Social Media Marketing

Introduction to social media marketing

Social media marketing is the process of creating and sharing content that attracts attention on various social media websites like facebook, twitter, google+ etc. Social media is quickly becoming a platform that is easily accessible by all who have an internet connection therefore it leads to increased communication which fosters brand awareness.

The exposure and visibility offered by social media marketing has influenced most business owners that it's worth their time and effort. Social Media marketing if done in the right way has the power to increase your website traffic tremendously.

Statistics that show the increasing popularity of Social Media Marketing

• 89%

  Of social marketers agree that their social media efforts have generated more exposure.

• 64%

  Of marketers see social media marketing as an effective lead generation strategy.

• 71%

  Of B2B companies use social media platforms to gain insight about market place and gather information.

• 62%

  Of marketers using social media for 2+ years reported a rise in seaarch engine rankings.

Social Media Marketing – Benefits that are hard to ignore!

• Improved business exposure
• Increased User Interaction
• Generating high quality leads and more traffic
• Better search engine visibility
• Relatively reduced marketing cost
• Real time performance analysis and feedback
• Great networking opportunity
• Strong and engaging social presence

From nurturing new business relationships to acquiring customer insights, the benefits of social media marketing are numerous.

Content Marketing as a subset of social media marketing

Our social media analysts believe that quality content is an integral part of social media marketing. Each social media channel is unique in its own way, so publishing same content everywhere can be very detrimental for your online success. We need to always create customized content for different channels and make sure the content adds value to the one who is reading it. Every network has a different approach to follow, so it's important to know the rules before beginning our social media marketing stint. The content that we post helps to create connection and bond with potential buyers and also adds on to the online credibility and reputation of a business. At ALIF Technologies we sincerely invest in content marketing to boost the social media marketing performance for our clients.

Five important steps which can exponentially increase the return on your investment in social media marketing:

User Engagement

Social Media success largely depends on the extent of user engagement. People want to communicate and build a relation with brands online. Viewers act as your brand advocates, so your strategy must always be to post content which increases interaction and helps your business gain exposure. Social Media is all about sharing, so share content that is interesting for your audience and at the same time adds value too.

Be authentic

With social media whatever you post stays online forever, so always remember to add content that is relevant and authentic. Your audience is smart enough to figure out what's genuine and what's not. So the moment you post something that doesn't reflect your brand culture, you have lost the battle. The same die hard brand advocate will be the first one to discard your brand if you don't live up to their expectations in terms of being authentic and real.

Explore new avenues

Always explore new possibilities as social media is a market that is constantly growing and is projected to be the biggest available marketing opportunity in near future. Always test new strategies to see what works for you, and abandon what didn't yield desired results. Exploring the social media space would give you the benefit of constant self-inspection and an advantage of being ahead of your competitors.

Analyze regularly

When you are frequently innovating with new techniques and strategies it's important to stop and analyze your performance at regular intervals to ensure that your marketing efforts are leading you in the right direction. Some key performance metrics that you must track on a regular basis include:

• - Number of leads generated
• - Conversion Rate
• - Social Media shares/likes/followers and exposure gained
• - Social Media mentions

These performance indicators will not only help you in determining which approach is working best for your business but also determine which social media network is working best for you. Do more of what's working and either dump or reconfigure what isn't.

Social Sharing

Integrate your social media updates in the form of twitter feeds, comments, ratings, reviews, social sharing statistics on your website to increase user engagement and thus boost the average time a user spends on your website. Adding these tools empower your visitors to interact and share content. And constant updating improves search engine visibility as well as compared to static pages.