digital Marketing are perpetually related to each other.
Youtube
Undisputed colossus of the video world.
Anyone who wants to be present on the web with videos must be, automatically, on the social media YouTube.
Social Media Marketing works great with large numbers. YouTube has over a billion users, almost a third of all Internet users.
It is a social platform active in more than 91 countries and is available in 80 different languages.
Do you think it's enough for you as a catchment area?
There are basically three types of videos on YouTube:
Information, Inspiring, Funny.
These are the three things that users want to find on this social media.
You can then use Youtube in your Social Media Marketing strategy to show quality content, give value to users even before they become your customers and, as they say, to "put your face on it".
In addition, video ads that appear at certain times have also been created on the social network. They have even been included in the videos. It is a resource to be taken into account.
Snapchat
Snapchat, in a way, was the predecessor of the Instagram we know today. The stories of Instagram, in fact, were born first of all on Snapchat.
You might think that today is a social media little used and instead you do not know how wrong you are!
That's why I want to show you why it should not be missing in your social media marketing activities.
To help you understand how much it is investing in content creators, Snapchat has also added Insights, tools with numbers of views, unique visits, demographic data and much more.
Conclusion
Social media has become an important part of our lives, and this trend is not going to stop.
If the consumer public is present in virtual places, then those who have an activity must also be there and be noticed.
Social Media Marketing can really help you and your brand, as long as you can identify the winning strategy!
Are you in doubt and don't know where to start?
Ask me for information and we could outline together the Social Media Marketing strategy that best suits you!
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