Social Media Marketing: The Benefits & Tools to Execute a Campaign

Social media marketing has quickly become one of the most necessary forms of marketing since 2014, when many experts agree the trend began. To young entrepreneurs, engaging in social media marketing is a no brainer and is a must in their minds. Older small business owners, on the other hand, may not understand the value and relevancy of social media marketing. Keep reading to not only understand the benefits of social media marketing, but to also learn which tools can help you find and schedule content for a successful campaign.

Benefits of Social Media Marketing

Customers not only expect a business to have a Facebook page, but they base whether or not they’ll go to a store (in person or online) based on the company’s social media standing. A recent study by G/O Digital found that shoppers like to study the Facebook pages of businesses before they go out. Finding out information about the business they are looking into is essential to their purchasing decisions. The study also found that buyers are also more likely to commit to a purchase based on positive reviews on Facebook feeds.

Social media marketing extends past Facebook, all the way to Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and many others. While your business doesn’t need to be on every single platform, it is important to have strong presence and complete profile on whatever site or sites you choose. Take a look at a list of Top 10 Benefits of Social Media Marketing according to Forbes:

10 Benefits of Social Media Marketing

1. Brand Recognition: It is always a good thing when you are able to put your brand’s voice and identity in the hands of customers. Social media makes it easy and effortless for existing customers to share their thoughts about your company, and being on different social media channels makes it easy for new customers to find your brand.
2. Improved Brand Loyalty: One of the greatest gifts a company can give themselves from social media marketing are brand ambassadors. Brand ambassadors are people who love and embody your brand all while talking about it on social media. A company who does this well is Free People. Free People asks its real customers to use a hashtag wearing certain items of clothing and post it to Instagram with the possibility of the company using the photo on their official page. This gets customers involved and encourages interaction.
3. Opportunities to Convert: Every fan, like or share you get on social media is an opportunity to turn them into a customer. Each blog post, image, video or comment is a chance for someone to react, and every reaction could lead to a site visit and purchase. Not every interaction with your brand results in a conversion, but every positive interaction increases the likelihood of an eventual conversion.
4. Higher Conversion Rates: One surefire way to convert engagement into actual customers is by adding a human touch to posts and interactions. Customers appreciate when a company doesn’t sound robotic and actually engages back with them. This can range from liking a comment they wrote about your brand or directly messaging them when they have a question or statement about your company.
5. Higher Brand Authority: Even more than when they hate something, when consumers love a product or service they take to social media to talk about it. Consider researching influencers on Twitter and interact with them to skyrocket your brands visibility. When they post your brand name, their followers will be exposed to your company and may want to follow you for updates about other incredible products and services you offer. The more people that are talking about you on social media, the more valuable and authoritative your brand will seem to new users. Not to mention, if you can interact with major influencers on Twitter your social authority will rise.
6. Increased Inbound Traffic: Social media marketing has absolutely changed the way companies rank on search engines and how many people will go to a web site. Before, people who went to a brand’s website were generally already familiar with the brand; it was a challenge to find and attract new customers online. Today, the more quality content you post on social media, the more traffic you’ll send to your site.
7. Decreased Marketing Costs: In a study by Hubspot, 84% of marketers found that as little as six hours of work a week towards social media marketing was enough to increase web traffic. Dedicating a little more than one hour a day to marketing is not a large chunk of time when managing different social media channels. You can even indulge in paid advertising for a relatively low cost; Facebook advertising allows you to start out with just $5 for a campaign.
8. Better Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Rankings: Thanks to the sophisticated algorithms Google and other search engines use to rank search terms, it is no longer enough to simply stuff a website, blog post or social media update with keywords. To showcase your company as a strong brand, social media is a must; being active on social media can act as a signal to search engines that your pages and company are legitimate, credible and trustworthy. Posting on a regular basis, many times a day, also improves SEO rankings.
9. Richer Customer Experiences: As mentioned above, social media allows for customers and businesses to interact directly with one another. Customer service rules apply for online companies as well as those with actual walk in stores. It is important to always address the customer and concern directly and in a timely manner whether it is with a tweet or phone call.
10. Improved Customer Insights: When your brand and customers are on social media, your company has a unique opportunity to engage in social listening. Through Twitter feeds or Facebook home pages, you can see what people are saying about you in real time and in an honest way. Use these findings to change and improve your company based off genuine customer feedback.

