You have an awesome product, service, or offering that you want people to know about. You know that your product is the right fit for the audience you want to help. Your product is ready and you found a market fit for it.
You know that this is their solution to get better organized, be more productive, may even help them become a better version of themselves or get their tasks done faster and smarter.
Now how do you go about promoting it?
You start promoting your idea or product to your immediate network. You ask your friends, family, and neighbors for referrals. You even go to events, offer free samples to a few interested customers, watch Shark Tank or read numerous blogs for promotion ideas. Sure these are excellent steps, to begin with.
But what measures would make your brand more accessible to the clients that actually need it? Where traditional measures fail, social media marketing has made it easy for small business owners to promote their online presence in different ways possible. If social media marketing is drafted in one of your strategic goals, then you are in the right place.
In this post, you’ll learn:
- What is social media marketing?
- Why your business needs social media?
- How to get started on social media?
- Is social media worth your time?
What is Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing is many things today. It is not just creating a website and promoting it on different platforms. It goes way beyond.
Social Media has evolved into a more personal, more relatable way of connecting businesses with its audience.
Social Media Marketing is a channel of content creation, content optimization, running paid ads, campaign management and building a genuine problem-solving community that is available for educating or informing your audience.
Your clients can be anywhere, anytime between and through several devices, across different platforms at several times of the day. And social media makes it possible for your business to reach out to your audience at the right time, without breaking your bank.
Just think of social media as a medium wherein your business can be made more human to its audience. When done right by setting proper goals and a plan, any social media platform can be turned into a lead capturing funnel for your business.
Why do businesses need Social Media?
A survey done by The Manifest last year stated that 73% of small businesses in the US invested in social media as one of the primary digital marketing channels in addition to creating a website. This means that integrating social media as a part of their marketing strategy has helped businesses generate brand awareness effectively and therefore more returns on investment.
Whether you have a consumer-centric business or a B2B business model, a home-based business or a storefront, you need social media because this is the most cost-effective and measurable way of promoting and reaching your customers.
Allow me to explain.
- Cost-Effectiveness and Measurability: As a part of your digital marketing, advertising on Social media is very cost-effective especially if you are tight on budget. Creating an account on multiple platforms is free for almost all social networking platforms and as a new business owner, any paid campaigns or promotions you decide to invest in are a relatively low cost when compared to the traditional marketing mediums. You can always start with a very minimalistic while advertising on social media and once you get more comfortable, you can tweak your budget again. Thus, advertising is more flexible than ever before. Now that most social media platforms come with built-in analytics or trackable software, you can even measure the success of your ad campaigns and make strategic changes when necessary.
- Increased Brand Awareness: Having a social media account for your business would definitely result in increased brand awareness for your product or services. With over billions of users on Facebook, Youtube, WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest are still the largest platforms where you can heighten brand awareness for your business.
- Build Credibility: Social media platforms are networking communities that engage with your audience, address concerns, solve their problems and by regularly interacting with them, your business builds credibility over a period of time. Customer satisfaction is the result of continuous communication and that leads to more referrals by customers. For instance, mommy groups on FB are widely popular amongst new moms as they seek out reviews on baby products, breastfeeding, pediatricians, OB/GYN in the local area and so much more. If your brand is mentioned by a satisfied parent, your business gets a word of mouth referral.
- Wide, Customizable, and Trackable Reach: With paid-ad campaigns on social media platforms you can target demographics of your audience (age, income, location, fashion preferences, etc) define your budget and track results. In a short duration of time, you get to know how your campaigns performed with your set of audience and therefore it empowers you to change or edit the content when needed. Traditional methods of marketing such as flyers, billboards or radio announcements are catered to the masses and are not customizable or personal in nature.
- Thought Leadership: Thought leadership is a term coined for someone or a brand that is passionate about being resourceful to the community, educating or informing others on how to solve a problem, and is positioned in a way that is more relatable and personal to the audience that demonstrates credibility and trust. In other words, as a brand, your business needs to incorporate the core messaging in your communications with your customers on social media. By being able to directly connect with your customers, this creates a relationship that they would look up to, allowing you to become a notable influencer in your field.
