WHAT IS SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING?

Social Media Marketing which is also known as SMM is being very beneficial to companies in order to make profit without adding up much burden financially.  Social media marketing is also known as Online or Internet marketing where the organizations advertise themselves on social media.  Around 70% of the world population uses the internet which makes it quite easy to attain the targeted customers online. Applications such as Facebook and Instagram act as the biggest tools which have been used in SMM. 

Social media marketing is a branch of digital marketing in which many businesses are investing because it bring a brand recognition of your business online. There are many digital marketing online course which can help you train in how to increase your social media presence and also to analysize the results of your marketing.

In this article, we will learning about –

• Introduction to Social Media Marketing
•  Types of SMM?
• SMM Features?
• Statistics of SMM
• SMM Advantages?
• Terminologies of SMM
• Challenges of SMM
•  What are the Strategies for SMM?

DEFINITION –

Social Media Marketing is a process where a lot of principles and techniques have been applied in order to create and deliver the products as per the customer’s choice. SMM targets the audience in order to help them buy items by maintaining a secure environment. 

Most effective types of SMM

There are 4 types of social media platforms.where you can easily advertise 

1. Social networks – Applications such as facebook, instagram are the examples of social networks where advertisements can be easily displayed in order to attract customers. 
2. Social media news or Paid media – Paid media includes apps such as reddit or digg. The reviews or the news about any company is generated for money by the content writers. There is an interference of the professionals of the company in a forum available for the public. 
3. Influencer marketing – The product marketed by the influencer gets a public reach and becomes popular. Influencers are more like the internet stars. They have millions  of followers and that is why they are approached by the new companies or startups.  

KEY FEATURES 

Social media marketing highly depends on 3 marketing areas such as – connection, interaction and customer data. 

Let us know now understand about the 3 aspects of the social media marketing 

• CONNECTION

Connection is one of the most important parts of the SMM through which it is able to advertise itself the best. The connection between the customers and the companies is what the whole story is dependent on. There are a lot of places where you can connect with the audience in order to influence them to buy new stuff. Youtube, Instagram and Tiktok are the most used platforms worldwide.

• INTERACTION 

Interaction can turn the business upside down and  it is very important for any company to target as many people as it can. Active interactions can be done through mails or chat and the passive ones are most likely to be visible from the number of likes. 

• CUSTOMER DATA 

One of the best SMM planning cannot be done without customer data. Here, we can say that the customer data is the game changer. SMM can easily abstract the data and convert it into a golden opportunity rather than getting hyped up by the volume, velocity and variety of the big data. 

SSM STATISTICS 

APPLICATION	USERS	PURPOSE	YEAR
INSTAGRAM	81%	To buy products or services	2020
TWITTER	80%	To interact about business	2022
TIKTOK	46%	To achieve followers	2019

It has been said that an average US user spends around 2 hours on the internet and a normal facebook user clicks on around 12 ads every month which makes Facebook the biggest platform for Social Media Marketing. 

ADVANTAGES OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING 

Social media marketing has proved to be beneficial for both the customers and the companies. In order to match the expectations of the customers, customization has also been introduced in the market.  Here is the list of the advantages of the SMM –

• It is extremely pocket friendly.
• It helps the SEO ( Search Engine Optimization)
• It creates a forum for the customer care
• It provides authenticity.
• It helps in advertising.
• It is very much user-friendly.
• It creates brand awareness
• It is helpful in gathering the customer data

TERMINOLOGIES OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

• STICKY CONTENT
• EARNED MEDIA
• VIRAL MARKETING

1. Sticky content – It is referred for that content which not only attracts the customers to buy it but also motivates them to share it with their friends and family. 
2. Earned Media – It is a marketing term for the brand exposure without any paid promotion which generally means the public’s support to any specific brand. For example- Zara does not invest money on branding as it knows people will come and buy their products. 
3. Viral Marketing – Viral marketing is the term which refers to the rapid growth of the market. It promotes the sales in an inexpensive way. 

CHALLENGES IN SMM

• HACKING –  It is one of the major challenges of SMM where it gets prone to hackers and it lacks in security most of the time. Once you log in, you will leave your footprints and hackers can easily have access to it. Social media marketing lacks privacy and security. 
• Ethical issue – It is very difficult to maintain ethics online because the social media apps allow users to upload any content without any check
• Scam or Fraud – There are many sites that are not reliable because they tend to disappear once you pay for your order online. They do not respond to mails or messages. Locally, that is what we call a Scam. 

THE 6 STRATEGIES OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

• Product – You have to mainly focus on the quality of your product. If your product is up to the mark, people will be giving more attention to it which will simply create brand awareness and trust. 

• Price- The price should always be affordable so that it can reach a greater mass. 

• Promotion – It is the necessity of today’s world. With no promotion, you would not be able to sell your products to people. Promotion generates more awareness, trust and positivity among the people towards your product.

• Place –  It matters the most among these/ Earlier, if you had a shop in the local market,you would have more customers than the other shops any day but if you are an online store, place matters but it changes itself into an online mode so you can be at any Social media platform.

• Packaging – It is briefly appealing to the people if the packaging has been done in a better way. It creates an unsaid perspective about the product. A nice packaging can always do wonders in the market.
• People – The whole market relies on the very one factor –  People. They are the only targets. Each company is trying their best to achieve as much attention from the public as they can. People are the deciding factors in every field. 

 CONCLUSION

In this article, you have read about SMM and the types, strategies, terminologies, advantages and statistics of it.  You now must be aware of the basics of Social Media Marketing and the challenges that come along. It is important to study the pattern of the highs and lows of the SMM for a broader perspective.