How to get the most likes

Benefits of Social Media Marketing

The world is obsessed with the internet and more specifically, social media (Rosen, 2014). Social media marketing has an array of benefits (See Table 1) to modern businesses and in fact it is essential to their survival and success.

Table 1, Source: (DeMers, 2014)

Dave Chaffey, mastermind of Chaffey’s 6 digital marketing channels, runs a blog on digital marketing which gives some great insights on the topic.

So, how do you actually create a successful social media strategy?

The first step for any business is to conduct a situation analysis. The first stage of this would be to properly assess their current situation; which platforms they’re already active on, which platforms are most relevant to their business as well as analysing trends in followers behaviour i.e. which posts get the most likes etc. During this first step it is also essential for a firm to properly segment (geographically, demographically, benefit, psychographic & behavioural) their target market, doing this will allow to channel relevant content to those actually likely to be interested (Tuten & Solomon, 2018).

A useful next step for the situation analysis may be to conduct a brief competitor analysis in order to assess their usage and to uncover which forms of social media they utilise most. Doing this allows a business to discover which platforms consumers in their industry respond to most positively, for example if a rival companies receives very little interactions with followers on Twitter – this is an indication that the rival is either doing something very wrong or that Twitter isn’t the right platform for the industry.

After this, a business will need to create a concrete set of goals or objectives that align with their overall philosophy and ambitions. These goals may include; increase brand awareness, increase website traffic, increase community engagement, content distribution or facilitate customer support.

Implementing the correct strategy will very much depend on the business’ goals and industry. If a firm is seeking to facilitate customer support or increase community engagement, then engaging with followers by responding to messages and queries on sites such as Twitter and Facebook are a great way to start. Conversely, if a firm is looking to expand their brand awareness, then creating viral content on sites such as YouTube is an excellent way to do this. For a firm to increase website traffic and content distribution, it may be plausible to hire a social media influencer (someone with a lot of influence & followers on social media, namely Instagram) to advertise for them and promote their product with special offers.

Which Social Media Platform is Right for your Business? 

The industry your business operates in as well as your target market is very much dependent on which social media platforms your business should focus on.

Spredfast (2018) have compiled figures relating to all major social media platforms in order to make their demographics more transparent. Spredfast (2018) have also produced a table outlining which social media platforms best suit each industry (See Table 2).

As an example: A small, sports wear company with a young, male dominated audience wants to impose itself on social media in order to expand their brand and advertise their product. It could be suggested that their best bet would be to focus their attention on utilising YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter.

Utilising resources such as this is essential if one is to create an effective social media marketing campaign for a couple of reasons; these resources are typically free, based on facts & evidence and they’re able to pull huge amounts of data that a typical SME (small to medium enterprise) would struggle to achieve.

Discussion

Whilst a social media marketing campaign may seem like an excellent idea in our hyper-digitalised and connected world (Fjäder, 2016), it may not be the correct focus of attention for every business. DeMers (2018) discusses 7 reasons why social media marketing may not be for your business an example he offers is: some industries just aren’t suited to social media marketing. If this is the case than focusing your businesses attention on other forms of digital marketing would be a far greater use of time, effort and money.

Perhaps an email marketing campaign, search engine optimisation or developing an application may be better paths for you and your company.

References 

DeMers, J. (2014). The Top 10 Benefits Of Social Media Marketing. [online] Forbes. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2014/08/11/the-top-10-benefits-of-social-media-marketing/#6f18c2ff1f80 [Accessed 20 Feb. 2019].

DeMers, J. (2018). 7 Hard Truths About Social Media Marketing. [online] Forbes.com. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2018/05/04/7-hard-truths-about-social-media-marketing/#43226ee94587 [Accessed 27 Feb. 2019].

Fjäder, C.O., 2016. National Security in a Hyper-connected World. In Exploring the Security Landscape: Non-Traditional Security Challenges (pp. 31-58). Springer, Cham.

Rosen, L. (2014). Our Obsessive Relationship With Technology. [online] HuffPost. Available at: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-larry-rosen/our-obsession-relationshi_b_6005726.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer_us=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_cs=4RZ3IhpIfAIES3f2D3-MRw [Accessed 20 Feb. 2019].

Spredfast. (2018). The 2018 Social Audience Guide. [online] Available at: https://www.spredfast.com/social-media-tips/social-media-demographics-current [Accessed 26 Feb. 2019].

Tuten, T.L. and Solomon, M.R., 2017. Social media marketing (pp. 30-66). Sage.