Index
Social Media Marketing
What Is Social Media:
Social media is computer-mediated tool that allow people to create, share or exchange information, career interests,ideas, and pictures/videos in virtual communities and networks. Social Media is about building a conversation with your clients and consumers.
What Is Social Media Marketing:
Social media marketing, or SMM, is a form of internet marketing that implements various social media networks in order to achieve marketing communication and branding goals. Social media marketing primarily covers activities involving social sharing of content, videos, and images for marketing purposes.
Social networking websites allow individuals and businesses to interact with one another and build relationships and communities online. When companies join these social channels, consumers can interact with them directly. That interaction can be more personal to users than traditional methods of outbound marketing and advertising.
These days, it isn’t enough to have a website for your business – your digital storefront extends to social media marketing sites like Facebook and Twitter, and it’s time to start capitalizing on it. If your company still doesn’t have a Twitter account or a Facebook fan page, it’s time to get with the program and bring yourself up to speed (or risk falling behind your competition).
Is Social Media Fad?
Over the last several years, there has been an explosion of growth in popular social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, and many others. It's safe to say that the era of social media is just getting started, and the need for social media in business will only become stronger over time. The whole world has seen the impact of the expansion and adoption of social media tactics, and the rising stats speak for themselves.
So much of the customer experience now lives on the web, social media enables brands to take part in a customer's online experience outside of the typical channels.
The Top Social Medias And Activities:
Facebook is the one site where you’re likely to find friends, colleagues, and relatives all floating around. Although Facebook is mainly centered around sharing photos, links, and quick thoughts of a personal nature, individuals can also show their support to brands or organizations by becoming fans.
Perhaps the simplest of all social media platforms, Twitter also just happens to be one of the most fun and interesting. Messages are limited to 140 characters or less, but that’s more than enough to post a link, share an image, or even trade thoughts with your favorite celebrity or influencer. Twitter’s interface is easy to learn and use, and setting up a new profile only takes minutes.
One of the only mainstream social media sites that’s actually geared towards business, LinkedIn is to cyberspace what networking groups once were to local business communities. It’s great for meeting customers, getting in touch with vendors, recruiting new employees, and keeping up with the latest in business or industry news. If it matters to your company or career, you can probably do it on LinkedIn.
Serving as a giant virtual idea and inspiration board, Pinterest has made a huge impact on social media in the last few years. Especially popular with women it lets you share pictures, creative thoughts, or (especially) before-and-after pictures of projects that others can pin, save, or duplicate.
Social network that aims to make sharing on the web more like sharing in real life. Includes an interactive tour and a description of its various features.
This platform is different form many others in that it essentially hosts microblogs for its users. Individuals and companies, in turn, can fill their blogs with multimedia (like images and short video clips). The fast-paced nature of Tumblr makes it ideal for memes, GIFs, and other forms of fun or viral content.
If you’re looking for a quick, convenient connection between the camera feature on your smart phone and all your social profiles, then Instagram is the answer. Not only will allow you to share via Twitter, Facebook, and the Instagram website, you can choose from a variety of photo filters and invite friends to comment on your photos or ideas.
As a video sharing service, YouTube has become so popular that its catalog of billions and billions of videos has become known as “the world’s second-largest search engine” in some circles. The site has everything from first-person product reviews to promotional clips and “how-two” instruction on virtually any topic or discipline. Users have the ability to share, rate, and comment on what they see.
StumbleUpon is a discovery engine (a form of web search engine) that finds and recommends web content to its users. Its features allow users to discover and rate Web pages, photos and videos that are personalized to their tastes and interests using peer-sourcing and social-networking principles.
LiveJournal is asocial networking service based in San Francisco, California where Internet users can keep a blog, journal ordiary. A wide variety of political pundits also use the service for political commentary, particularly in Russia,where it partners with the online newspaper Gazeta.ru. As with many other social networks, a wide variety ofpublic figures use the network.
And These are the top social media site using by most of people
1) LinkedIn
The Good: One major benefit to using LinkedIn is its user base, which consists mainly of business professionals. Over LinkedIn, your ads are almost always seen by business-minded individuals, like yourself. This makes it a social media platform with high conversion rates. Like Facebook, you can also target to niche groups in categories like demographics, employee title and location.
The Bad: Don’t expect a high click-through-rate for your ad here. However, while you’ll rack in less overall clicks on LinkedIn, the users behind the clicks are much more qualified than they are on the other social media channels. On Facebook, you may get as many as 1 in 200 impressions; on LinkedIn, it’s common to receive 1 in 500.
