A Beginner’s Guide to Social Media Marketing | PromotionWorld

• Updated on: 2019-03-02
• Read original article here

There’s no doubt in the fact that social media is the fastest growing trend in the history of the world. It has successfully revolutionized the mode of communication among humans.

Since the past few years there has been a rapid growth in various social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and many others and the need for Social Media in business has become stronger over time. It has become an essential part for any kind of business whether it is a small, local operation, or a global, enterprise-level business.

Let's take a look at what benefits Social Media provides for a business:

Social Media Marketing is a type of online marketing that makes use ofsocial networkingwebsites as a marketing tool. The goal of Social media marketing is to create content that users will share in virtual communities and networks to help a company broaden customer reach and increase brand exposure.

Keeping these things in mind, it’s time to look at the most popular social media platforms.

Facebook is the most widely-used social network to date. It has played a vital role in connecting distant friends and family members and bridging the gap between brands and their communities. It has taken the way of online interaction to a whole new level.

According toresearch, active users on Facebook include men and women from all age groups. However, the most active users are 25 to 34-year old men. Presently, there are over 2.32 billion monthly active users (MAU) in the world.

Planning to use Facebook as your marketing tool? Here are some tips to be considered:

The first and most important Facebook marketing tool for brands is Facebook Pages. A Page is the hub of information for every brand, be it a company, product, service, or even an expert or a celebrity. receive updates from that page in their news feed when they “Like” a page and “Follow” it So, it's important for a brand or a company to set up a strong profile for its business page.  A Company or Brand logo as a profile picture and a Good “About” section will serve this purpose. The next thing would be to select its target audience in order to create ads targeted at specific geographic areas, ages and even the types of devices used for browsing. Facebook is considered to have one of the best-targeted advertising programs online. Post useful information from time to time to the timeline that will serve the purpose for the users. Facebook provides a wide variety of posting content online. These include videos, offers, leads, canvas, carousel, events and many more. Each ad has a certain advantage and can be useful depending on the type of marketing one is doing. tool that tells you about who your customers are, where they are located, and how much they are engaging with your page and individual posts.

Instagramis the most popular photo-sharing social networking site that enables users to post and share their images online directly with friends and followers on their network. As of June 2018, Instagram has1 billion MAUand 500 Stories DAU out of which the main audience is 18 to 34-year old men and women. It has been analyzed that about72% of teenagersuse Instagram.

Instagram is considered as  “the new home for brands,” because of the fact that here the followers are brand-loyal, engagement is high and real business goals can be achieved.

Here’s everything you need to know about how to use Instagram for business:

LinkedIn is a business-oriented social network that has been specifically designed to connect career and business professionals. As of the latest stats, LinkedIn has about  240 million active users.

LinkedIn plays a vital role in business as it has the ability to tap into existing connections and grow the company brand through word-of-mouth. LinkedIn is the number onechannel B2B marketersuse to distribute content. It is considered to be the most effective site for lead generation by 93% B2B marketers.

YouTube is the most popular video sharing website which enables its registered users to upload and share videos with anyone accessing the site. These videos can also be shared on other sites. According to the latest stats,1.9 billion logged-in users visit YouTube every month.  

There are many tools that help businesses in handling and analyzing the effectiveness of their marketing strategies over various social media platforms. Let's have a brief look at some of these tools:

Hootsuiteis a famous Social Media Marketing tool that enables you to handle all your social media platforms at a time.  

Apart from this, it lets you schedule a tweet or a post to be posted on a particular day on all social media platforms. It also displays analytics, which helps you analyze which tweets or posts were more engaging than the others.

Nowadays, content is the key to success. It helps you to grab your customer’s attention and engage them.Buzzsumois a growth hacking tool that lets you do so. It finds relevant keywords and specific content topics that are more likely to be viewed by customers on social media platforms. You can then create relevant content that will engage consumers, urging them to share your content on social media, and increase conversions with strategic CTAs.  

Buzzsumo is not only a great tool for tracking social shares, but also finding influencers who shared your content. The information can then be used to make a list of contacts for an influencer marketing campaign – another sure way to enhance growth.  

It is also a great competitor research tool. It gives detailed insights into the most competition’s content and details about their performance, which will enable you to learn about various strategies and techniques to ensure your content reaches its target audience. Moreover, it is absolutely free to use. Companies like National Geographic, Ted, Vimeo also use Buzzsumo for customer referrals.

Social Media Marketing has become an important tool that businesses cannot take for granted. Just to have a social media presence is not enough; you should use it as a full-fledged marketing channel.

It should also be taken into consideration that different social media platforms have different uses. On one platform, blog content is the king. On another, video content has domination. And on another platform, pictures win the day. So, it is advisable to create content that works well on each platform.

If you haven’t chalked yoursocial media strategy, make sure that you start planning today.