by Rahimah Sultan

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Many businesses, large and small, use social media as a vital component of their market mix. Globally, there are 4.9 billion people using social media platforms. So, having a presence on social is a good way to connect with both current and potential customers no matter your industry. Social media is a good way to reach your target audience, establish a loyal customer base, strengthen your brand, and increase your revenue.

This article details what you need to know about social media marketing including what it is, how it works, the best strategies, and how to implement it.


What Is Social Media Marketing?


Social media marketing is a form of digital marketing that uses social media platforms to promote your offerings and brand to your ideal customers. It involves considerably more than random posts on your business accounts. A successful social media marketing campaign requires good strategy and planning.

After you create your business profiles, you have to maintain and optimize them. Then, develop a content calendar that shows what you’ll post and when and where you’ll post. These posts will probably include a combination of text, images, stories, and videos that position your brand in a positive light and capture a relevant audience.

These posts will be unique and regular and additionally, you’ll respond to likes and shares and comments to monitor your standing and hopefully create a community.

Your social media marketing strategy may also include paid ads to allow your brand to appear in front of certain groups of people at specific times.



What are the benefits of social media marketing?


Social media is a powerful tool for marketing your business, due to its versatility and popularity.  Unlike traditional marketing like billboards, radio spots, and print ads, it’s very measurable.

Following are some of the most important benefits of a social media marketing strategy:

1.  Adds a Human Touch to Your Business

2. Drives Traffic

3. Generates Leads

4. Increases Brand Awareness

5. Builds Relationships


Here is a brief description of the top 7 social media marketing platforms for business.


There are several social media marketing platforms you may want to use when developing your social media marketing strategy. As you consider your options, you’ll find that some platforms are better suited for your brand and target audience than others.


1. Facebook

This is the most popular social media platform. When using Facebook, you can boost brand awareness, generate leads and increase sales, and gain followers. You can also display highly customizable, targeted ads. Keep in mind that Facebook comes with a lot of competition.

2. Instagram

Over time Instagram evolved from a basic platform to share images into a place where brands can engage their audience with beautiful photos and videos. It also offers reels, stories, live streams, and shops that can take your marketing efforts to the next level. This is one platform you want to use if your business relies on visuals to sell products/services.

3. Twitter

On Twitter, you use very short posts called “tweets” with text, animated GIFs, videos, and links to connect with your audience using short but valuable messages. A tweet can usually be up to 280 characters. You might be able to, build brand awareness and look for topics and information relevant to your industry and target audience.

4. YouTube

If you want to include videos in your social media marketing strategy, YouTube is the way to go. It’s a streaming social media platform as well as the second-largest search engine next to Google. If you have the desire and ability to produce meaningful video content, YouTube should definitely be one of the choices for your social media marketing strategy.  Using YouTube, you promote the unique features of your offerings, explain complex topics, showcase interesting processes, and much more.

5. Pinterest

This “visual discovery engine” inspires users who regularly search Pinterest for ideas that help them renovate their homes, plan weddings, take dream vacations, and fulfill other desires in their lives. If you provide products or services that can allow users to discover their dreams and achieve them, Pinterest is the way to go.

6. LinkedIn

If you are a B2B business, LinkedIn is a business networking platform that will be particularly useful. LinkedIn is geared toward professionals and allows you the opportunity to share your industry expertise. You can also use it to promote job openings within your company, connect to your employees and even generate leads through paid ads.

7. TikTok

TikTok, which revolves around short-form videos, is a newer social media platform that tends to target younger females. It may make sense if you’re trying to reach that particular demographic. As a business on TikTok, you can use hashtags that relate to your posts, brand, and offerings. When consumers search for these hashtags, they may come across your content.


What are the key components of a social media strategy?


A social media strategy is a plan that lays out your goals, the ways you’ll use to achieve them, and the metrics you’ll track to measure performance.

You might be tempted to post on a few social media platforms sporadically, but this is not recommended.

To really make the most of social media marketing strategy and increase your chances of success, you need a solid strategy.