Pricing
Like Facebook, LinkedIn lets you choose whether to pay based on the cost-per-click (CPC) model, or pay by every 1,000 impressions (CPM). LinkedIn has set a minimum budget of $10/day for users of their ad platform however. There are also minimum bids for CPC text ads ($2.00/click) and CPM text ads ($2.00/1,000 impressions). Sponsored Update minimum bids will vary based on the audience you choose.
With these minimum bids, it’s important that you seriously consider your objective when building out LinkedIn ads. These ads should be very business-focused, as Facebook and Twitter provide much cheaper alternatives for content marketing. Test a few LinkedIn ads and see whether the price is worth it for your business.
How to buy
Step 1: Create a new campaign
There’s a Business Services tab on the top right of your LinkedIn homepage. Hover over it and choose advertise. If you’re a new advertiser, click Get started. If you’ve advertised before, click Manage and you’ll be taken to your Campaign Manager. Once there click Create new campaign in the upper right.
Step 2: Choose your ad type
Name your campaign hoose from among company updates (picked from existing posts and will appear on your page) and direct sponsored content (which will appear in people’s home feeds). It will provide an ad preview for you.
2) Twitter
The Good: Twitter allows you to target people based on their current interests. Every time someone sends out a tweet with a hashtag, you have the ability to target them via social media advertising; this is just like keyword targeting on Google AdWords.
Another way you can effectively target a particular audience on Twitter is by honing in on a particular user. Find someone, like an industry influencer, and target their set of followers to extend your ad’s reach.
The Bad: Even though Twitter has a great ability to target users through keywords and hashtags, targeting by interest isn’t as easy. The selection of interests to choose from are extremely limited. The closest interest category for a B2B inbound marketing agency to choose from is “Marketing.”
Pricing
The cost of Twitter ads depends really on the ad type. Promoted Tweets and accounts might cost you anywhere from 50 cents to 10 dollars or more per engagement (video view, link click, follow, etc.) based on how targeted your ad is. Promoted Trends on the other hand have been reported to cost $200,000 a day.
The key here is testing your ads. Run a few short campaigns with a small budget to find out which objective is right for your audience and your budget. Twitter only charges you when a user completes the action set out in your campaign objective anyways, so all of these campaigns will provide some value. Good advice for advertisers is to look at what other advertisers are bidding for similar ads, which is information Twitter provides anyways.
How to buy
Once you sign into the Twitter ads platform (and insert your payment information), actually buying Twitter ads is a simple six-step process.
Step 1: Start a new ad campaign
You will have to name your campaign, choose your funding source and customize your start and end dates before anything else.
3) Facebook
The Good: Facebook has the largest audience, at over 1.19 billion registered users. The major plus with advertising here is the visibility it could give to your company. This makes Facebook a great choice for a small businesses. With the option to advertise based on location, you can easily increase your reach. Unlike LinkedIn, it’s a very cost-effective option. You can spend as little as a dollar a day per ad.
Another pro with Facebook ads are their advanced targeting options. When advertising on Facebook, you can target viewers based on six different categories: location, gender, likes/interests, relationship status, workplace and education.
They also do their own form of A/B testing for you. Facebook lets you create multiple ad variations and uses the best performing ad set from those variations. This gives you very valuable information into the effectiveness of each ad your company is producing.
The Bad: Facebook as an advertising only has one crucial drawback you should keep in mind: the metrics that Facebook provides regarding ad performance are (currently) pretty miniscule compared to other sites.
Pricing
It’s extremely difficult to pin down an average cost for Facebook ads, since it will vary drastically between businesses and ad types. Some sources report Facebook ads averaging around 25 cents for every 1,000 impressions while others point to it being over six or seven dollars. Again, the key is to test your ads in various formats to find out which is most cost effective for you.
With Facebook you have the choice of using a cost per click (CPC) bid, or a cost per thousand impressions (CPM) bid. The former is a great choice to start off with but if your ad is performing very well, the CPM model may be cheaper since those impressions will come easier. Either way you will only pay for the impressions you receive.
How to buy
The buying process for Facebook ads might seem long at 6 steps, but it’s quite fluid, as almost all of your actions take place on one screen.
Step 1: Choose your campaign objective
Pick from among the ad types described above. Once you do, you’ll be prompted to choose which Facebook page you’ll be promoting and to name your campaign.
