Tapping social media for marketing

 

Social media has turned into a blessing in disguise for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), 

which cannot afford huge budgets to market their products. 

With its many platforms, social media helps these people to reach out to much larger audiences 

than they could have in the past. It is nothing but a strategy of marketing and branding through 

the Internet, where organizations can do it through written content, images, and videos. 

Just like with traditional selling, marketing campaigns through social media also require a similar 

approach. Marketers need to understand who they are targeting and which media their target 

audience use. After comprehending these, they can accordingly formulate messages for them. 

First and foremost, organizations need to concentrate on increasing traffic to their website 

through measures, such as search engine optimization (SEO), word of mouth, etc. Next step is 

promoting your brand by developing a rapport with the visitors. This will help you convert your 

audience into loyal customers. 

When you are ready to take off on social media marketing, things to consider are reasarching 

what keywords will draw audience to your website; how to make content interesting; and linking 

to related articles. 

Content can be made interesting by writing engaging articles, adding attractive images, 

compelling videos, and innovative infographics. Blogging at regular intervals will keep your 

audience in the loop as to what your company/organization is up to.   

Meanwhile, it is essential to keep tabs on your competitors, as it may, probably, open you up to 

things that you would not have thought up before. 

To measure how successful your social media initiatives are, make use of tools, such as Google 

Analytics. It will help you analyze which techniques are working for you. 

We can now look at what role different social media platforms can play.   

Facebook is a very informal medium. It requires a visually appealing community page for your 

organization, as videos and images of your products have to be projected alongside articles. Here 

the interaction needs to be casual and friendly. 

The same thing applies to Google+, which is a direct competitor to Facebook. The Hangouts are 

a distinctive feature here.  Using Google+ Communities, you can get constructive feedbacks. 

Pinterest allows you to display your products and lets you also enhance your brand image with 

pinboards.

Twitter is a medium that lets you be in touch with your audiences constantly. Tweets need not be 

restricted to media updates, but they can be on special offers and your promos. Engage with your 

audience by retweeting and responding to their questions. 

Since LinkedIn is different from the others as it is professional, it is a very productive arena.   

You can get it in touch with people dealing products that are similar to yours. It also provides 

you with updates as to what is happening in your particular marketplace. 

Reddit, Digg or Stumble Upon, which are more or less similar platforms, give you the 

opportunity to share interesting content. People occupying the space in these communities are 

highly tech-savvy, nerdy, and, therefore, more flexible to new ideas.