Social Media Marketing: A guide for beginners and best practices

 

The world is going digital now more than ever. Digital marketing is becoming the new traditional marketing and everybody wants a part of it. And social media is no joke. It has become one of the most important channels for marketing where having a strong social media presence is like having a million dollars in your bank account.

Just after 10 years of being launched publicly, the internet gathered 1 billion active users. And that was in 2005! In 2020, here’s what it looks like:

As per the sources, the active internet users as of March 2020 were 4,574,150,137 (457 crores). That’s a huge number and if you are able to get to even 1% of this population, consider yourself very lucky.

So, what is Social Media Marketing?

Assuming you know what social media is, social media marketing is a way to let people (or your potential audience/customers) know about you, your business or anything that you are trying to promote. It is a way of creating awareness through social media platforms.

Ever since COVID hit our lives, social media usage has increased by 87% in India and that’s where companies are seeing a massive opportunity. Companies are flocking to social media marketing every day to start selling their products and services to the netizens.

The worldwide statistics don’t show any different from what’s happening in India when it comes to social media usage increase. In fact, sales from online stores and social media platforms have drastically increased and have shown profits to businesses.

Amazon, the online retailing giant, has shown a jump in revenue by 40% in the second quarter of 2020. Does this tell us something? Obviously! 

When the world is hit by a pandemic, the internet is the new shopping mall, the new cafe around the corner of the block and the university that everybody goes to.

Is it really that important?

By now you know very well if social media marketing is important or not. Let’s answer a slightly different question, “Why is SMM important?’.

Well, to be honest, the ‘whys’ may resonate differently with every brand. Take a look yourself at reasons why social media marketing is so essential:

• It is the fastest way of communication. Your one post/tweet/status might reach thousands of users within minutes which isn’t possible with any other medium.
  
  

• Social media is always in trend. If its Facebook today, tomorrow its Instagram and day after tomorrow its Twitter. People don’t leave social media, they simply switch from one to another throughout the day.
  
  

• Digital marketing has defeated traditional marketing a long time ago. When marketers saw that people travelled by cars a lot, billboard advertising was the new trend. The same happened when people started spending a significant amount of their time online on socials.
  
  

• Creating a strong relationship with your customers is what it’s all about and what better way to do that than on platforms where customers are always active.
  
  

• Another amazing thing about social media is its quickness. You launch a product, you immediately get feedback on it. You start selling your services and if its good, word of mouth is doing your promotion on people’s social walls.

Isn’t that enough to get started with? 

Social media marketing is so famous that you can count people who do not integrate it than the ones who do. Check out the best practices by industry experts!

Okay, so what are the best practices?

• Focus on social media where you can represent your business best.

• Link your landing page on all socials to redirect users to your business.

• Interact with influencers that can help you promote your business.

• Share content that users can learn from, enjoy and share further with their network.

• Be consistent but don’t overdo it.

• Pay attention to what your potential customers are saying. Praise them for their loyalty.

• Boost your social media posts once in a while to reach a larger audience and increase your follower base.

Any acronyms I should be knowing?

Yes! We posted the most used acronyms in social media marketing on our Instagram @DigiLivingZone. Take a look!

What does the author think?

Social media marketing is already a trend that we should be adapting to. This pandemic has given us more than one reason to go digital and one of the major parts of it is SMM. To be an expert, all you need is creativity, adaptability and a dynamic approach.