4) Google+
The Good: Since the search engine giant created this social media platform, it’s no wonder they added SEO benefits to it. Any activity on your company’s page is calculated into your search optimization. For someone in your circle, your company’s page will appear before others that are not in their circles. People using Google+ are usually more tech-driven than those on Facebook or Twitter. If you think this is the right audience for you, it could be advantageous to use your marketing tactics there.
Google+ features “+Post ads” that post on Google’s Display Network, which increases the reach of your advertisements considerably. This is a major plus, because visitors don’t have to be directed to another website to with their clicks.
The most unique aspect to these ads is that an advertiser doesn’t pay for an ad if someone doesn’t click on it. They only pays for as many clicks as it gets. The one downside of this is that Google counts hovering over the ad for more than two seconds as a click.
The Bad: This social media network hasn’t received nearly as much engagement as the other three sites mentioned in this blog. It only has 540 million users; compared to the others, this is very low. It also doesn’t support advanced targeting options like Facebook does. On here, you can segment ads based on demographic targeting, contextual targeting and device targeting.
Pricing
Cost-per-click (CPC)
When do you pay? Only when someone clicks on your ad
Why choose it? CPC is perfect if your goal is to get more traffic to your website. You pay only when someone clicks your ad to visit your site. Set your own bids or choose automatic CPC bidding, where you let Google technology find you the most clicks possible within your budget.
Cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM)
When do you pay? Each time your ad appears
Why choose it? If you want your ad to be seen as often as possible by your target audience, and don't care so much about clicks, CPM is a great choice. You bid per one thousand views, so a CPM of $10.00 means you pay one cent each time your ad is displayed ($.01 x 1,000 = $10.00).
Cost-per-acquisition (CPA)
When do you pay? When your ad leads to a sale or conversion on your website
Why choose it? If your end goal is sales, email sign-ups, or other online transactions, CPA may be for you. Set a target CPA -- the amount you want to pay for each conversion -- and the Conversion Optimizer takes care of the rest, putting your ads in the auctions most likely to lead to conversions.
Social Media Marketing Plan:
Here are some questions we need to ask our self
1. What should my company aim to achieve?
Here we need to estimate our wants, means that what can i do in social media. In what way we can create our brand awareness in social media, and how can we be touch with our clients etc...
2. Who should manage my company accounts?
Here we need give the total authority to who know well about social media, here we need to prefer experienced person to monitor all the accounts
3. Should my company have a presence on all social media networks?
We need to create the accounts in all popular social media sites.
4. What are the best social networks for businesses?
Like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Google plus+, etc...
5. How often should i post new content?
It’s good to post 2 to 3 posts per day
6. What type of content should i post?
Like events, product information, quiz, links, articles, etc...
7. Should i use social media for customer service?
That is our wish
8. How can i convert followers into customers?
Driving cross platform interaction to our customers, means we have to invite followers for other networks of our site, and giving the link on the posts.
9. How can i measure the success of my marketing effort?
Using google anlytics we can measure the statistics.’
10. What is the biggest mistake to avoid?
We have to measure all those, like what posts have highest likes and comments, what posts we can avoid like this.
7. Blog
A blog is basically a 'weblog', a kind of website, a journal that is updated regularly. It is a discussion platform besides being a content achieve. People can discuss a topic on a blog and comment on posts. It is basically run by an individual or a small group.
Blogging
Every activity and skillset that is required to manage a blog comes under the purview of Blogging, for example, writing posts, publishing them, designing, social marketing, etc. In simple words, blogging is the process of adding new content to a blog and updating it at regular intervals.
Blogger (Person) − Person involved in blogging is called a 'blogger'.
Blogger (Service) − It is a service provided by Google that allows us to compose a post, edit, update, and manage it. You can customize your blogs easily with the help of a 'blogger'. It lets you share what is on your mind and earn money. It is a convenient platform for avid as well as novice users. No technical knowledge or coding is required. It runs directly on Google servers and is impossible to hack.
WordPress − It’s a free software to create and customize a search engine friendly website or a blog. A number of themes and plugins are available to transform your website as required. Approximately 70 million people are a part of WordPress community. WordPress is available in both free and premium plans.
Blogspot − Blogspot is a free web hosting service gifted to web developers by Google. It helps Google Blogger in delivering its service. We cannot use any other platform to use it.
