Social Media has become an integral part of modern life having billions of active users who are spending a major portion of their daily time on social media platforms. Social media platforms have not just remained a place to share, engage and entertain but rather are inclusive sites where brands and enterprises are actively looking for prospects and customers.
At the very same time, social media users are the potential customers seeking out information, products and services being promoted by various influencers and other users.
Social media sites have become battlegrounds where everyone seems to be sharing their part of information about their favourite brands, products and services and thus the shared information can reach billions of eyeballs coveting that piece of writing, image or video as a sacred item that ought to be owned by them.
So, if you are not promoting or advertising your products or services on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn etc. then you are missing out big!
To counter the loss or boost your revenue you should go all out with social media marketing that can help your business turn a new leaf and become a renowned brand that is in demand by hundreds of thousands of potential customers on social media. According to Hubspot, social media posts have shown 23% higher engagement rates than other digital marketing strategies and tactics. This makes SMM crucial and increasingly significant for businesses of all sizes.
If you don’t know a dime about social media marketing and don’t know where to begin then you don’t have to worry as I’m here to help you get started with social media marketing (SMM) without investing a dime except for your time and expertise.
With my 7 years of experience in the industry as a digital marketing expert, I have seen firsthand the power and impact of social media platforms on sales. I can vouch for SMM and ensure you that social media marketing is now the easiest and most powerful way for businesses of all sizes be it a startup or big enterprises to add an extra layer of revenue to their sales.
In this comprehensive blog post, you will learn:
- What Social Media Marketing Is?
- Why Is SMM So Important for Modern-Day Businesses and some tips for SMM.
- What Are Some Important Social Media Platforms To Consider As Priority?
- What Is the Impact Of AI On SMM?
- What Will Be The Future Of SMM And What Is The Role Of AI In Shaping Its Future?
Understanding Basics Of Social Media Marketing
In this digital world where everyone is relying on and using social like never before, businesses have the golden opportunity to reach millions of users and engage with them like never before.
If you are on social media, you must have come across some ad posting by your favourite brands or you would have seen some celebrities promoting a piece of clothing or jewellery as their luxury partner. Those social media posts would have gotten the better of you and incited a desire to have those promoted items for yourself. That’s what social media marketing or SMM is all about, promoting products, or services using social media platforms to have the users as potential customers.
To put it in simpler words, Social media marketing (SMM) is a process of creating valuable and shareable content and running campaigns on various social media platforms focused on promoting a brand, product or service.
SMM is all too focused on leveraging social media reach and engagement on various platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Instagram, and others for increasing brand awareness, driving traffic, and generating leads.
If I were to tell you a simple way to start SMM on your own without any third-party help, you would have to begin by creating compelling content, and then you would have to engage with your audience, who happens to be the users on various social media platforms. The next big step for you is to develop a marketing strategy that aligns with your business goals.
For instance, if you want to advertise your event organizing agency offering planning and catering services, you should actively post various event portfolios showcasing the glamour and grandeur as organized by you. You can also have a few influential accounts to repost your stuff or have them invited to your events.
In this way, your active presence will be shared among various users who will seek out your services when needed increasing your sales manifold.
The key to success in SMM is to have a too strong social media presence that is gradually built through various interactions and compelling content.
This strong presence will help you establish your brand’s personality and tone. You should always try to voice out the content and information that resonates with the aspirations of your target audience. Another major aspect of SMM is to help the brand establish a relationship with customers and build its credibility and trust.
Social media is a free-of-cost platform for addressing customer grievances and receiving feedback. Brands can have a loyal customer base by actively responding to their complaints and approvals and thus expand their reach and revenue.
If you’re interested in learning more about SMM, and would like to avail digital marketing services for boosting your online presence and increase revenue, please visit Rankwdh, a leading digital marketing agency.
Rankwdh has multiple cost-effective packages to help businesses achieve their marketing goals thanks to tens of media experts who have widespread and unrivalled expertise in the digital marketing industry.
Importance Of Social Media Marketing:
Social media is the main source of news and is the primary medium for interacting with friends and family. It is a place for gathering information and exchanging it without investing anything but your time. It is a vital tool for companies and brands to its media users their consumers and has a wide potential customer base.
