Do you have Facebook or Twitter? I also! Nowadays it is rare that a person is not active in social networks, sharing their life and being in contact with their friends, their relatives. All this technology has grown a lot in recent years and has reached dimensions that were perhaps unthinkable until a couple of decades ago.
I find it incredible how I can communicate and talk with any family member or friend anywhere in the world quickly and easily. Or how can I create alliances and relationships with other people that I have never seen in person but that I know 100% online and I consider them friends or colleagues.
It is a wonder!
But what about business and marketing?
In addition to being used for personal life you can also take advantage of social networks to do marketing and grow a business on the Internet. In this guide you will learn about marketing in social networks and everything you can get by applying a correct strategy.
Marketing strategies in social networks - Manual to Begin
Before starting to see the different marketing techniques and tips on social networks that can be used, we will first review other aspects that are more interesting and will help us realize how important they are today in communication and in Internet marketing.
Why do social media marketing?
Although the average user can only use them to share photos and be in contact with their friends, social networks have a great use in marketing and business. Let's see some of its main purposes:
Branding
If you are creating a new brand that you want to publicize and that people can quickly identify, social networks are the ideal channel to achieve it. First create the identity, logo and main message of your brand and then begin to position it within your market niche. With a good strategy you can make it known effectively and with the possibility of reaching thousands (or millions) of people.
Interaction with your audience
Do you want to know more about what people think, say and do in your industry or niche? With social networks you can have direct interaction with users interested in your products or services.
This is very useful to know more about your needs, your desires, problems, frustrations, motivations or any other aspect that allows you to know more about your prospects. The better you know them, the better solutions you can offer.
Traffic
Social networks have the potential to carry large amounts of Web traffic to your blog or website. Sharing quality content, articles, videos, infographics or any other valuable information that contributes something in the main social networks can give your marketing a viral effect.
I highly recommend reading the post about viral marketing. This strategy takes full advantage of social networks in terms of generating traffic and visits.
Positioning and Reputation
It does not matter if you start and nobody knows you, social networks are the perfect means to position yourself as an expert or as someone who knows the subject and can add something interesting in your niche.
Many people prefer to listen and pay attention to someone who is well positioned in social networks and has many followers to someone who has no profile or (almost) no activity. It is a form of social proof and reputation.
Content marketing and blogging
There are many sources of traffic and ways to make people read our blog and all the information we offer. Social networks are interesting because they encourage interaction, debate, opinion and allow readers to share their information that they find interesting or valuable.
All these platforms like Facebook or Twitter can take your blogging and content marketing to extraordinary levels of reach, influence and visits.
How a propeller to your sales
Although many people do, I do not consider social media marketing networks as a means to make direct sales or aggressive promotions. Of course, from time to time it is possible and nothing happens, but this would be 1 in 10 messages. If all the time you promote or offer products / services, users start to get upset, uncomfortable or simply ignore the publications.
Use social networks as a driver for your sales for branding, traffic, positioning, to meet your audience, live with them and most important of all: TO CREATE CONFIDENCE. That confidence is what later (and through another channel) becomes sales.
Customer service
If you already have a company with a considerable number of clients, you can use social networks as a means to answer questions, questions or problems that your customers have in the post-sale stage. I have seen many reputable companies use this method.
You can even create specific customer service accounts and apart from having a normal account (especially on Twitter).
Immediate feedback
Do you have any great ideas for a new product? Did you think of doing an experiment on your prices? Did you write an excellent article and want to know immediate opinions?
Social networks will allow you to receive food from all this and anything else that you publish in an (almost) immediate way. Depending on the number of followers or fans you have, in a few minutes you can have several valuable answers that can help you a lot.
Benefits of social media marketing
We already saw some uses that you can give to social networks in your Internet marketing strategy. Now let's see what are the benefits that you will get to put all these practices in use:
Authority
With authority the people in your niche will trust you and you will become a reference or leader in everything you do. Of course, this benefit does not come overnight, but it is one of the most important and for the that so many users decide to dedicate time, effort and money to social networks.
When there is confidence, the possibilities of selling and creating a long-term relationship increase a lot.
More visits
There is not much explanation here. The more you share and the more influence you have on the networks, the more traffic you will have and the more people will read what you post.
Just do not abuse and find a good rate of publication on Facebook and Twitter. Not very little but not too much.
SEO
This benefit applies to content marketing. Although at first it was not like that, Google is increasingly giving more importance to the number of times that articles or contents of a blog are shared on Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus.
It is like a form of social proof and that the content is useful and relevant. So, the more people share your content on social networks, the better positions you can get in Google and SEO.
We should not base our 100% SEO strategy on this factor, as there are many others that are more important. But it is certainly something to take into account.
Alliances
In social media marketing there are not only possible prospects or clients to whom you can sell your products or services; You can also find other experts and users with a high level of experience and influence in your industry or market.
On Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google Plus and all other platforms you can interact with them, know them more and create a relationship that can be converted into a strategic alliance that can give your business very good results.
Market research
Nowadays, doing market research is much easier thanks to the Internet and the tools we have at our disposal. In social networks you can ask any question that works to better understand the needs, problems or desires of your market and you will receive very good answers.
You can also use tools to create surveys like SurveyMonkey or Google Docs. You send it to your followers and in a few hours you receive the answers that have arrived.
