Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is a practice of sharing content and dialogue between companies, influencers, customers, and prospects, using various online platforms, including videos and photo sharing, blogs, social network websites, wikis, forums, and related web 2.0 technologies.

Why an individual should invest more in Social media marketing?

• Facebook- 93% of marketers use Facebook advertising regularly, which translates to about 3 million businesses that use it to market their business. 23% of users on Facebook who clicked on ads reported making a purchase.
• WhatsApp- 3 million companies use WhatsApp for business. Approximately, 42 billion texts are sent and 1.6 billion photos shared through WhatsApp daily.
• LinkedIn- 79% of B2B marketers view this social media as an effective source of lead generation. It makes up more than 50% of all social traffic to B2B websites and blogs.
• Twitter- 85% of small and medium business users use twitter to provide customer service. 77% of users feel more positive about a brand when their Tweet has been replied to as this helps in building their trust.
• Instagram- 60% of users learn about new products via other profiles on Instagram. Out of one billion users, about 800 million accounts follow at least one business entity on it.
• YouTube- 150 million hours of YouTube is now watched by people every day. The most viewed brand videos are on average 31-60 seconds of duration.

The 5 Levels of Social Media Engagement

Level 1: Observing- Watching the conversation from afar and simply 'lurking' to decide if it's interesting or valuable enough to join.
Level 2: Following- Following a brand in some way i.e. following on Twitter or liking on Facebook.
Level 3: Engaging- Interacting in a limited fashion, such as clicking through to read your content, viewing a video, liking a wall post.
Level 4: Endorsing- Actively sharing your content with others, i.e. retweeting, sharing via Facebook, etc.
Level 5: Contributing- One must participate in the conversation with full enthusiasm and try to interact with your brand by tweeting, posting, or commenting on a post.

Social Media Marketing Goals: You must look out that your goals are SMART, i.e., Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.

• Specific- Make sure your goals are focused and identify a tangible outcome. Without specifics, your goal runs the risk of being too vague to achieve.
• Measurable- You must have a clear definition of success. This will help you to evaluate achievement and progress and would answer all your queries related to how much or how many and highlight how you'll know you achieved your goal.
• Attainable- Reflecting on this component, it can reveal any potential barriers that you need to overcome to realize success. Your goal should be challenging, but still reasonable to achieve.
• Relevant- This is about getting real with yourself and ensuring what you're trying to achieve is worthwhile to you. Determining if this is aligned to your values and if it is a priority focus for you. This helps you answer the why.
• Time-Bound- Every goal requires a target date, something that will motivate you to really apply the focus and discipline necessary to achieve it. This answers when. It's important to set a realistic time frame to achieve your goal to ensure you don't get discouraged.

By- Sakshi Bhardwaj