Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

What is social media?

Have you ever wondered why you see certain ads in your social media feeds? Or, why people feel compelled to comment on content on social platforms? This is all part of social media marketing and it’s a very important tool for digital marketers and businesses. It enables them to engage an audience and drive business results. 

Social media marketing (or SMM) is a form of digital marketing that utilizes social networking platforms to increase brand and product exposure, cultivate relationships with consumers, and generally support different marketing objectives.

The importance of social media

You can think of social media marketing as the space where social media meets marketing. But why is social media important to digital marketers? There are several reasons.

For example:

• It helps build relationships with existing and new customers.
• It provides a real-time focus group and feedback loop .
• It allows a brand to offer an instant and positive customer experience .
• It enables creative storytelling .
• It taps into one of the most popular online activities
• It allows a brand to reach specific target audiences based on demographics, interests, behaviors, and more.
• It drives extensive reach and brand awareness , website traffic, and conversions.
• It offers real-time analytics and insights into audience demographics, engagement metrics, reach, and conversion rates.
• It provides a cost-effective marketing option because social media platforms are free to register, and businesses can be flexible with social media budgets based on current objectives.

Benefits

Let’s now consider the benefits of social media marketing. In fact, it has many benefits, chief among them the ability to build relationships with new and existing customers. The agility of social media enables brands to leverage these relationships as a real-time focus group for new ideas and products. This helps to create a nearly instant feedback loop.

According to We Are Social, social media now has 4.80 billion users globally. This is almost 60% of the world’s population!

Here are just a few of the many benefits of social media marketing:

It builds relationships: Social media marketing enables marketers to build and maintain relationships with both new and existing customers around the world who may have been difficult to reach in the past by traditional means.

It leverages organic feedback: Social media enables brands to leverage organic and real-time feedback from customers – simply by reading what they are saying about their brand, products, or competitors when they post or comment. This technique is called social listening . It’s used to find what works well for your brand and what you can change and adapt. It can also give you ideas for new products or features your customers would be interested in.

It offers a positive customer experience: Social media also helps you, as a brand, to offer an instant and positive customer experience to people who reach out to you or discover your brand online. When people associate your brand with a positive customer experience and feel you’ve responded in a genuine way, they’re more likely to positively engage with your brand, buy from you, and possibly even become a brand advocate.

Finally, it builds brand story: Social media also enables you to build your brand story in the mind of your audience. This can be achieved by telling the story of your brand through videos, ads, case studies, and other forms of media formats on social channels.You can build a strong recognizable brand identity in the minds of consumers by communicating your brand values and message in a consistent authentic way, and telling your brand story through the content which you post online.