Social media and its role in marketing dates back to its origins, where it was nothing more than a place for friends and family to share ideas and interact with each other.
However, large companies and Digital Marketing strategists did not lose track of it and were able to detect its great potential to reach a large number of people, different market niches and with an incredible effectiveness rate.
Without a doubt, Social Media Marketing is one of the techniques that we should all self employeed database incorporate into our workflow, and here we come to tell you why.
Keep reading!
Social media refers to web-based communication technology that people use to interact with each other, share information, thoughts, and ideas. Users share various types of content such as videos, photos, and documents.
Social media includes a number of websites and applications such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube , Reddit, among others. Users interact with this technology through devices such as computers, tablets, and smartphones.
Moreover, social media does not only refer to the use of the platform for socializing purposes, but also includes activities such as blogging, community gaming, video sharing, photo sharing, business networking, etc.
Thanks to social media, you can improve the way your target audience perceives you, as you can target them appropriately through segmentation. In this way, customer loyalty will increase.
Now, how do these platforms work at the enterprise level?
In business, social media is used to market products, promote brands, connect with customers, and foster new business.
As a communication platform, social media promotes customer feedback and makes it easier for customers to share their experiences with a company.
Organizations, in turn, have the ability to quickly respond to positive and negative feedback, address customer issues, and maintain or regain customer trust.
Social media is also used for crowdsourcing, which is the practice of using social media to collect knowledge, goods or services.
In this sense, businesses use crowdsourcing to obtain ideas from employees, customers and target audiences to improve products or develop new features for those they already produce.
Social networks and their role in marketing is very broad, where their main functionalities are:
Social media analytics
This is the practice of collecting and analyzing data from blogs and social media websites to help make sound, number-based business decisions.
The most common use of social media analytics is to conduct buyer persona research .
Social Media Marketing
This app increases a company's brand exposure and customer reach.
The goal is to create engaging content that social media users will share with their social networks. A key component of this strategy is social media optimization (SMO).
Similar to search engine optimization, SMO is a technique for attracting new visitors to a website. Social media links and sharing buttons are added to content and activities are promoted through status updates, tweets and blogs.
Social marketing of customer relationships
Social CRM is a powerful business tool. For example, a Facebook page allows people who like a company's brand to like the company's page. This, in turn, creates ways to communicate, market, and network.
Social media sites give users the option to follow conversations about a product or brand to gain real-time feedback and market data.
Recruitment 4.0 and marketing
Recruitment 4.0 in the same sentence as “marketing”? Yes! This technology is here to stay in the human resources field.
Marketing is a fast and effective way to reach a large number of potential candidates, both active job seekers and people who were not thinking about changing jobs until they heard about the recruitment position.
A clear example of this is the social media platform LinkedIn.
It is a network based solely on the professional field, where companies, through their recruiters, can start a Content Marketing campaign to begin a search for workers, being able to see their profile with their entire career, which speeds up the entire process.
Business social networks
Businesses also use enterprise social networks to connect people who share similar interests or activities.
These applications include internal intranets and collaboration tools, such as Yammer, Slack, and Microsoft Teams, which provide employees with access to information and communication capabilities.
Externally, public social media platforms allow organizations to stay close to customers and facilitate market research.
Social media marketing: What is its importance?
Do you still have any doubts about what social media and its role in marketing do for businesses? We are now giving you a lot of valuable information to clarify your doubts.
First, we recommend that you complement this reading with these 3 valuable contents:
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Improving the shopping experience for your web users is essential. Find out how by reading here!
Social media marketing is crucial to effectively reach your target audience. This tactic is important as it can help you attract ideal customers and showcase your products and services online in a much more attractive way.
Social media and its role in marketing also consists of telling the brand story and connecting with your audience in a more humanized and personalized way. People will get to know you better. Moreover, social media marketing is cost-effective compared to other channels.
As I mentioned before, social media will help you understand your competitors and users' consumption habits.
This way, you can create long-lasting, transparent relationships and successful loyalty, since 53% of consumers admit that they are more likely to buy from brands that are transparent on social media.
Social media is a powerful medium to spread the word about your business – after all, around 3.5 billion users have a social media account worldwide. That’s why so many marketers, entrepreneurs, and bloggers use it. Still, social media marketing is beneficial for any business, no matter its size.
In addition, social media marketing is instrumental in improving brand loyalty and strengthening customer satisfaction – in fact, this is the primary marketing channel for 50% of Gen Z and 42% of millennials . You’ll also benefit from community authority if you post valuable content that educates your audience.
Another reason why social media marketing is essential is that it is perfect for showing authenticity. Be kind and friendly when letting them know about your brand personality.
4 marketing and social media strategies you should know
If you're wondering how to put into practice everything we've seen so far about social media and its role in marketing, we won't let you down. Below, you'll find the 4 most effective strategies to take your branding to the next level:
1. Start using chatbots.
You may have heard it before, but it doesn’t matter, I’ll say it again: chatbots are trending . This is not surprising, as they are the only digital tool that can communicate and solve problems for your users and loyal customers without the potential need for any human intervention.
In addition to the above, chatbots integrate with the platforms through which consumers now feel most comfortable interacting: social media.
In parallel, these platforms make it easy to integrate an AI-powered chatbot into your social media strategy. These tools allow you to create your own chatbot that:
do not require any coding knowledge;
can answer customer questions;
They are able to receive orders directly from comments, Facebook Messenger, Instagram direct, among other means and
integrate with all major payment systems.
2. Create a personalized experience for your customers
Chatbots are not only a great way to automate certain everyday tasks, but if implemented correctly, they will allow you to improve the customer experience by giving a touch of personalization to your content that your users will know how to take advantage of and appreciate.
To do this, stop linking ads only to landing pages and create ads that redirect the target audience to a window directly with your social media messages, and thus, you will have a better digital presence .
By doing this, you will be able to:
break the traditional view that customers have that you are just trying to sell to them;
make your customer experience more personal;
boost your sales and
develop a loyal fan base.
3. Develop an efficient content marketing strategy.
Quality is key and content is no exception. Content marketing has been a prominent form of marketing for a long time and this is not going to change anytime soon.
Many brands fail to link valuable content with the right posting schedule and the right frequency of posts. High-quality SEO content, along with all of the above, will attract the right customers at the right time.
Aside from its ability to capture an audience of organic traffic, a good content marketing strategy can be implemented for free.
Make sure to create a relevant hashtag strategy along with optimized and comprehensive content.
4. Create a community for your audience.
While “followers” and many other metrics are important, they are not the be-all and end-all of social media success.
You need to show your audience that you are not just a robot – integrate personality through humor and emotions into your posts so that everyone can relate to your brand.
Social media is all about being “social,” and if users see the same type of posts over and over again, they’ll lose interest. We all would feel the same way, don’t you think?
This is why we must make our communications more interactive, as follows:
ask open-ended questions;
Collect opinions on certain issues to achieve effective feedback ;
share a variety of information rather than just data about your products or services and
ask them to interact with the brand through “ likes ” and “ shares ”, this way you can also reach their inner circle.