Social media has become one of the most important ways you can use to promote your business so today, I’m going to reveal Social Media Marketing Definition, top Benefits of Using Social Media for your business and Best Social Media Platforms for marketing your business.

The world is changing much faster now than ever before.

New technology and trends seem to show up overnight, and it is more challenging to keep updated with these advancements.

Among these, social media is quickly becoming an indispensable part of our daily lives as it determines how we interact and communicate online.

Businesses don’t miss this trend and focus on these platforms and channels to reach more audience.

However, diving into this complex world without understanding what it encompasses might do more harm than good.

In this social media marketing guide, we’ll show what you need to know to build a successful strategy which delivers your message and value to the targeted audience and helps grow your business.

A. What Is Social Media Marketing?

In a broad sense, social media marketing refers to the application of social networks and platforms to promote a specific service, product, or brand.

This can be done by identifying and connecting with the targeted audience in a meaningful way.

Sure, the main goal is to enhance brand awareness, improve the conversion rate, and grow your business.

Most social media platforms integrate data analytics tools that allow businesses to track the progress, engagement, and success of their marketing campaigns.

Thus, more and more companies are using these channels to address a variety of stakeholders, including potential and current customers, employees, bloggers, journalists, and the general public.

Unlike traditional marketing, which bombards potential customers with sales commercials and billboards – social media marketing is typically a two-way process.

Your business needs to listen, communicate, engage, express empathy, get involved, and offer values to build a long-lasting relationship with your audience.

If you can do that, your strategy is likely to succeed and lead to more sales. Check These Powerful Marketing Tips for 2020 & Beyond By 23 World Class Marketers 

B. What are the Benefits of Using Social Media?

Every business, from start-ups to multinational corporations, is adopting new techniques and strategies to enhance their presence on social media.

Though they have to allocate a lot of resources, these marketing methods might bring many benefits.

Below Are The Top 8 Benefits of Social Media For Business:

1. Cost-effective tools:

• Compared to other traditional channels like TV ads or billboards, marketing via social media is undoubtedly much more cost-effective.
  

• It is completely free to create or sign up for a new account in all social network platforms like Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter. Even when you decide to pay for advertising on these sites, the fees are typically smaller than you would expect.

• By adopting social media marketing, you can save a lot of money and spend your budget on other business projects.
  

• Just with the right knowledge and skills, you can achieve your marketing objectives quickly without breaking the bank.

2. Improved customer engagement:

• The majority of the global population, regardless of age, gender, professional, or religion, is using social networking platforms every day. That’s why it can be a great way to engage and communicate with your customers.
  

• The more frequent you interact with the audience, the higher the conversion rate would be.

• Create a mutual communication platform so that your potential customers know that their interests and needs are always met.
  

• More importantly, interaction with the audience is an effective way to attract their attention and convey your messages better to more people.

3. Enhanced brand awareness:

• Social networking platforms are one of the most profitable and stress-free tools to enhance your corporate vision with digital marketing.
  

• By creating social media channels and starting interacting with the public, marketers can easily increase the presence and visibility of their product or service to a broader base of audience.
  

• As a result, it heightens user experience and boosts your brand recognition.

4. Long-lasting brand loyalty:

• When your business has a social media channel or page, it can be simpler for your customers and partners to find and connect with you from anywhere.
  

• As such, you can increase brand loyalty and customer retention, which is one of the major goals of nearly all companies.

• Keep in mind that there is always a close connection between brand loyalty and customer satisfaction.
  

• This means the most effective way to keep your buyers choosing your products in the next time is to make them happy. That’s why it is important to engage with them regularly and start building a good relationship.

• Social media platforms aren’t only confined to product or service introduction, they are also the leading channels for promotional and communicational campaigns.

5. Better customer satisfaction:

• As said earlier, social media platforms play an essential role in communicating and networking with customers, suppliers, and partners.
  

• With the help of Facebook or Twitter, for example, marketers can create a voice for their companies and improve the overall brand image.
  

• It is simple to see that most customers really appreciate when you like or reply to their comments naturally instead of a computerized message.
  

• By valuing and taking care of your customers online, they will definitely have more trust in your product or service and keep using it in the future.

6. Raised marketplace perception:

• The marketplace perception is an effective way to find out the wants and needs of your customers without communicating or interacting directly with them.
  

• No surprise that this is also the most valuable benefit of social media marketing.
  

• By observing and analyzing the activities of the audience on your page or channel, you might collect and have insight into the opinions and interest of the current and potential customers.

• Since more and more people are turning to the virtual world, these behaviors can’t be examined without social media.

• Thanks to the availability of many analytic tools, it is much easier now to obtain information and have a better understanding of your market.
  

• Once you have a large fan base, checking the demographic aspects will give your business many valuable insights to grow.

7. More website traffic:

• Another important advantage of social media marketing is that it can also help your website get more organic traffic.
  

• This is especially important for affiliate businesses. By sharing or posting your content on these platforms, you are providing the audience with a justified reason to click on the link and visit your site for more useful information.
  

• Therefore, it is essential to create quality and premium content which can help your readers answer their questions. With more inbound traffic, it is much easier to make conversion opportunities.

8. Increased search rankings:

• Most search engines, including Google and Bing, pay a significant focus on the presence on social platforms to rank a website. That’s why it is important to adopt new SEO techniques to ensure successful rankings.
  

• Optimizing your site and updating your blog regularly are no longer enough. Instead, you should create a new channel and homepage on Facebook or YouTube and share your content. This will show the search engine that your brand is constant, integral, and valid.

C. Best Social Media Platforms for Social Media Marketing:

The key to a successful social media marketing campaign is to choose the most suitable platform for your companies.