Large Businesses and small firms can connect with customers and potential customers alike and resolve any possible conflicts in their minds about a brand, its services, pricing or quality. One must not think that engaging with customers is all you can get from social media as there is more to it and let’s discuss the benefits of social media marketing for businesses.
Here are the top reasons why social media marketing is important for businesses:
Wider Reach:
Social media platforms are the places with access to more than 4 million users and about 3.6 billion active users. This means that 3.6 billion people each day have the potential to be converted into paying customers of a brand they come across on social media.
This audience reach is unparalleled and unheard of on any other advertising platform such as billboards, print and electronic media. The active users on social media will continuously share the post they find interesting and thus help the brand have indirect marketing reaching a wider audience base and having more leads and ultimately increasing sales.
Brands, businesses and firms can employ a variety of social media marketing strategies such as paid advertising, influencer marketing, and social media listening or even content marketing to generate leads and increase sales.
Build Trust And Credibility:
SMM allows businesses to communicate with their target audience, continually engage with them through social media posts and interaction and thus help brands build relationships with their potential customers.
Social media is a convenient and cost-effective platform to listen to customer concerns, worries and feedback. Brands can inquire about their products and services and have valuable suggestions that can help in better marketing strategies and decisions.
Overall, social media can act as a community platform where brands and consumers can bind together to come up with innovative and practical ideas for better products, services and marketing campaigns.
Data-Driven Decision Making:
Social media platforms can be excellent tools for understanding user preferences and intent. Brands go through social media trends and popular discussion topics among communities to create their inventories.
The data-driven informed decisions help them satisfy user demands and produce what is required of them instead of producing fancy white elephants that only appeal to consumers but are of no use to them.
By using the likes, comments and shares of a post, brands can think of solutions to consumer problems and come up with new product lineups that satisfy the feedback gathered from older posts.
Build Brand Awareness:
By using all of the above-listed points that are actively engaging with social media users, considering the likes, comments and shares of a post and with the help of paid marketing campaigns brands can establish themselves as an authority on the product or service they are promoting.
Create brand awareness among the target audience, no platform can beat the significance of social media. For instance, you must have learned about all the latest clothing or footwear brands through social media e.g. Instagram or Facebook.
Creates A Loyal Customer Base:
SMM platforms not only promote the ongoing sale of products or services but also help in achieving the target of a loyal customer base.
This loyal customer base will not be satisfied with anything less than the best and will wait for the next model to appear in the market to upgrade their products and show their respect and love for the brand.
For instance, apple or Samsung products enjoy a loyal customer base that will not sway even if they find suitable counter gadgets in the market at the way to lesser price tags.
Cost-Effective Marketing:
Marketing is a must for any business but if you are looking for cost-effective marketing plans, you may not find any alternative platform to your campaign than social media sites.
You can advertise your brands with free to no marketing cost and have miraculous results just with your skills and expertise in handling social media engagement and exposure of your products and services.
Role And Impact Of AI On Social Media Marketing:
In the last few years, Social Media Platforms have incorporated Artificial Intelligence for better performance and user-centric experience on all media sites. With the inception of AI in SMM, it has become increasingly important, sophisticated and simpler.
SMM has evolved into a data-driven market relying on AI-powered Chabot for communication and engagement. AI is also being used for automated content generation, and social listening algorithms are being employed for making social media marketing campaigns centred on the interests of users.
Businesses can now make use of the latest AI tools for coming up with trending and creative campaigns that not only capture the attraction of the target audience but also automate the whole marketing campaign.
AI tools can analyze the behaviour patterns and interests of users and social media algorithms suggest search engines and third-party platforms give customized ad experiences that make the whole marketing campaign more meaningful and effective.
Brands can identify and track their target audience and create customized content to grab their interest and have better chances of selling their products and services than with non-customized campaigns.
The impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on SMM can be summarized in the following key points:
1. Customer Service Automation: SMM is actively seeking the help of AI-powered Chabot which is being used by almost all businesses on digital platforms for providing automated customer support.
