Or what does a social media marketer do? Well, the answer is a lot of things. From managing accounts, posting, to researching competitors. Social media is often the cornerstone of marketing activities for a lot of small to medium businesses. It’s affordable, has great reach, and is great for interacting with your community. Social media is also great for SEO.
To begin with, social media marketing is distinct from digital marketing. It’s a subset of digital marketing, but it’s an important one.
So, what exactly does social media marketing involve?
1. Setting goals
Any marketing activity you undertake should always have a specific objective in mind. This is especially true for social media activities. Before you start changing the world with your posts, have specific and measurable goals planned, SMART goals essentially. These are a few of the questions you need to ask yourself when deciding on your goals:
- What are you trying to achieve?
- What steps do you need to take?
- How do I measure my performance, or what are my KPIs?
- Are they realistic?
- Are these goals achievable in this set period?
2. Research
A less glamorous but immensely important part of social media marketing is research. Knowledge is power, and in marketing, extremely useful.
Research your audience
Know your audience. Be one with your audience. You are the audience. But seriously, to do well in social media, know who exactly your audience is.
- Are they on social media?
- If so, what platforms are they on?
- Do they have communities related to your brand?
- What is the overall sentiment of your brand online?
- What demographics do they fall under?
- Are there any audiences that you didn’t expect?
Answering these questions can help you accurately reach your target market, reduce unnecessary spending, and increase ROI. An unexpected audience can even be a potential new target market.
Research the competition
The thing about social media is that it’s great for businesses, the problem is that all the other businesses know it. The social media ad space is saturated, and the competition is fierce. To get ahead of the masses, you need to know what your competitors are doing.
- Research your competitors’ social media
- What keywords are they using?
- What are their most popular hashtags?
- Are they working on any trends that you might have missed?
- What are they doing well and what’s not working for them?
- What are their customers saying?
Knowing this is the key to improving your performance. Remember, don’t copy, do better.
3. Content Creation
The backbone of social media marketing, good content is essential in succeeding online. Your content should be relevant, appealing, and engaging. If your content is good, you can even go viral. Content has also to be tailored to your audience and the platform. As a tool, social media can be great at building brand awareness.
4. Social Media Ads
There are various platforms that you can advertise on such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and even Snapchat. According to Hootsuite, Facebook advertising has a potential reach of 2.18 billion, Instagram has 1.22 billion, TikTok has 689 million, and LinkedIn has 727.6 million. That’s a lot of people.
5. Tracking and Analytics
Digital marketing is useless without data. No amount of spending, clever copy, great content is useful if you cannot attribute it. You might as well just throw your money on the wall. Tracking is a large part of social media marketing. Marketers track performance, sentiment, engagement, share of voice, and more. They employ a number of technologies, including Hootsuite and Keyhole, in addition to each platform’s analytics tool. Social listening is also an essential component of tracking brand sentiment.
There you have it, the beginner’s guide to social media marketing. Of course, there’s more to a topic as always, but this is enough to get you started. If you want to know more, you can always talk to us at +971 4 580 3378,
