Obviously, social media nowadays are a new trend for netizens today. Even news and stories are largely circulated in social media websites like Facebook and Twitter. Today, the marketing wiz moved into these platforms and started crafting strategies to conquer the social media.

What is Social Media Marketing

Therefore, social media marketing is the art of gaining traffic and sales through the efficient use of social media sites. However, always keep in mind the people that you target for your business. For example, if your audience is mainly adults ages 45 to 60 then Instagram might not be an ideal platform to market in since a younger population primarily uses it.

Social media marketing can be very tricky too since social media sites have huge differences. Let’s say if you market in Twitter, you cannot use the same words in Facebook where in you can input more words and customize the post freely. Instagram, on the other hand, can not read URLs in regular posts and is mainly about imagery. Therefore, the strategy used for marketing in Twitter can differ from the approach used on Facebook and Instagram.

Starting Social Media Marketing

Every marketing begins with smart planning. Before diving and spending $$$ on your social media campaigns make sure to carefully plan the strategy you will use and the goals you want to achieve as well. Dave Jardine of DJ Plumbing took some very careful steps when planning his latest social media campaign: Garburator Repair Vancouver. Dave and his team created a video called the Adventures of the Garburator Man. This was a short animated comic strip that utilized humor to connect with his target audience. He then used Facebook and Youtube ads to drive the traffic to the videos and then back to his website. Dave says that they plan to do more of these kinds of animated videos in the future.

Ask questions like: how much is the budget? How long are you planning to run the ads? Who is your audience and where are they from (demographics)? What message do you want to them to be aware of?

These questions will be of a real help if you can answer them.

Focus on the Content

In social media marketing or any other methods of marketing, content is always always the top priority. Content, most especially for social media, has to be unique and fascinating.

Most marketers are using click bait headlines and misleading tags to gain clicks and traffic. We cannot deny the fact that this technique is working but be careful to drive negative comments and feedbacks from reader and users. We always have to be creative when it comes to marketing. If you have some time to spare, there are free software out there that you can use to craft simple yet beautiful and informative infographics, or you could also choose to curate.

Measuring Effectiveness

Of course, we want to know how your ads are doing or if it is ever helping your business in some way. For measuring clicks and traffic, some social media has their way to measure metrics, but for some like Instagram, you can use Google Analytics for it.

Measuring the effective or the impact of your campaign can help you understand the audience more: what types of post they most likely engage with, what is the best time to post or share a content. Through knowing these aspects you can improve and modify your strategy for the next campaign.

Social media marketing is a powerful method in the 21st century to drive traffic and raise brand awareness. Do not forget to make your audience the center of your campaign and not what you like for your campaign.