Social Media Marketing Training
Introduction to Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing yields greater ROI than other marketing channels because it provides a forum to build relationships through storytelling & gather real-time feedback for optimization. Social media marketers are responsible for content creation and management, community growth, and optimization. Social media marketing plays a role in the Paid/Owned/Earned ecosystem and the Buyer’s Journey. Facebook is great for large scale reach, Twitter is ideal for real-time conversations, LinkedIn is used for professional networking, Instagram for curated photos and video, and Snapchat for vertical ephemeral storytelling.
Hashtags, branded or non, are a great tool for marketers to increase brand recognition, expand reach and target new customers.
We’ll start by first discussing some general concepts related to social media marketing like; storytelling, the roles & responsibilities of a social media marketer, how social media marketing fits into the digital paid owned & earned ecosystem, the buyer’s journey, platform principles and hashtags. Let’s begin with the definition of social media marketing and its evolution.
What is Social Media Marketing : Social media marketing (SMM) is a form of digital marketing that utilizes social networking platforms to increase brand/product exposure and cultivate relationships with consumers. By definition, social media marketing is a form of digital marketing that utilizes social networking platforms to increase brand and product exposure, and cultivate relationships with consumers
Social media marketing has many benefits, chief among them, the ability to build relationships with new and existing customers. The agility of social media enables brands to leverage these relationships as a real-time focus group for new ideas and products creating a nearly instant feedback loop.
The adaptiveness of social media allows for flexibility with your creative – because of the aforementioned feedback loop, you will know very quickly whether or not your creative is resonating with the desired audience. Lastly, due to your ability to build meaningful relationships, quickly adjust creative, and target for optimal relevance, social media generally yields a higher ROI than most other marketing channels.
Storytelling has always been of cultural importance due to it’s ability to entertain, educate, and instill moral values. In social media, you can use stories to highlight your brand, connect to your community and build relationships in an educational and entertaining way that makes it very consumable and authentic. Need more proof? Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook all have features called “Stories” now to better enable their users to engage in storytelling.
Stories are a great vehicle to humanize your brand and build credibility.
By now, you’re familiar with the “Paid/Owned/Earned” digital marketing ecosystem. All three elements are integral to your digital marketing strategy and social media plays a role in each.
Paid media is a great way to promote content in order to generate more earned media and can also be used to drive traffic directly to your owned media properties, and with social media, you can achieve that by using platform-native ads and paid influencers.
Owned media is an extension of your brand and creates additional avenues for people to interact with your brand and your brand’s social media channels do just that.
Earned media is the equivalent of online word of mouth and is the vehicle that drives traffic, engagement and sentiment around a brand. Whenever someone likes, comments on, shares or reposts your brand’s content – that is earned media.