Social Media Marketing to some may sound rather foreign, a totally new concept. We’ve of course heard of commercial marketing. Some have even taken it up as a major in college. Well, in layman terms, social media marketing is basically what social media marketers do; marketing through social media.
There is more to social media than just getting online on social media platforms to chat, post photos, and what not. Social media isn’t just for fun, a hobby done at the end of the day to catch up with friends and acquaintances. The platforms can be used for business too. Marketers now use social media to do what they know best; to market products and services to the public.
Social media marketing is basically advertising goods and services on the various social networks, the same way ads are run on Billboards, TVs, radios, newspapers, and magazines. It is different from e-marketing and digital marketing in the sense that, the advertising activities here are exclusively done on social media platforms like Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, and the most common – Facebook. E-marketing involves marketing products and services through company websites.
Why opt for SMM?
You may argue, “Why waste time and resources on social media marketing when companies already use e-marketing from their websites?” The answer is simple it’s 2017!
Close to a third of the world’s population actively uses social media on a daily basis. Social media is the one place that provides a platform to know and understand what goes on people’s minds, their desires, their wishes, what they don’t like and why. They are of personal nature.
For example, people like to take photos of their meals and post them on social media, especially Instagram. A couple of seconds later, all their friends, say on Instagram, know what they’re having for lunch and where they’re having it from. That in itself is indirect marketing of the food offered by the said restaurant. It only takes a few seconds to do that. Now imagine taking that advertising to a professional level. That is how powerful SMM is and that kind of marketing power is what has made this type of e-marketting unavoidable in today’s eCommerce space.
How it works
With billions of people interacting every day on their social network pages, an environment for creating awareness is developed. Businesses can engage their products, services, and brands with other people using the networks. A user that comes across a post, status update or tweet from a company marketing their products or services instantly becomes a potential customer, or even better, a potential investor.
Such marketing is done either through the companies’ social media pages on the said platform or, through promotional and sponsored ads done on the social network at a fee. Just like ads on TVs, radio and print media evoke potential clients to try out the product or service, so do ads on social media. SMM also involves developing informational content, design, administration of social media pages, and research into social media trends.