Social marketing (SM) or social media marketing (SMM) is one of the most searched terms on the web today. You don’t have to be an entrepreneur or an analyst to know that people have been spending their time on social network sites (SNS) already for many years.
According to the latest estimates of the Digital 2023 report by We Are Social, users with at least one social profile in the world would have risen to 5.16 billion in 2022 out of a total population of 8.01 billion.
In Italy, 51 million people access the Internet daily and 43 million of these are registered on social network sites. 97% of Internet users access from mobile phones, while the amount of hours spent online reaches almost 6 hours per day.
It results that the role of the social media manager, but of marketers in general, is becoming increasingly strategic, both for B2C and B2B companies. Let’s now find out what is meant by social marketing and what are the best strategies to boost your SME or business.
Table of contents
What it is, who the prosumer is and how to activate word of mouth
Social marketing, which falls under Web 2.0 and 3.0, is a branch of digital marketing based on the use of social platforms to establish a direct dialogue with leads and increase brand awareness.
The basic principle is that whoever publishes something expects an interaction (usually a like, a reaction, a comment or a share) that, in some way, gives value to the published content.
From a strictly economic point of view, consumers no longer play a passive role, but become content producers themselves; thus the figure of the prosumer is born, who is both consumer and producer.
Thanks to the latest technological advances, the consumer, in fact, has a myriad of tools at his disposal to have his say and activate the classic word of mouth mechanisms. Here, those who are able to influence the word of mouth are more likely to control the market.
And so we come to the crucial point of the question: how to do this? Unfortunately, it’s not enough to publish and share a content, but it’s necessary to follow it along the entire funnel, taking care to choose the right target groups.
Social marketing: a well-structured strategy
It’s easy to see that, like other marketing strategies, social marketing cannot be improvised, but demands to be a well-structured strategy. First, it’s necessary to:
- define goals, both short and medium-long term;
- establish the target group, i.e. that group of reference users that would welcome the product/service more willingly than the indistinct mass;
- choose the most suitable platforms for the declination of one's advertising message by asking oneself: “what is the best way to communicate the presence of my product/service?”;
- establish a budget because, although one may believe that social media are free, this is not the case at all.
Developing an editorial plan and managing it according to best practices
After having established your social marketing strategy, you need to develop a dedicated editorial plan (EP). Content is the foundation stone for building your digital presence, increasing brand awareness and creating engagement.
Content should be published consistently, respecting industry best practices (adding tags and hashtags, using emoji, etc.), at specific times and with the right target audience. It can also be useful, but is not necessary, to create avatars, i.e. prototypes of the target digital users who share content with their ad hoc created network.
Remember: each platform has its own peculiarities (image resolution, hashtag traffic volume, timetables, shortened links, debugging tools, etc.); respecting the guidelines of each social will allow you to maximise the effectiveness of your communication.
The only way to achieve greater visibility, however, is to create valuable, interesting, attractive, interactive and entertaining content.
The EP, which also includes the use of buyer personas, should also indicate the tone of voice to be used; this will be spontaneous and easy for leads to understand and more formal in the case of customer service or if promoting brand values.
If one does not have clear ideas a good starting point is the study of competitors (copy, do better), added to the rule of third parties:
- 1/3 of social content must promote the company’s activities;
- 1/3 of social content must relate to the company’s sector;
- 1/3 of the social content must directly promote the products/services offered by the company.
Interfacing with the communication manager
It’s very important that the social media manager interfaces with the communication manager, who generally manages, on the marketing side, all corporate communication. In any case, the basic idea is that the strategy is proposed by the social media manager and approved by the communication manager, who will have a deeper knowledge of the company’s policy and will therefore be able to indicate how to mention the company and its products/services.
The communication manager’s task is also to reason about the company’s favourite themes and seasonal trend topics.
Monitoring metrics, analysing and... analysing
Exactly like Google Analytics, which monitors website traffic, social network sites provide advanced analysis tools, which allow the performance of pages, profiles and individual contents/posts to be monitored.
The monitoring activity is fundamental for the elaboration of one’s strategy, as it allows one to understand what the trends of the moment are, which content has had the greatest impact and whether it has actually generated a return on investment.
Choosing the right social platform
The management of social accounts and company pages is often entrusted to a social media manager, as we mentioned earlier. He or she, belonging to the marketing and digital communication department, will have to spend a lot of energy and time to literally ‘feed’ the corporate channels.
Fortunately, there are numerous cloud-based tools/programmes through which corporate accounts can be managed and monitored simultaneously, providing the communications professional with a single, automated and user-friendly interface.
Below are the 5 most used tools in the field of social marketing.
Buffer
Buffer is probably the most popular dashboard for creating and managing social campaigns on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest in a centralised, fast and secure way. The tool provides real-time performance of posted content.
Hootsuite
Hoosuite is a tool for scheduling posts on more than twenty platforms. It also offers special features such as indication of the best time to publish, tracking of mentions and the degree of audience engagement.
SEMrush
SEMrush’s reputation precedes it. This suite, which was created primarily for SEO and SEM activities, also has a section dedicated to social marketing, useful for those who need to compare their company pages with those of competitors, identify the best performing content and keep track of all audience interactions.
Hubspot
Hubspot is a social media management software whose main benefits consist in the ability to simplify social media management giving priority to the best performing channels. Like the other platforms, it gives the possibility to monitor engagement and track mentions.
Meta Business Suite
Meta Business Suite is a package of tools offered by Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, which allows both to be managed not only from the desktop, but also from mobile. The suite allows you to:
- manage the roles of a profile/page;
- create and/or remove posts, reels and stories;
- send messages/use mail;
- reply to and delete comments;
- ban people;
- boost posts;
- create advertisements;
- monetise;
- access Facebook Gaming;
- monitor insights.
To recap
To recap: social marketing is the set of strategies that social media managers use to promote a content within social network sites; why is this done? Because social is an effective, direct communication channel with billions of potential customers.
Social marketing benefits
Social marketing, in detail, offers the following benefits:
- it allows you to reach a wide and diverse audience;
- it allows you to forge a direct relationship with your target audience;
- it increases brand awareness;
- it generates traffic to your website;
- it increases sales;
- it save your money on traditional marketing costs.
Moka Adv: boost your creativity!
If you too would like to benefit of the benefits of social marketing strategies, contact us by filling out the contact form below, sending us a message on WhatsApp or calling us on 095 0935481.
At best you will be amazed at what a well-structured social marketing strategy can do; at worst we will have offered you a coffee on the slopes of Etna volcano.
Moka Adv is a web agency with over 10 years of experience, boasts a client portfolio spanning the entire of Europe and is part of the well-known JO Group cluster of companies, committed to digital transformation.
For more information or to launch your business on social networking sites contact us!
Moka Adv: boost your creativity!