By choosing the right channel that most consumers are using, you can easily send your messages and interact with them.

Here is a quick guide to top 4 best options that every digital marketer should know.

1. Facebook

=> Overview:

Since its inception in 2004, Facebook is undoubtedly the largest social media platforms in the world with more than 1 billion accounts and 2 million active users each month.

With the audience from diverse backgrounds,  Facebook is a great channel for companies to market their business, reach and interact with their targeted market.

Facebook has increasingly become an integral part of people’s online presence.

For many people, it is the only place where they can socialize and engage in different online activities.

From those who often check the notifications during the day to those who constantly browse to update interesting posts, the major driving force behind Facebook is the connection.

The greatest thing about Facebook is that most of its users range from 25 to 35 years old.

Since this demographic group accounts for the majority of the global population, it’s simple to see that this social networking platform is an opportunity for every business to invest.

More importantly, you can also find people from different demographic features, such as gender, income, education, religion, occupation, marital status, and more.

Thus, marketers can easily launch their campaigns to the right group without wasting resources on the unimportant audience.

=> Facebook for business:

To meet the increasing demands of businesses in engaging their customers, Facebook has offered many impressive features.

First, it comes with a targeted platform for digital advertising.

This means that you can use Facebook advertisements to reach those who are in your targeted segment and are highly likely to buy your service or product.

Therefore, you won’t need to worry about spending your money on the wrong audience.

E-commerce integration is another feature that makes Facebook a great social media platform for businesses, especially small and medium enterprises.

The site makes it easy for the users to buy any products or services from your company just with the click of a mouse.

2. Twitter

=> Overview:

The simple interface and 140-character feature are important things that help Twitter transform the world’s access to real-time information.

With more than 320 million active users in total, this platform a great place for people to share anything from great content and worldwide politics to sports and breaking news.

This makes Twitter an excellent tool for business to share the latest updates on their products or services and participating in the online conversation within your industry.

Based on research, the average age of Twitter users is quite younger than those on Facebook.

However, there are still older groups using this platform, so a company might target customers of different age ranges.

In overall, this channel is great for those businesses which are attempting to reach a wider base of online audience.

=> Twitter for business:

When it comes to the business world, Twitter has many great things to offer.

In general, companies can use this social media platform to reach and communicate with their audience easily through a variety of advanced yet simple-to-use features.

Hashtags enable marketers to follow and engage in all conversations concerning trending topics and controversial issues in the same market.

Also, it is a good idea to add unique and distinctive hashtags into your content to help it reach new audiences.

Also, Twitter provides businesses with many advertising opportunities.

You can deliver your digital advertisements to the targeted groups of customer easily with multiple options and formats.

Depending on your goals and budgets, you can choose to promote a tweet featuring your products or promote your own account, which shows up in the left area.

To start a new conversation with potential users, it is also possible to promote a few trends which are associated with your industry.

3. YouTube

=> Overview:

After its humble beginning in 2005, YouTube has quickly advanced into the second largest search engine, right behind its counterpart Google.

It is a great foundation for online fame and the driver of Internet culture.

As billions of clip hours are uploaded and viewed by millions of people all over the world each day, YouTube is a fertile ground for business to reach and engage their targeted audience by creating and offering high-quality content.

With more than one billion users, YouTube is larger than any other cable networks in the world.

It is estimated that nearly 75% of users use this video sharing platform to entertain each week.

This brings a golden opportunity for brands to reach an interested, engaged, and active audience on a constant basis.

More importantly, the possibilities of taking action during watching are relatively high, thus leading to better conversion rates.

=> YouTube for business:

The most obvious benefit of using YouTube for most businesses is to have a limited access to a video hosting service.

As a result, they can save a lot of money on marketing while still driving more engagement and influencing conversions by publishing interesting video content.

YouTube content is also integrated easily into your site or shared on other platforms to optimize its reach.

Since your YouTube content can be searched in both Google and YouTube, investing in this platform can also help with your SEO strategies.

That’s why it is essential to keep your video content always optimized for searches if you expect to get the most out of this useful feature.

4. Pinterest

=> Overview:

Launched in 2010, Pinterest has quickly taken the online community by storm thanks to its easy-to-use pinning and beautiful images.

This platform currently has around 175 million active users who use it to create and share image collections for businesses, style, and hobbies.

The site is specially designed to become a collection of ideas which inspires its users to start new projects, whether these are a home renovation or cooking recipe.

By creating meaningful and impressive images, marketers can easily link back to their websites and get more traffic.

=> Pinterest for business:

The most important feature of Pinterest is that it has a large number of women users across different demographics, such as location, education level, income, and age.

This makes it a great option for any company with services and products that target women.

More importantly, the image-focus nature also makes it perfect for those brands in the fitness, food, art, home décor, or fashion industries.

The Buy Button feature paves the way for anyone to sell their products directly from the Pinterest page.

All you need to do is searching and pinning products on the Platform, then add them to the shopping bag and pay.

As a result, Pinterest is probably one of the best social media channels to boost sales and improve brand awareness. Check My In-depth Pinterest Marketing Guide to help you get the best results marketing your services on Pinterest.

D. Final thoughts

Creating a good social media marketing strategy from scratch can be both overwhelming and exciting at the same time.

While it usually requires a huge amount of resources, these new techniques can play an essential role in the success of your business.

Without social media, you can’t reach millions of possible customers worldwide and miss out many opportunities to market your services or products.

Your customers are mostly online, they are joining social networks and also expecting that you’ll do the same.

Ignore it, and you will definitely lag behind in this competitive business world.

Now it’s your turn to embrace social media marketing!