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What is social media marketing?

Social media marketing is the process of using social media channels (Facebook, YouTube, Instagram etc…) to interact with your audience and grow your business. With more than half the world now using social media, the opportunity to grow has never been more apparent. With an effective marketing strategy, social media can be a great place to build a conversation around your brand.

Social media marketing can be split into two sections:

Free Social

The first is free social. Social media platforms are free to use for everybody, including businesses, and they even offer insights (such as Instagram) into the performance of your social account on their platform. Utilising free social media marketing is the best place for any business to get started as you can already reap the rewards of social media without having to invest money (making it a great ROI generator).

Paid Social

The next version of social media marketing is paid social. All social media platforms offer paid promotions on the apps. This could be anything from boosting posts (such as with LinkedIn and Instagram) to paying for advertisements (such as with TikTok or YouTube). Each social media offers a unique paid offering so it’s best to speak with social professionals about the best direction for your business.

8 Benefits of Social Media Marketing

Below we’ve put together 8 benefits of social media marketing that you will experience through both free and paid social media strategies.

Build Brand Recognition

Social media is the fastest way to build your brand in the modern day. As mentioned previously, over half of the world is using social media meaning you can easily capture your target audience by creating engaging content.

Whether you’re a new brand or already hold a large market share, social media lets you stay in your consumers’ minds and lets you create a following for your brand.

Tell Your Brand’s Story

Social media lets you promote your brand’s story. Telling your story to your audience is important for building rapport and connecting with your customers. Social media is the best way to spread your brand archetype to the world and build a following that connects with your archetype.

Generate A Conversation

Social media is the online version of word-to-mouth marketing. It’s so easy in the modern day to generate a conversation around your products or within your industry, from something as basic as a poll on Twitter to stirring up a conversation about the latest trends.

Get Information On Your Audience

One of the greatest parts of social media is the ability to get information about your real audience. Social applications allow users to view demographical data on their audience such as gender, age and location. Having this information allows you to easily refine your marketing strategy to better suit your audience.

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Provide Fast Customer Service

Rather than receiving emails or having customers call, social media (such as Twitter) allows you to create an instant customer service experience for your customers. Even Twitter do this themselves with their @TwitterSupport page.

Build Customer Loyalty

A study from marketing dive found that 90% of people would buy from the brands they follow on social media. This means that building a fan base on social media can also increase your brand loyalty with your followers more likely to interact and buy from your business over competitors.

Increase Website Traffic

PPC and organic search are great ways to attract visitors to your website, but if you’re not also utilising social media then you’re missing out on a massive amount of traffic. Social media can bring in large amounts of traffic to your website from people seeing your social ad or customers who follow your page.

Identify Industry Trends

As well as monitoring customers, social media allows you to monitor other businesses within your industry. You can utilise this to stay up to date with your industry and be informed of new approaches that your competitors are taking. This will let you stay on top of the market and make sure you’re not left behind.

Final Thoughts

If you’re not currently on social media, you need to be. Whether it’s with paid social or through free social, making sure your business is there is key to survival in this technological era. Simply being on social media is no longer an advantage, you must utilise the platforms properly to build a better audience and receive better engagement than your competition.

Simon
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Simon
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