- High Conversions: Being able to build an authority in your online community, your business gains the trust of your audience. When some clients refer you, you get a referral which is great. But by doing so, your business also builds trust with the community members, especially if the person referring has had a positive experience in the past.
How to start marketing on social media?
Starting a business can be a very exciting time, however, promoting your business can give you a fair share of anxiety too. With tons of websites and platforms, numerous users, and so much content out there waiting to be explored, where do you even begin? What are your overall goals for marketing your business?
Honestly, it is a lot to process.
Let me break this down into simple steps to help you get started on social media:
- Identify the social media platforms where your audience is hanging out.
- Define your branding with social media usernames and handles.
- Create a Social Media Plan which includes setting goals, buyer persona, competition analysis, social media audit (if you have been promoting your brand already), defining a content strategy, identifying metrics, and setting timelines.
- Execute and try to stick to your plan as much as you can
- Automate the frequency of your content and check on analytics
Let’s dive into these steps further.
Step 1: Identify the social media platforms you need to promote
There are just so many social media platforms today from Facebook to Youtube, Twitter to Instagram, that its hard to choose which ones would help you reach your goals.
Before creating a profile on any social platform try asking this question- Where are the majority of your target audience and competition hanging out?
Choose the platforms where you can find your potential audience the most.
Let’s just say if your brand belongs to the fashion industry and you want to generate more brand awareness about your business then Reddit or Twitter may not have your tribe as much as Instagram or Pinterest.
You don’t need to have 5 or 6 platforms to promote when starting out. Signing up for just ONE or TWO platforms to start with is definitely what I would recommend and then work your way into other platforms when you are ready. It will be easy for you to generate awareness and create a community on fewer platforms than trying to be everywhere. Creating interest and engagement with good quality content takes time and patience.
Step 2: Define your branding with social media usernames and handles
Your social media handle should be the same as your brand name or the services that you are trying to promote. It is important that your audience can identify you amongst the other fishes in the sea. There are 3 important tasks to consider when you choose your username on social media:
Use a username that is consistent with your branding. For example, The Upbeat Marketer cannot use the handle The Upbeat Marketing or The Positive Upbeat Marketing as a username on other platforms. You can use underscores or hyphens if your original name is unavailable, however, using the original username is more appropriate.
Your username should be consistent in all other platforms that you are wanting to use. For example, if I have ‘The Upbeat Marketer’ page on Facebook, I should be using the same handle on Instagram as well- @theupbeatmarketer.
Use your social media handles consistently with a profile pic that is reflective of your brand name. Some businesses use pics of the owner or some just use their logo. Whatever you choose, make sure it is consistent throughout all platforms.
Step 3: Create a Social Media Plan
Napoleon Hill rightly said, “ Plan your work and work your plan”.
A social media plan can help you direct your social media marketing efforts in the right direction. It is a document or a template that helps you to craft out what exactly are you trying to achieve through our social media platforms. Since promoting on social media is dynamic, the very nature of this plan is also very dynamic. It keeps changing depending on where your brand is or how far along you are in your stages of promoting your brand. Always keep revising and revisiting your social media goals and keep your social media plan in check with the current goals.
Start by writing down your business goals, branding objectives and align them to your Social Media goals.
Every business has a set of goals that it would like to achieve, and your social media plan should tie directly into those goals. A business goal is any objective that a business can measure, say increased profit margins, more foot traffic or walk-ins to the store, enhanced customer service, and so on.
Branding objectives relate to creating a unique identity for your business that is recognizable and relatable to your audience. It also extends to creating a customer experience that initiates more loyalty from your audience. Some examples include- targeting your message in different ways to create awareness on why you do what you do or what sets your business different from the competition.
Buyer persona
A buyer persona is an in-depth profile of your target customer at any given buying journey. Now the target customer may or may not purchase your products but may be in the process of buying or may have terminated the decision of buying.
Why do you need a persona?
