Social Media Marketing
What is Social Media?
By definition, social media refers to cost-effective internet-based tools that merge social interaction, word use, and technology. Key examples include Twitter, MySpace and Facebook.
Marketing Role
As a marketer, you can employ social media to connect with existing and potential clients as well as peers. Through this avenue, you can personalize your brand (Third Door Media, Inc., n.d). You thus convey the intended message in an informal, relaxed manner. Essentially, you describe your organisation, your products, and your offerings. Social media has several major marketing roles, including:
- Identity creation
- Creating relationships
- Personality building
- Linking with peers
- Facilitating client interaction
Identity Creation
You can use social media to develop your identity by specifying your individuality as well as your services or products. Key avenues include status updates and the social media blog.
Personality building
You use social media to portray your ‘real’ self to clients. You achieve this objective by letting consumers into your corporate or individual persona. Integrating this personality details into your product updates encourages consumers to develop attachments to you and your brand. Social media branding is a key element in this process.
Creating Relationships
You can develop relationships with persons who could otherwise not be conversant with your firm or the services and products you offer. Proper relationship building could facilitate viral marketing.
Facilitating Client Interaction
Through social media, you can provide your clients with communication and interaction avenues. Consumers could reward your initiative by developing and cementing loyalty to your services or products.
Linking with Peers
Social media helps you to connect with peers within your industry. The benefits you can derive from such liaisons are many.
Key Principles
Like other phenomena, social media marketing has guiding principles whose adherence facilitates success. Basic philosophies include:
- Ensure consistency
- Provide support
- Portray a positive attitude
Consistency
Always remember that you are communicating with intelligent beings via social media. Your audience keenly watches your trends. Unexplained changes in tendencies are bound to raise eyebrows and invite suspicion. To prevent potentially destructive outcomes, be consistent in how you portray your services, products, or personality.
Provide Support
You should not expect social media marketing to perform all your marketing roles. Instead, you need to incorporate other marketing tools into your campaign (Lake, n.d.). Social media marketing will indeed create awareness. You however need to prop it up with varied marketing strategies.
Portray a Positive Attitude
Your attitude will play out via your writing voice. You can be totally formal and dry. This image will most likely push potential and existing clients away from you. After all, nobody is eager to spend time reading content that looks like an institution’s code of conduct!
You could also exhibit an approachable and warm outlook. This approach will most likely endear your audience and draw them towards your organisation and its offers.
Developing Your Social Media Marketing Strategy
You need a solid plan. In this plan, you will specify different parameters such as:
- Your intended message
- Your target audience
- The action(s) you expect the audience to take
- Your planned scope
- How to evaluate the outcome
- Your purpose for launching the campaign
Determining your Intended Scope
Scope refers to the reach of your social media campaign. Here, you specify the networking sites you will base your marketing on (Roeder Studios Inc, n.d.). You also state the frequency and level of your social media marketing initiatives.
Defining your Intended Audience
You need to specifically focus on the clientele you wish to influence. You then tailor your marketing strategy so that it directly addresses them.
Creating Your Intended Message
Careful thought should go into the creation of your message. This way, you ensure that the message suits your intended audience.
Specifying what Action Your Audience Should Take
This initiative constitutes the ‘call to action’ element of social media marketing. Your online audience should clearly know what you expect them to do. This action could involve clicking on some link or calling your organisation. You have to clearly express this desire. Otherwise, your audience will only give fleeting attention to your page or post and then move on to other pursuits.
Defining the Purpose of the Initiative
As in any other venture, your social media work needs to have a clear purpose. You could be focussed on increasing the number of your online fans. Alternatively, your objective could be to attract online followers who eventually translate into clients. Whatever your stated purpose, it will enable you to institute assessment procedures and guidelines.
Determine Your Evaluation Principles
Obviously, you would like to assess the impact of your social media campaign. You need to state how you intend to measure success in your plan. You could focus on different parameters, such as:
- Quantitative rise in those who read your posts or articles
- The number of calls that you receive from your audience
- The quantity of sales that derive from your campaign
Summary
As outlined above, there are many advantages of social media marketing. Handled well, this cost-effective strategy could see your company’s popularity and performance rise dramatically. You need to put in place several initiatives that ensure that you realise your intended results. The plan is the first step in the process of social media marketing. In the plan, you state the purpose, range, assessment procedures, audience, and message of your social media campaign. Furthermore, you need to augment your online campaign with other advertising initiatives. You need to exhibit consistency and genuineness so as to earn audience trust and, probably, their loyalty. Your communication needs to be informal. If you do it correct, your business could substantially rise through the popularity and performance rankings.
References
Lake, L. (n.d.). Understanding the role of social media in marketing.
Retrieved from: http://marketing.about.com/od/strategytutorials/a/socialmediamktg.htm
Cloud, M. (2011, Sept. 15). The art of social media marketing.
Retrieved from: http://www.ciplex.com/pixels/2011/09/05/the-art-of-social-media-marketing/
Roeder Studios Inc. (n.d.). Social media marketing: A small business primer.
Retrieved from: http://www.lauraroeder.com/social-media-marketing/
Third Door Media, Inc. (n.d.). What is social media marketing.
Retrieved from: http://searchengineland.com/guide/what-is-social-media-marketing
