Social media marketing just doesn’t happen abruptly. No. Just like the marketing department invests time and energy into coming up with creative and engaging billboard & print media ads or TV & radio adverts, so does the social media marketing team. Each marketing move done on social media needs to have the following elements:
- Clearly defined objectives
- A clear target audience
- Optimization for maximum conversion into sales
- Captivating content/ideas
- Aggressive promotional power
- Good reception
- Social responsibility
SMM is a full-time job. In order to achieve all these, specific social media marketing techniques are used. They include:
- Message Adaptation
Different social media networks are used by different audiences. For example, Instagram users are made of Millennials, of which more are females than males and most under the age of 35. LinkedIn hosts more “serious” users consisting of more males than females, 90% of them being career professionals. Facebook users, on the other hand, are mostly made up of millennials and generation X crowds. The message being delivered in each marketing post needs to be tailored to reach the specific target audience. Otherwise, it might be sidelined and be a total fail.
- Aggressive Interaction
Social media is naturally a fast-paced interactive environment. Effective SMM requires aggressive interaction with customers and clients showing interest in the company’s posts, regardless of the nature of the interest (negative/positive). Inactivity from engagement poses the risk of fading into the background, whose ripple effect is declining sales. Aggressive interaction, on the other hand, keeps your company on the user’s newsfeed, which increases chances of sharing, creation of new awareness, and direct translation into sales.
- Game Theory
Game theory is an old phenomenon that involves the science of strategy, optimal decision making, planned counter measures, and independent strategic setting. SMM experts use this technique to actively stay ahead of the competition. In social media marketing, experts use game theory to develop strategies like posting marketing ads that provoke user engagement, increased activity during social media peak time, and posting relevant marketing content that is in context with trending topics.
- Use of multimedia
“A picture is worth a thousand words”. That is probably the oldest saying since the invention of photography. Statistics show that social media posts accompanied by an image or a video clip get double the attention that plain text status posts get. Most social media platforms, even Twitter that has a limited 140 character policy, support multimedia. Product-offering companies can market their products by posts that include photos and a description-precise caption. For services, well-taken photos or video clips of instances where the service is being offered can be used.
- Integration of both online and offline advertising
Staying actively involved in social media can be a tasking endeavor, especially for companies with a small labor force. In such instances. Offline advertising like marketing on conventional media (billboards, TV, radio, and print) should be integrated with online advertising. This is done through adding URLs and handles of the company’s social media pages to the conventional advertisements. Any queries or interactions made thanks to the offline advertising can be followed up online the next time the marketing team logs into the social media.