Having a buyer’s persona helps ensure that all your marketing activities involved in acquiring and retaining customers is aligned to their needs. It gives you deep insights into the challenges that your potential client goes through, what motivates him/her, and how you can talk about your product or services to them to align as per their needs.
A persona can start with a general demographic (income, education, age or marital status), challenges, and problem areas where your business or product can help. Finding them on different social media platforms such as facebook groups, online communities or even forums can help you sort out a lot of the details needed.
Concludingly, any detail about your target customer either through your online research or by your existing customer base will help you stay aligned to your business goals.
Take a look at this example of a buyer persona for an online fitness business that targets moms who cannot go to the gym because of certain challenges.
One thing that you can make sure of is that one persona may not define your entire target audience. There are multiple personas that can be created or identified sometimes and they can be at various stages of your marketing funnel. So make sure to include each persona with each stage of your buying journey.
Competition Analysis
Is your competition on the same social media channel as your target audience? If yes then what is their unique proposition? How is their voice on social media-friendly, formal, or just informational, educational? Looking into the competition could give you insights on what draws your audience’s attention, what different can you offer to solve their pain points or even ideas on what content is being liked to generate more brand awareness.
Social Media Audit
A Social Media Audit is done to keep in check with how far along have you come in terms of your social media performance and in achieving your defined marketing goals. It helps you to identify gaps in your social media strategy.
Include this audit in your plan only if you have already promoted your brand on social media. By doing so you can identify which platforms are working well for your brand or business. Skip audit if you are just starting to promote for the very first time.
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Editorial Calendar
Like always having a strategy would mean for you to have your content plan or editorial calendar in place. This document or a template would give you a sense of timeline as to when and how to accomplish your brand voice, what or which type of content to be created, when to post, who would be in charge, and the deadline to meet various content creation needs. You can start with a simple excel sheet, Word doc or Google doc or even notepad to take down notes on what needs to be posted and when.
Identifying metrics
Given the advancement of various social media platforms, you can analyze your social media performance or paid ad campaigns by the very virtue of their in-built analytics. Metrics are a measurement of how far you are likely to or have achieved your social media goals. Some of the most common social media metrics that can help you oversee your social media performance are likes, comments, the number of followers, reach, the number of website visits and signups.
Setting timelines
Timeline or deadlines are important for you as a marketer to have the goals measured. Is your weekly content ready to be published? When will you be posting an infographic? If a video has been created in due time…
Step 4: Execute and try to stick to your plan as much as possible
Executing your social media plan is as important as creating one. Sure there will be revisions, a lot of them even when you are starting out. Sometimes the goals defined may not match your expectations or is not consistent with your business strategy, so the best option is to keep an open mind.
Whatever you write onto the plan is not all black and white, rather an open and dynamic document that reflects on the goals to be pursued and how they are to be achieved within a specific time period. If these goals or ambitions are not fulfilled due to reasons known or unknown, you can always go back and correct them. To document your plan you can use old school methods or just google docs or excel sheets should also work fine for the purpose.
Step 5: Automate your social media postings, increase social listening and check on analytics
It can be hard to post content every now and then when you are figuring out the other aspects of your business. Automating this process of posting regular content will make you look consistent and at the same time will buy you enough time to focus on other areas that need your immediate attention. A few of the tools that I have personally used several times are- Hubspot, Sprout Social, Tailwind, and Hootsuite.
These tools also come with features such as social listening and built-in analytics that will show you what your competition is doing, whether or not you have been mentioned, which content had more engagement, how your content has been performing on other platforms, and so on.
Is social media worth your time?
Social media can be a complex beast and usually causes a lot of stress when not done right. It can make or break a reputation, build, or crumble a brand. How social media can be worth your time totally depends on what your goals were defined and how you strategized ways to achieve them. In this digital era that we live in, it is vital for businesses to get their message out in a place or platform where billions of possible users hang out. A digital presence not only helps you build awareness it also adds credibility to any business.
What other additional steps would you take to get started on your social media journey?
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