Tumbler − It is a microblogging platform that allows us to make a blog and customize it. We may use stories, images, videos, audio, etc. Bloggers can either keep their blogs private or follow other blogs.
Advantages of Blogging
1. Better online influence. It assists in making impressions in grabbing a good profile.
2. It forms a good source of income.
3. Maintaining a blog can help improve your writing skills.
4. A blogger can easily become a published author.
5. You can get instant feedbacks in the form of comments, shares, etc.
6. Bloggers can be sound learners, as they tend to read and engage more in such content.
7. Get a long fan following list.
8. Blogs can help you build a strong network.
9. Maintaining a blog can help you improve your technical skills on Wordpress, SEO, etc.
10. Sell Online − Blogs can be a great virtual store.
11. Express yourself − Blogging is a great way to share your ideas through inspirational means.
12. Blogging is an easy, yet a sure way to build trust online.
Blog Promotion
13. You can take the following measures to promote your blog
14. Connect your blog to Google+ to allow auto-sharing.
15. Post quality content and post regularly.
16. Write search engine friendly content.
17. Have an Email button in order to receive feedback from your readers.
18. Use your blog link in mail signatures.
19. Enable site feed to let more and more people subscribe to your content.
20. Add your blog to Blogger’s listings. Submit your URL to blog directories.
21. Actively comment on other ’s posts. This way, your profile gets more exposure.
22. Participate in online forums.
23. Use social media for branding.
24. Hold a contest or a carnival.
25. Write as a guest blogger. Write multiple pages and link them together.
26. Blog Commenting
27. Commenting on a blog is an art. You need to put some effort to post comments that catch users attention.
28. Add a few attractive phrases with exclamation mark to draw attention.
29. Comment as early as possible, as the first few comments are the ones read by most.
30. Refrain yourself from over-promoting.
31. Don’t be rude or use offensive language.
32. Include questions in your comments. They seek more attention.
33. Be influencing by updating an article.
10 Tips to Generate More Social Media Traffic:
Social media can be an incredible source of traffic. And best of all, it is traffic that you can count on, day after day. However, it also requires lots of constant hard work and usually it can take some time before you can actually see the results.
One of the best things about social media is that you get lots of different results. By following the tips, you will not just increase your traffic, but you will also get more fans and followers, get more social media engagement, build relationships with your audience, you will reach a wider audience and you will be able to establish yourself as an expert in your field.
One of the great things about social media is that you can apply very similar techniques between different social networks. Twitter and Facebook, for example, might not have anything in common except the social aspect, but in the end, posting great, valuable content is one of the best ways of increasing your traffic.
Here are some of the ways that you can increase your social media traffic:
1. Profile
It all starts with the profile – no matter the social network, a complete profile is a must-have. Spend some time to make sure you complete all the relevant categories and fields, and most importantly, that you provide links to all your websites. On Twitter, I would also recommend you write down your website address in your description so that people can easily see it. On LinkedIn, you have the option to personalize your links. It’s very easy to do, and can make a big difference, as seeing “company website” might not entice lots of people to click on it:
you go to “edit contact info”, you can choose “other” and write down what the website is – for example, instead of just saying “blog”, I wrote “social media blog”, which makes it clear what I write about.
2. Join Different Social Networks
Social media traffic is at its best when you use more than one social network. I personally believe it is best to try out several social networks, in order to figure out which ones bring you the most traffic. Such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Google Plus+, Twitter, Pinterest etc...
3. Post Regularly
Once you start posting on social media, it’s very important to keep it up regularly. You won’t keep getting traffic from social media unless you keep posting and engaging constantly (preferably daily, or at least during weekdays). It also important to be human on social media – don’t just post links all the time, but also images, videos, text only posts and even posts that don’t have anything to do with your business. It might not get you traffic, but by only posting links you will put most people off by being too sales.
4. Post links to your blog posts
Posting links to valuable resources is one of the top ways of getting traffic from social media. Whenever you write a new blog post, article or have a new valuable resource on your website, make sure you post it on your social media profiles. However, don’t just post the link and the title of the article/resource – rather, try to write a short introduction that will make people want to click on the link and read more. You could also ask a question within the post, so that you can also attract some more engagement to the post – more engagement often times leads to more traffic!
