In today’s world, social media has become a major part of our day to day lives. Gone are the days when your only way to build that same awareness was through billboards or magazine and television ads. With social media, you have the ability to bring your brand content directly to your customers, partners, and prospects.

What is Social Media Marketing?

Social Media Marketing (SMM) is a method to increase your reach for promoting your offerings through various platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Youtube, etc. In simple terms SMM helps you expand your other marketing efforts, so your content has the chance to be seen by a wide audience, and hopefully, the right audience.

SMM will also help you to build brand awareness and also to gain traffic or attention through social media sites. Social Media is a medium for building personal relationships with your audience resulting in growth in revenue, reach, and overall Return On Investment (ROI).

Social Media Platforms

There are various social media platforms when it comes to choosing the right social media platform to use for your inbound marketing efforts they are Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.

Below are some staggering statistics:

According to Online Marketing Companys, Online adults aged 18-34 are most likely to follow a brand via social networking.

That’s because it currently boasts over 2 billion users which far more than the largest country, China, with 1.4 billion people living within its borders.

According to We Are Social, 2.56 billion global mobile social media users, equaling 34% penetration; globally with 1 million new active mobile social users added every day.

So the above statistics tell you everything that to stay in the competition and to reach out to more prospects or audiences social media is one of the important aspects of getting more ROI.

Social Media Platforms:

Below are some key performance indicators which are important while doing Inbound Marketing they are:

Reaching out to Targeted prospects. if you have a million followers but they don’t engage with your content its a waste of time. I would prefer a five thousand targeted followers who will engage with your posts, re-tweet, like, share your message.

Engaging with your followers by creating a quality content this can also be a video content

How many Social Media Followers are inquiring about your offerings/products/services.

How many of them actually become customers?

The actual KPIs that you can measure will vary by social media platform some include clicks, likes, shares, re-tweets, subscribe, Hashtags, Mentions, etc.

There are a lot of options when it comes to choosing the right social media platform to use for your inbound marketing efforts. To help you decide which channels are the best fit for your social strategy, let’s walk through the basics and benefits of each of them.

Facebook:

As discussed in the above statistics there are billions of Facebook accounts all over the planet. There are two types of Facebook pages: a personal page and a business page.

A personal page has a limit of 5000 persons limit whereas, business pages can have millions of followers. Having a business page for advertising also gives you access to analytics and the ability to correctly categorize your company for search, add a mission statement, a product catalog, awards, and give your customers the chance to give reviews.

YouTube:

This is the second-largest platform after Facebook. It has a global reach of over 1.3 billion users to age groups in between 18-49. Over 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute and almost 5 billion videos are watched on YouTube every single day.

From a marketing perspective creating great and engaging videos of your products/offerings will help you to convert prospects into customers.

LinkedIn:

Generally, this platform is mostly used for B2B Marketing. It used to be a network primarily used for recruiting, but these days it’s also becoming a platform to find the latest news and to stay networked with people all over the world.

This platform is used for targeted advertising, to network in groups, and to share content that will drive links back into your website properties.

Twitter:

This is a microblogging site for today’s marketers and you can see what’s happening in that very moment around the world.

There are several forms of advertising on Twitter, including ads in the news stream, with trending topics, promoted profiles, and a lot more. But one of the best uses of Twitter is the organic networking you can do directly with your audience, engaging in conversation that helps build loyalty and trust.

Instagram:

This Platform is owned by Facebook and is the third-largest growing network with 90% of prospects are under the age of 35. Primarily this platform is used for sharing photos and videos.

Instagram is important because it has a very deep engagement, especially for brands. Over 80% of users follow at least one brand account. Forrester tells us that engagement with brands on Instagram is 10 times higher than Facebook, 54 times higher than Pinterest, and 84 times higher than Twitter.

Conclusion:

As per the above facts related to social media marketing definition, I am sure this Inbound Marketing effort will help organizations in reaching out to targeted customers and help to generate more ROI.

Understanding Social Media Marketing

Understanding eCommerce presented by Digital Media Marketing