In 2020, over 3.6 billion people were speculated to use social media worldwide and this number is set to increase to 4.41 billion in 2025.
Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms and networks to market a product or service.
As a business owner in Connecticut, one of the fastest ways to see improvement and growth in your business is to engage in social media marketing. It is a powerful tool that can project your business to a larger audience. This, of course, increases your brand awareness, and sales. It also helps to drive traffic to your website.
You can achieve this by posting amazing content on your social media profiles, interacting with your followers and running social media ads.
On social media, people can discover more about your business, follow your brand and buy from you. So, if you have an account on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter and you’re not leveraging it for social media marketing, you’re running at a loss.
In this article, you’re going to find out what social media marketing is, the benefits and how to implement it in Connecticut.
What is Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing is a tool that leverages social media platforms to grow a business, achieve marketing goals and survive in the digital marketing space.
However, there’s more to social media marketing than posting photos of your brand across your social media platform. When the thought of using social media as a marketing tool crosses your mind, here’s what to expect:
- You have to be consistent in maintaining and optimizing your social media profiles.
- You have to post pictures, videos, stories and relevant information about your brand that can generate leads.
- You have to reply to comments, likes and reviews about your business.
- Engage and interact with top influencers and big names in your industry.
- Have a community that supports you.
There’s also paid social media marketing. Here, you pay advertising agencies so that they can have your business projected to a larger audience.
Benefits of Social Media Marketing
Millions of users are always online every day. That means leveraging social media the right way exposes you to different benefits. Check out some of the benefits of social media marketing below:
- Humanize your business
By constantly publishing posts, content and videos, you’re adding a face to your brand. This gives your brand a sense of recognition among brands in the industry.
Your content and posts make it easy for customers to form a bond, connect with you and trust you. It makes your customers feel like they’re interacting with a human and not a machine.
- Drive traffic
When you have a good relationship with your audience, it will be easy to convince them to click on your link to your site.
You can add the link to your site on your social media account profile, making it easier to find. From potential visitors and followers on your social media, you can convert them to paying customers.
- Generate leads and customers
Social media is a great platform to generate leads. You can easily present your customers with a gift in exchange for their details like their email addresses.
You can generate quality leads on platforms like Facebook, Instagram etc.
- Increase brand awareness
Because social media allows you to upload pictures and videos, your brand already has a visual identity. Constant posting of videos and pictures helps to increase brand awareness.
And when your brand already has an established audience, it’s easy to carry out other marketing campaigns.
- Build relationships
You can create personal relationships with your customers through social media. Since social media is an informal platform for interacting with others, it means you can create a connection with your customers individually.
On social media, you can engage in group discussions with your customers and hear their opinion on how to improve your business.
The larger your social media audience is, the better your relationship with them, and the easier it is to benefit from social media marketing.
Social Media Marketing Statistics
Social media marketing is powerful enough to offer you all the above-mentioned benefits.
However, to clear any doubt you may have, take a look at the social media marketing statistics below:
- Every day, people spend at least 2.25 hours of their time on social media.
- People click at least 12 Facebook ads on Facebook every month.
- At least 81% of people take to Instagram to research certain products and services every day.
- 80% of Twitter users feel connected and honoured by a brand whenever they get a response to their comment.
- 46% of TikTok users spend hours on the app without leaving the app for a long time.
- 70% of people that had a good experience with a brand on social media always introduce their friends and associates to the brand.
These statistics are proof of the effectiveness of social media marketing. For these reasons, effective social media marketing can make significant improvements in your business.
The Essentials of a Successful Social Media Marketing Strategy
The benefits of social media marketing are attractive but it’s not as simple as just posting content. Some strategies guide a successful social media marketing campaign.
These strategies may work differently for different businesses, but notwithstanding, below are the strategies you should know about:
- Knowledge of your audience
Before carrying out a social media marketing campaign, you should have basic knowledge of your audience. You should know the social media platform they’re most active on, why they choose that platform, and what type of content interests them. You should have an overall knowledge of your target audience
- Brand identity
You need to be sure of the image you want to portray to your audience. What’s your signature? What is it that your audience can recognise you by every time? What’s the reaction you expect when your audience views your content?
All these need to be considered before launching a social media marketing campaign.
- Content strategy
You’ll need to give quality time to planning out your content. Contents that have the voice of your brand in them. You shouldn’t invest in content that deviates from the original track in the long run.
Meanwhile, how original and consistent can you be in your content? This is one consideration that shouldn’t be overlooked.
- Analytics
Knowing the best time to share your post and the best contents to share can only be achieved by having a critical analysis of your type of audience.
- Regular activity
To survive on social media and retain your audience, you have to be regularly active. You need to post videos, content and pictures regularly. You should be able to keep up with trends and update your profile regularly.
Creating your Social Media Marketing Plan
Knowing social media strategy isn’t enough. How do you implement it? Having a workable plan is the way to utilise all the social media marketing strategies.
Now, how do you create a workable social media marketing plan?
- Choose your platforms
Before now, you must have surveyed the type of platform your audience is most active on. Choose that platform and start from there. Naturally, there are platforms where your type of business thrives as with other businesses like yours in the same niche.
Do not feel pressured and try to have an account on every social media platform. Knowing fully well that you can’t keep up actively with all of them. You can, however, start to branch out when you’re comfortable with the accounts you’re managing.
- Set goals and objectives
You should have goals and objectives for your business before launching a social media campaign. Goals like setting the number of followers you must have gathered at the end of a certain time. Or, posting at least one content or picture every day for 3 months, or always updating your profile regularly. These goals help to set you on track and keep you focused.
- Report and adjust regularly
Every social media platform enables you to check its analytics. This is where you can track the progress of your account.
You can check which post gathered the most comments or how often your followers are increasing.
After checking it all out, point out where you’re going wrong and where you need to put in more effort.
Conclusion
Social media marketing has proven very effective for different businesses and your business in Connecticut is not left out.
You must understand the very use of social media marketing. Understand that it’s not just about driving more traffic to your site or generating more leads. It’s about having an identity for your brand, it’s about giving your brand a voice that your audience can resonate with any time anywhere.
Also, note that social media is not where you pitch your business; that’s why you have a website for that. Instead, social media is for growing an audience, it’s for you to get connected with your customers and share important information with them.
Once you’re able to build a good relationship with your audience, you’d find that there’ll be no need for pitching as you’d naturally attract customers.