The key components of an effective social media strategy include:


1. Audience Research

You should have a strong understanding of your target audience before posting anything. You can answer questions regarding what platforms they use, who else they follow, and what kind of content they prefer.

2. Brand Identity

Decide how you’d like to position your brand when you post on social media and interact with your followers. Think about the messages you hope to communicate.

3. Content Strategy

Content strategy relates to how you’ll use content to attract your audience and grow your brand on social media platforms. To be successful your plan needs to be specific.

4. Analytics

In order to measure performance and determine how to improve your strategy, you’ll use a process known as social media analytics where you collect and analyze data from your social media platforms.  This allows you to determine whether or not what you’re doing is working.

5. Ongoing Activity

As with most types of marketing, social media marketing is not something you do one time and forget it. You’ll need to post on it regularly, be engaged with your followers, and optimize your profiles on a consistent basis.


Remember that in addition to your social media marketing strategy, you will also need a professional business website so that those who discover your business through social media can check out your website to learn more about what you offer.


If you don’t already have a website, consider this.


If you’re just starting a business you can use this information for setting up your social media marketing strategy. If you’re already well on your way, it can serve as a reminder to use social media marketing in addition to your other resources.

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by Rahimah Sultan

These days it seems that everyone is on social media. As an entrepreneur launching your own business, you are your own CEO, PR team, and social media squad. Obtaining business success with social media marketing is the market trend and a must for newcomers to online business.



New entrepreneurs need to pay attention to 6 things:

Authenticity
Finding Your Niche
Being Consistent Across all Platforms
Getting Offline and Meeting People
Content
Facebook and Google Ads


Jason Pinchoff discusses these in his article The Pinch List: Top 6 Social Media Musts, which you can read here.


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by Rahimah Sultan

Social media marketing has come a long way. There are many new avenues to explore and places where businesses can stand out. Boost your social media and add something to your online marketing with these tips for improving your social media marketing.

Put New life into Old Content

You can put new life into old content by finding your most popular posts and updating them and then re-sharing.

Keep Learning

Social media requires constant learning and mastering of new skills. Learn how to use audio, video, photography and focused content marketing.

Use YouTube

Create brand awareness with quality videos posted on YouTube, and you should develop a YouTube channel.

These are just a very few options for improving your social media marketing. You can read the entire list in this article by Debbie Hemley… 26 Tips for Improving Your Social Media Marketing.

 
 
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by Rahimah Sultan

When you visit a website are you curious about who owns or operates it? Do you check it out, especially if it contains something that peaks your interest? What is the first page you look at?

Your ‘About Us’ page is a vital part of any website. It is actually one of the most visited pages of any and every website. If you want to find out about a company, an organization or an individual, you will probably look at this page first. That is why I have included it in my Tips for Promoting Your Website. So, take advantage of this fact when promoting your website.

Personalize Your Page

One of the first impressions you can make on a potential consumer is from your ‘About Us’ page. This is good news for everyone because it is one of the best pages on your website for you to get creative with and truly personalize.

If your business has a particularly interesting, or unusual, back story relating to how it came about, that could be a fun way to make the most of your ‘About Us’ page. You can use fun images or a pleasing color scheme.

One thing to remember when you’re creating a good and effective ‘About Us’ page is to personalize it enough to suit you and your business. Reveal the how, why, and what your business ultimately stands for. Do not overload your consumers with too much information.
Your ‘About Us’ page should not be too long. Explain succinctly what your company does, and what the goal is, but in a fun and relatable manner.

Optimize your website

Be sure you optimize your website for relevant, repeat organic traffic from search engines. Your title, description and meta tags should reflect what your site is about. The description should be a sentence or two describing the content of the webpage. Now use the main words of the description for the keywords meta tag. If you have a blog update it regularly and optimize each post in the same manner so the search engines can find it.

Post actively on forums and blogs

You can participate in forums where your target audience is reachable. Post useful responses to questions, and include a signature with your website on your profile. You could possibly incorporate your own tips for promoting your website in a discussion. Do not spam as you most likely will be banned.

Publish an e-zine

An e-zine is an online magazine like a newsletter. You can publish your own or subscribe to others. You can find many free directories where you can add your digital newsletter and articles. Ezine Articles is one of the top directories.

