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Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing, sometimes shortened to SMM, is a term that refers to a host of marketing activities done entirely within social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, or others. For example, any promotional efforts carried via social media are textbook social media marketing, same as responding to customers or influencers you work with via comment sections.

 Like any other form, social media marketing requires a well-developed strategy with goals mapped out.

The benefits of social media marketing

Social media platforms have an astounding amount of regular users from every walk of life. Therefore, social media carries an incredible potential as marketing channel, while remaining mostly free to use. Here are some key benefits you can expect to leverage via SMM:

  • Drive brand awareness and traffic — establishing social media presence, posting captivating content, and regularly engaging with your followers is a surefire way to make them remember you. Beyond that, you can insert links to your website into your profile, content you post, or comments where applicable — this will allow you to direct more traffic to your website;
  • Build customer relationships — one of the biggest perks of social media marketing is the ability to humanize your brand, make it into a persona. Interactions with that kind of persona feel more personal, which helps your brand forge stronger relationships with your customers; 
  • Generate leads — more personal experiences customers have with your brand on social media drive them to visit your website, perhaps sign up for a newsletter, a trial, or even schedule a call with your team. Beyond that, social media platforms include some more ways to boost your lead generation efforts, such as call-to-action buttons or marketplace features;
  • Monitor your competition — social media is a perfect place to watch what your competition is doing, since its public. Monitoring their social media activity will allow your brand to learn of their tactics, promotions, campaigns, what kind of content they post, their ways to respond, and much more. That knowledge can be used to refine your own processes across the board.

Social media marketing best practices

With an increasing number of social media platforms available, each of them requires a slightly different marketing approach to be effective. There are, however, some common points you should keep in mind as well. Here are a few recommendations:

  • Create fascinating and diverse content — social media is a very lively landscape, meaning you need to make an effort to be seen, and even more effort to be remembered. Try your best to follow trends, post actually valuable pieces of information, and use as many content formats as you can pull — polls, videos, guides, how-tos, insights, podcasts, and much more.
  • Repurpose, repost, recycle — repurpose a canned customer support response into a guide, repost a gripping customer/influencer post to fill the blanks in your content calendar, recycle your most popular Instagram Stories into Reels. Doing all of that in moderation is a great way to maintain your momentum and place on fast-paced social media;
  • Engage in converstaions — simply posting regular doses of content is not enough. Make sure you're engaging with your potential customers by liking or sharing their comments and responding directly. This way, you'll drive your brand awareness and persona to new heights;
  • Leverage social media monitoring tools — measuring your data, or your competitors' data, against overall industry metrics is a great way to understand your place in the picture. Looking at analytics can also highlight areas that need improvement on your end. While nigh every big social media platforms has an analytics tool of their own, it's a good idea to use a one-in-all solution like Awario. This way, you can maintain watch over all of your pages in one neat package.