It is not the only way to do market research on the Internet, but it can be very useful to receive more feedback and learn more about any niche.
Methods and main Social Networks
Excellent! We already know what to use social networks and what are its main benefits, now we will see the main platforms and sites that you can use. Each one is unique and has advantages and disadvantages. Identify what you need and create a plan based on that.
In June 2013, Facebook had 1.19 billion users. This data justifies the need to create a special marketing plan for this social network that has grown (and will continue to grow) exponentially in the coming months and years.
With Facebook you have the possibility to create a community of active users who are interested, share and think about your content and also about your products and / or services. It works excellent to branding and promoting a new brand, to bring traffic to your blog and to generate subscribers to your email marketing list.
Fan page
The profiles are for people and also help to make marketing. But if you have a business, the most common is to make a fan page where you have followers to whom you can share all kinds of content, images, videos, links, etc.
Creating a fan page is free and you can have the list in less than 5 minutes. The most important thing is to get "likes" and grow your community. This can be done naturally and also with advertising (below).
Facebook Ads
This is Facebook's pay-per-click advertising system. It can work for two main purposes:
- Grow a fan page and get more likes
- Send traffic to a Web page (works better to a capture page to do email marketing)
Facebook Ads is a great alternative to Google Adwords, it is relatively cheap and can help you "exploit" your Facebook presence and your Web traffic. You can also create groups (works very well to interact with clients), events or even chat directly with people with messenger or messages.
In general, Facebook is one of the most important social networks and there is often no lack of a social media marketing plan. Can you survive without Facebook? Definitely. You just have to be aware of what is lost and also create a good plan for other platforms.
If you've been on the Internet for a few years (or months), you've probably already heard about Twitter, the microblogging social network that has also seen great growth in recent years. Unlike Facebook that has more features, on Twitter the objective is to share information and content through "tweets", which consist of small messages of maximum 140 characters which can include images, links, videos, videos or other forms of multimedia.
The more followers you have, the more reach your tweets and all the information you send. Twitter is excellent for creating viral marketing and making a link to your blog or website be shared hundreds or even thousands of times. To achieve this you need to put into practice a good positioning method and gradually gain influence in the followers that are obtained.
In addition to sharing information and multimedia, Twitter is excellent for talking about anything and interacting with people with common interests. This is the social network that more companies use to provide customer service. To gain more followers you can start following people who are interested in your topic, start talking to them, share valuable information and little by little you will be better known and your followers will increase.
There are also some tools to get the most out of Twitter like Tweetdeck, TweetAdder, Hootsuite and many more.
Youtube
If you are going to include videos in your content marketing, YouTube will be indispensable in your strategy. Create a channel, add videos and synchronize them with your blog and with your other social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus. With Youtube you can generate a large amount of traffic and also share content in another format very different from written articles.
If you are going to have a strong branding strategy, Instagram can help you to be recognized easier by means of attractive and fun images. You can also use it so that your audience knows you more as a person and what you do. They trust you more because they do not see you as a business but as an ordinary person
Everything in your blogging strategy
All these social networks fit perfectly into your blogging strategy. They will allow you to have more traffic, more readers, subscribers and of course sales. Your blog is a very important channel of communication and growth for any business; by using it correctly with social networks you can get all the benefits that we saw
Final tips in your social media strategy
Quality over quantity
It is not good to abuse publications on social networks. Always make it a priority to keep a good rhythm of publication of content and quality information and not things that are useless for your followers or fans. Of course it is also good to share funny things, historical data, leisure videos or any other similar thing. As long as they awaken an emotional reaction and relate it to you or your brand, you will be on the right track. Just do not post 100 tweets or 40 Facebook posts a day.
No direct sale
As we saw, social networks help branding, content marketing and positioning. Do not use it only as a means of direct sales or promotion because it will not work for you. The sale is already in the sales funnel or Web page.
Beware of distractions
Has it happened to you that you need to do something important like write a post or create a product but you end up doing nothing to be checking Facebook or Twitter?
Social networks are a great distraction that greatly affects productivity and effectiveness online. It is important not to get distracted and be clear about the use that is going to be given to each of the platforms.
Posting tweets or sending information on Facebook alone does not help at all. There are more important things in any business and marketing strategy.
Enjoy it when you can
Unless you are a specialist community manager, it is best to delegate your social networks to any other person and deal with other more important things such as sales, advertising, product creation, planning, etc.
In many freelancing sites are people who know how to handle different platforms and with which you can create an excellent marketing plan in social networks. You create the plan and the freelancer executes it
Create a community
Try to always form an active community on your social networks, especially on Twitter and Facebook. The more interaction and response there is to your publications, the more confidence and reputation you will achieve.
Remember that trust is crucial to achieve growth and sales.
A social media marketing plan can offer you excellent benefits for your Internet business. Remember to be careful, because just as good and valuable are shared quickly and virally, so too is bad. Only one warning
What's next? To take action!
Choose the social networks that best suit your business model (I recommend using at least Twitter, Facebook- and Google Plus if you're going to do SEO-), create a solid plan with clear objectives, communication channels and how all platforms they will work in conjunction with your blog, your website and all the other components of your business.
Share and start the debate! And of course I invite you to "tweet" this guide so that your followers can also learn more about the subject.
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