5. Engage!
The “secret” to social media success is lots of engagement. By engaging regularly with other people on social networks, you will drive more people to your profile and updates, and therefore ultimately increase your traffic. Engaging means:
- Commenting
- Liking
- Sharing other people’s posts and updates
- Asking and answering questions
6. Join some of the lesser-known social networks
Facebook, Twitter and the like might be the top social media traffic generators, but sometimes the smaller and niche social networks can also be great sources of traffic. First of all, try to find out if there are any social networks that deal directly with your niche (Like GoodReads for book authors) and join them. This is where you can find lots of people that could genuinely be interested in what you have to offer – which results in more traffic. I would also recommend trying out some of the smaller social networks, like Tumblr – you can simply share your content on these types of social networks, which wouldn’t take too much time and can still bring in some extra traffic.
7. Create and join groups/communities etc.
Groups and communities on social networks can be great sources of traffic. If possible, start by creating your own group and then join other groups that relate to your niche. Make sure you join groups that are active – meaning people are engaging constantly.
You can then post your link updates in these groups, but make sure you also check out the rules and regulations of each group. It’s very important not to focus on sales updates, but rather engage with other group members. This way, you won’t be too sales-y and people will be more inclined to read your updates and eventually click on your links.
8. Use #hashtags
Hashtags are now present on most major social networks – Twitter, Google+, Facebook etc. Hashtags can help grow your traffic by making your social updates more easily discoverable. I recommend using no more than two hashtags per update, as too many of them will put off some people.
Try to also look at which hashtags are trending for the day and use them in your updates wherever possible. There will be more people searching for those hashtags, so your updates have better chances of being seen.
9. Post at the right time
The time when you post a new update can have a huge influence on its success. If you post at the right time, more people will see it – and therefore, you will get more traffic and more engagement.
Unfortunately, there is no right time there works for everybody across all social networks. And one of the main characteristics of social networks is that they have no geographical barriers, meaning that you can have fans and followers everywhere in the world.
Although there are different studies that show when people are most active on the different social networks, the best way to find out the best hours to post updates is by trial and error. Try posting at different times during the day and night and see at what times you get the most engagement and clicks. You can then use scheduling tools to schedule your updates so that they go at those exact times, even if you are not available.
10. Add social sharing buttons to each of your blog posts
By adding social sharing buttons to each of your blog posts, you make it much easier for your readers to share your posts to their own friends and followers. This way, you increase your reach within social media with minimal efforts on your part and more people will be able to see your link and therefore, drive more traffic.
The Social media reporting and analysis is the process of analyzing the Return On Investment (ROI).
Creating a social media report can be key to explaining your progress on social media. You can choose the stats that matter and deliver it in an easy-to-understand way; there are tons of personal insights to gain as well as valuable info for your boss or client.
First: Which stats matter to you?
A social media report is simply a collection of data and stats.
Which data and stats should be on there? And why?
The answer likely depends on your specific social media strategies and goals.
· Followers tell you the number of people who wish to connect with your brand. The benefits of followers are for the reach of your content, the social proof of your brand’s popularity, and in some cases a simple vanity metric to boost your confidence!
· Clicks tell you that the content you’re sharing is of personal interest to the user. Clicks send traffic to a URL and establish your social profile as a great resource for curated content.
· Retweets tell you that the content you’re sharing is perceived as potentially interesting to one’s followers. The benefits of retweets is for advanced exposure to people who aren’t your followers and social proof that you know what you’re doing on social media.
· Favorites are somewhat of a wild card. The benefit of favorites is as a social proof metric, and beyond that, it’s a bit hard to tell what people are thinking when they favorite because there are so many different strategies and reasons (curation, appreciation, bookmarking, etc.). On some channels, favorites/likes may surface the content higher into the News Feed.
Which timeframe is most valuable to you?
Here are the timelines that have come up most often in our discussions:
· Weekly
· Monthly
· Quarterly
· From campaign start to end
(Note: For monthly reports, some use a 28-day period so that it’s consistent across all months, since the months may vary in length. Also, for quarterly reports, often a 90-day period is used, as you can fit four 90-day periods into a year.)
How do you want to track your progress and growth?
Also, there can be some differences in the way you view progress. For instance, are you most interested in seeing where you are today, or how you’ve grown from a previous point in time?
Here are some of the different ways we’ve found to look at reports in this case:
· Snapshot – A look at the numbers for a chosen period, with no previous history considered
· Week over week, period over period – A comparison of stats for a chosen period with stats for the previous period, or even from the previous year
And there are some tools available in the internet to analyze the all data for the social media.
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