SMM — A Friendly Refresher

What is SMM?

SMM stands for Social Media Marketing. It’s the practice of marketing your business by means of social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram in order to gain more brand awareness, or ideally lead to conversions.

The Importance of Social Media Marketing

With marketing, it’s all about how to get your brand, products and services out to your target audience. Creating a brand message that resonates well with your target audience is part of the challenge that companies face. In today’s digital age, your brand isn’t what you tell the customer it is, but rather what customers tell you it is. As a business owner, marketing team, or single marketer for a small company, you need to know how to be able to reach your audience in the most effective way possible. By effective, we mean in terms of cost, reach, and quality of that reach. Social media is predominantly the answer to all of those calls.

It’s absolutely free to set up a business account with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google+, you name it. Using social media only starts to cost money if you decide to use paid ads, which can take multiple forms with text, pictures, video, carousel ads, etc. Those paid ads can also be set up to target certain demographics, locations, and other audiences depending on the network you’re using.

Pro tip! It’s best to determine which social network your target audience is mostly engaged in, and then use paid ads for that specific network before moving on to other networks.

As of January 2016, WeAreSocial Singapore conducted research that led them to conclude around 2.307 billion people (holy crap) around the globe are actively using social media. In Canada alone, there are 21 million active social media users, and 17 million people are active mobile social media users.²

It’s plainly obvious that in 2016 – if you aren’t already on social media – you should be. If you don’t use it, you don’t really exist. 

How does it work in tandem with SEO, websites, etc?

If you have a well rounded social media marketing strategy, all of your dots should connect. That is; your marketing outlets should all lead to each other. Your website should link to all of your social media profiles, and your profiles should have a link back to your website. If you blog frequently, make sure to post them on your social media pages and include links to send people back to your website. When you promote products on social media, include links that lead to the relevant product pages on your website.

It’s all connected! The user experience should flow!

When you create useful content and promote it on social media, it helps your SEO (search engine optimization), and having great SEO is how your website can show up on Google when relevant keywords are typed in.

Want to learn more about the basics of SEO? Click here. 

Here are a few SMM tips we can leave you with:

• Listen to your followers.
  • Part of what makes social media such a great business tool is the fact that it’s a two-way communication tool. If your customers have complaints, praising reviews, or would just like to talk, make sure you take the time to speak with them.

• Don’t make it all about you.
  • This may sound counter-intuitive, but most brands on social media tend to do poorly when they post about themselves, their products, and what they do. You should definitely post about your brand and the product, but make sure the majority of your content has to do with topics revolving around your industry, events in your community, and, of course, your audience. People tend to respond better to people, not product. Post content of your staff in the office, or happy customers. It’ll go a long way.

• Use the force… Er… Analytic Tools.
  • Most of the popular social media platforms you’ll use come with great backend analytical insights about your business page. Make sure you use these! Spend at least half an hour a week studying your analytics. This will help the stats seem less scary and mysterious, and give valuable insight on who your posts have been reaching and what you’re doing well on versus what areas you may need to improve in. Data, when interpreted correctly, can help lay out the path to success. ¹

What can we do to help you with SMM?

If you ever need a hand with managing your social media accounts, we’d love to hear from you! Social media should be a large part of every business’ marketing strategy. It helps raise awareness of your brand, and has little to no cost by doing so! Talk to us, and we can figure out a strategy that works for you! Here are the links to ourFacebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Happy socializing!

Sources: Entrepreneur¹, Smart Insights²