Social media marketing is a form of online marketing that basically focusses on communication, branding and engaging with your target audience online on various social media channels. Social media marketing is all about having a two conversation instead of traditional one way communication like radio, television and print media. Some of the channels in the social media spectrum includes blogs, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+, YouTube, Instagram and forums.
Social media makes everyone a citizen journalist online and it provides you with a solid way to communicate your message to a wide audience online. It gives people the ability to talk, share relevant information, network, ask questions and voice their opinions on a variety of topics. It should never be seen as a direct marketing medium to promote yourself. It’s all about networking.
What you can do with social media
Create and spread awareness: Using top social media channels like your blog, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube you can create awareness of your business, product and services. The key with doing this is always taking the soft sell approach.
Build a community: Use all the networking channels online to build your own targeted community consisting of people that are interested in your business. If you have a community that is interested in your business, you have a gold mine you can tap into.
Engagement: Use social media to engage directly with your target audience (community). There’s no other medium that is as natural and social as social media online. Engagement is key with social media as it’s two way instead of one way.
Social media marketing is a great way any business can use to make them stand out from their competition. Even though your competitors might already be using social media, research and study them on how you can improve and make your campaign better.