Customer interaction and engagement are a must factor for social media marketing and thanks to these AI-powered Chatbots, businesses and firms can go hands-free relying on tools and technology for catering to their customer base, thus saving manpower and resources.
2. Predictive Analytics: SMM campaigns are all about knowing user intent and gathering feedback for a product or service thereby hyping its good aspect and eliminating any error in its creation. But by using AI tools, firms can firsthand experience customer behaviour and interest and thus come up with specific products that meet the needs of the target audience.
Predictive Analytics is as important a job in social media marketing as quality content for a website. Therefore, businesses can use AI to predict customer behaviour which is done by analyzing social media data and usage patterns of a customer. Behavioural and intent analyses enable businesses to make targeted and strategic decisions.
3. Personalization: after using AI algorithms to come up with user analytics and social media usage data, businesses can gather the data from various platforms and use personalized campaigns to cater to a select portion of a society who are intended the purchase desired products and services. For instance, Apple Enterprise has a dedicated customer base who are focused towards the brand itself rather than design innovation or specification upgrades.
Therefore for every new model launch, marketers are not promoting a cost-effective or affordable product but rather Apple merchandise with upgraded specs and higher prices. On the contrary, newer Android firms are promoting their Android gadgets are affordable alternatives to those big names with similar or even better specs. So, by analyzing user preferences and interests, businesses can create personalized campaigns and gather the interest of specific target audiences who generate revenue for them.
4. Ad Targeting: SMM is all about promoting products and services on social media platforms and AI can help to promote those goods effectively. That is done with the help of predictive analytics and personalized campaigns. The part of marketing campaigns done on social media platforms is all carried out by Ad targeting. AAI-powered personalized and automated content will help businesses target customers by displaying to them what they are interested in seeing.
For instance, you must have observed that once you search for the latest smartphone in town on your search engine. For a couple of days, all your ads on different platforms, such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter etc. will be based on smartphones and tech gadgets.
Future Of Social Media Marketing:
Social media marketing has been in use for the last decade and it is not going anywhere even with the advent of AI. With the rise of AI and automation of most marketing campaigns, many people are concerned about the future of SMM but it is a fact that AI cannot eliminate the human touch and even with the help of AI, predictive analytics and automation, the final decision to come up with strategies and drive campaigns will be done by a human.
However, the change is inevitable, SMM will evolve from mere post sharing, liking and commenting process to an advanced marketing strategy that will sharpen the marketing plans and generate more revenue.
Some of the most significant changes expected with the rise of AI in the future of SMM include:
Rise of Influencer Marketing:
Content automation will allow common social media users to have much influence as user analytics and behaviour patterns will allow them to garner the interest of other users who will then see them as influential figures with high followership or social media presence.
Therefore, influence marketing will continue to rise to allow SMM handlers to focus more on small influencers who can achieve big things for them.
The Importance Of Video Content:
Just a few years back textual posts were all users expect from social media, continually sharing and liking the enticing images they see all day on different social media platforms. But the domain has evolved, reels, short videos and video stories have made the significance of video content way higher than textual or imagery.
Therefore, most social media marketing campaigns use enticing and novel videos to trend on various platforms and capture the attention of their target audience. The use of video content will significantly evolve and all platforms will need to incorporate video-making and sharing features for better appeal and usage.
The Final Words:
In conclusion, Social Media Marketing is an integral component of any digital marketing strategy as it allows businesses the opportunity to reach a wider audience, create more leads, and generate higher revenue. SMM provide an opportunity for brands to build relationships and create communities focused on promoting their brand’s services and products.
The ongoing rise in Artificial Intelligence and associated automation tools will make SMM more effective, efficient and sophisticated and businesses will now focus more on making informed and targeted decisions while delivering a personalized digital experience to customers.
To stay on top of digital trends, it is necessary to stay up-to-date, competitive and relevant in the industry and that’s the key to achieving success in today’s digital world.
If you want to know more about SMM and how it can help your business, please feel free to reach out to me at Rankwdh. At Rankwdh, we are providing all kinds of digital marketing services with very cost-effective packages that are sure to help you grow exponentially.
Thank you for reading!