Who hasn’t heard about Social Media? It has slowly taken its roots in our lives, making it an essential part of our everyday routine. It has become an effective way to connect with people all around the world while making it a place where you can build a business, a brand, and a community.

People have started using social platforms as marketing tools to target audiences, generate traffic, build brand awareness and get sales. With over 4.2 Billion users of the internet worldwide, it is imperative that your business and brand are present and active on social media platforms.

With every passing day, people spend more and more money to make their social media presence known, but for that, you need to know what is Social Media Marketing (SMM) and how can it benefit you.

What is social media marketing?

The use of social media platforms and websites for the promotion of a product or service is known as Social Media Marketing (SMM). Through social media, you can connect with your target audience, build your brand, generate website traffic, and increase sales.

Social Media Marketing (SMM) can also be taken as:

• A major part of your overall digital marketing system aligns with various other marketing strategies.
• A data collection center that can be influential in decision-making.
• A lead, subscribers, and sales generator.
• A place to collaborate with other businesses and brands along with content creators, influencers, celebrities, and brand ambassadors.

Over the last few years, Social Media Marketing (SMM) has evolved into a business generation system with varied strategies and paid media content. With proper attention and customized crafted strategies, Social Media Marketing (SMM) can take your business and brand to a whole new level.

The benefits of social media marketing:

The benefits of Social Media Marketing (SMM) are endless whether you take the organic reach path or spice it up with paid marketing strategies. Following are some major benefits of Social Media Marketing (SMM).

Social Media humanizes your business/brand

In the sea of endless choices people like doing business with people they click with, and social media is the place to click. To make a connection with your consumers you need content that humanizes your business/brand. You need to be professional but not stiff when developing your image on Social Media, to do so, your content needs to be engaging, catchy, approachable and most of all have a character.

How can you humanize your business/brand?

Some of the best ways to ‘humanize’ your brand are:

• Be interactive; i.e. make your content eye-catchy and approachable in the sense that it is fun and casual.
• Show your team; i.e. show off your team on your social media so that humans are able to connect with humans.
• Bring behind the scene activities to the front; people like to know about the process and feel that they are a part of it all. So why not share what gives your brand its name?
• Keep open communication. People should be able to approach you at any time of the day and you should give them the platform to do so.

Drive traffic

Generating traffic is the most important feature of social media. Your social media profile is also your landing page as from there you channel the traffic, commonly known as the audience, to your website turning them into assets or sales for your business/brand. It is important to know that the goal of your social media pages is to make that conversion happen.

How can you drive traffic through social media?

You can drive traffic to your website by:

• Optimizing all your social media profiles by posting and branding with a clear message of what you want them to do. You can post strong CTAs and tell your audience what to do.
• Be consistent with your posts by posting on a regular basis so that your audience does not forget you or your brand.
• Design engaging and interactive posts to keep your audience coming back to your feed and social media platforms.

An online community

Social Media is a place to gather like-minded people in a single place and build a community. Online communities over social media are more than customers. They are the people who like you and are ready to stand up in your favor and vouch for your thorough reviews and product suggestions. These communities help your business/brand grow by referring you to others around them.

Here are some strategies for building a community on social media:

• Have your customers/ clients post about you. This way people would know that other people are using your services/products. You will get testimonials and reviews which you can further share on your platforms.
• Know your target audience. As in really understanding what they need, like, dislike, and care about. Once you know what your audience requires from you, you can easily deliver it and grab their attention by sharing similar goals and values.
• Targeted groups are your ready-made online community as they are already a collection of like-minded people who are interested in specific causes or topics. You can join groups as a business or create your own.

Generate leads and sales

Every B2B marketer’s strategy is made up of Social Media Lead Generation as the next step after awareness and branding is collecting and converting leads. While a B2C marketer’s strategy, every social media platform has an advertising option where you put your offer in front of a targeted audience who are ready to buy and move them to the landing pages of your websites. Moreover, platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest have a built-in marketplace so your customers can purchase from you without even leaving the platform.

Increase brand awareness

Brand awareness is one more benefit that you can reap from social media as with regular posting and engagement you gain popularity by being seen and heard. Here it is important to create content that will be loud enough to make noise and become viral, which definitely is a tricky part.

Tricks to increase brand awareness:

• Collaborate and develop partnerships with various content creators and businesses. This way you can expand your audience and get a boost in your reach.
• Ask your loyal customers/ clients to share, tag, and repost your content to spread the word more.
• Have giveaways and discounts. These are easy ways to get people’s attention as who doesn’t love to save money or get stuff for free? With a giveaway or a sale, you can surely and quickly build brand awareness.

Build relationships

Social Media also benefits your relationship with your clients and help you develop new client relationship through your content and interaction.

Here’s how you can build relationships with your followers on social media:

• Engage with the audience. Reply to their messages, and comments and be interactive.
• Have customer service available round the clock whenever your regular or new clients want to reach you. Quick responses and help are always appreciated.
• Appreciate your clients by sharing their content, and have giveaways, sales, discounts, coupons, and offers.

Social Media Marketing has a long list of perks which is why you need to hop on the train and get yourself a digital marketing company like Kepler Digital, to manage your accounts and get the visibility and brand awareness you need to get ahead of your competitors.