Social Media Marketing

Use the strength of social media sites – mainly Twitter and Facebook – to reach your marketing objectives.

So, do not ignore the importance of your “About” page. Use it to your advantage.

You can benefit from the free online advertising tips discussed here. There are many no cost resources on the internet to promote your business, and of course you have the option of paid advertising. I’m sure that using these Tips for Promoting Your Website can be beneficial.

by Rahimah Sultan

Building a successful online marketing strategy is just like building anything – it starts with a solid foundation. That foundation comes from understanding three basics of online marketing:

Search Engine Optimization
Content Marketing
Social Media Marketing

SEO should include:
Relevant Keywords
Valuable Content that is Shared
A Website that Loads Quickly
Both Images and Content
Backlinks from Respected Websites

Content marketing is important because it helps build your brand and inspire confidence in you.

Blogs, training videos, podcasts, and even video games can be used in your successful online marketing strategy. Be sure your content is good quality so it will not adversely affect your rankings and damage your brand. It must be free of grammar and spelling errors so that you look professional. Remember that the content you put on your site might be the first impression a prospective client gets of you.

You can use other people’s materials with permission and proper attribution. However, if you author the material, it positions you as an expert.

Once you have provided something of value and positioned yourself as an expert, you are much more likely to build the trust necessary to sell something. You can feature your products or services with a banner ad on your blog or by inviting the prospect to click through to the ecommerce portion of your website.

Social Media Marketing

In order to make the most of a social media marketing strategy, you need to interact with your fans and create a true community. Show that you are accessible by allowing people to ask questions, voice concerns, and even complain. Then address these issues in a professional manner. Provide them with content that is interesting, not just promotional. Remember, social media is just that – social!

Gaining a certain number of followers or obtaining a target click through rate can be wonderful short-term objectives. However, the final objective of Internet Marketing is sales.

The Internet in general and social media specifically can be wonderful tools for generating sales. But, like all tools, they have to be used properly to produce the desired results.

Always keep the marketing basics in mind in your strategy. Ask yourself these three questions:

1) Why would a prospective customer buy my product or service rather than the offerings of a competitor?
2) Is there a segment of the market that would value the things that differentiate my product or service and is it large enough to support my business?
3) What is the most cost-effective way to reach this segment with the message that my product or service is different?

Then, only launch an Internet-Marketing campaign if it is the most cost effective way to reach your specific target market with your message.

Using a successful online marketing strategy is the way to open the door to sales.

by Rahimah Sultan

Russell Armstrong states, “For anyone who needs to clear out the cobwebs on their social channels and sharpen their effective social media marketing strategies, here are a few techniques to employ so you can take back control and rise in the ranks.”

Develop a Strategy and Follow It If you don’t have a solid plan in place, your content will probably be lost and never seen. For example, set a reasonable limit on how many tweets to publish every day. Adjust the number as needed, but definitely have a goal. Even publishing just five tweets a day gives you somewhat of a benchmark to work with.

You need to build trust by responding to tweets or posts on your channels. If you don’t reply people will turn to your competitors for answers or guidance.

While tracking is generally thought of as time-consuming and tedious, it needs to be done at least once a month.

Remain active on Google+ as that is essentially free advertising for your brand when other people search for you on Google.

There are five key platforms that you should use to grow your brand.

Click here to read the article.

by Rahimah Sultan

Are you using social media in your marketing plan. Here are some tips on viral marketing from Socially Stephanie.

As far as social media goes, Stephanie Frasco of Social Media Today states that there is no magic button to make your web content go viral. “However, there are some ways to increase your reach and make the sharing contagious.”

As you publish, your content will do some of the work on its own and will always be on your site for new visitors.

“Content + Influence = Authority. Or in other words Content + Sharing = Results”.

You have to have great content and targeted Influencers of the web sharing it. You have to have the right kind of content and that depends on your audience – the people your trying to reach, the ones for whom you’re writing.

Some types of content work better than others, such as lists, infographics, and how-tos, and longer pieces work better than short.

Click here to read the complete viral marketing article
 
 

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