By now, if you were skeptical about the power and benefits of social media marketing, those concerns are long gone. Now that you’re amped and excited about starting a campaign, here are some tools to help you find and create content and to schedule them out.

Social Media Content Tools:

When dealing with social media posts, the life of a tweet, post or Instagram upload can be dead within minutes. How often your company posts may depend on how much time and effort it can afford to spend on social media, but a general rule is two times a day on Facebook, three to five times a day on Twitter and once a day on LinkedIn. When creating content for a few days or a few weeks it is best to follow the 80/20 rule, where 80% of content is informative and industry related and the other 20% is self-promotional and about your business. If you don’t know where to find content, here are some tools to help you create dynamic and engaging posts. 

BuzzSumo: BuzzSumo is a relatively new social media marketing tool, but it has incredible benefits that make up for its youth. The advantage of using BuzzSumo is the sourcing of articles and information of a topic suited for your business. Using their “content research” page, you can search for a subject you want to write about and it will retrieve content suited for your page. You are also given the number of shares that subject has received over the past 24 hours to past year depending on your settings; this gives you an insight to how popular and how likely your post will be interacted with on social media. Another bonus of BuzzSumo is that it allows you to easily find and research Twitter influencers. As mentioned above, Twitter influencers can exponentially increase brand visibility and brand authority. BuzzSumo is a paid for service that begins at $99 a month.

CapZool: CapZool is another new, yet fun source for social media marketing content. What are you in the mood for? Memes? Quotes? Facts and images? CapZool has a vast and wide library of unique and interesting text and images for your social media needs. Since images, whether they are memes, pictures or infographics, receive a higher interaction rate than plain text, it is important to incorporate visuals into social media marketing. CapZool is another paid for service that starts out at $29 per month for small businesses. 

Canva: You don’t have to have special software or be a designer to create graphics anymore. Websites like Canva are easy to use and allow the flexibility to design all sorts of images for your social media marketing channels, including your blog, social media networks and e-newsletter. You have the freedom to customize images with text and overlapping visuals to add fun and personality to your post. Certain images are free, but they also also offer high-quality images for $1 each, making it affordable to create and customize beautiful social media posts.

It is also helpful to share articles you read on industry-related websites. If you find the content helpful or interesting, chances are customers will also benefit from the information.

Social Media Scheduling Tools:  

Not only is it beneficial to plan and write your social media posts in advance, another huge time saver is scheduling your updates ahead of time. It can be seemingly impossible to know how busy each day of your week is going to be. If you have plans to post an interesting article you found on Facebook or Twitter, but a work emergency comes up, there goes that post for the day in addition to the consistency your audience expects and the SEO results you need. If you can carve out a few minutes each week after you’ve finished writing social media updates, use online tools such as Hootsuite and SproutSocial to schedule posts in advance.

Hootsuit & SproutSocial:

Hootsuite and SproutSocial allow business owners to connect their social media accounts all together in one place, and enables users to post content, links, images and videos directly to their page. This can greatly save time and is one way to ensure that you will be consistently posting and improving the SEO ranking of your business. Each tool also allows you to pick what time of day you want your post to go live to ensure maximum visibility and interaction. SproutSocial also sends you weekly page analyses so you can view customer engagement and effectiveness of content.

Are You On Board with Social Media Marketing?

You have to be on board with social media marketing by now! If you like the benefits social media marketing has to offer your small business, but don’t know if you have the time to commit to high levels of research and posting required for SEO rankings, consider contacting Three Girls Media. We are happy help your business achieve its social media and SEO needs by using the content finding and content scheduling tools mentioned that we already subscribe to. Contact us for a free 30-minute consultation and get started on social media marketing today!

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Three Girls Media, Inc. is a public relations and social media management agency founded in the heart of California’s Silicon Valley with a team in the Seattle area. We love working with small and emerging companies across the nation to raise their brand awareness and name recognition. We offer a complimentary 30-minute phone consultation with our CEO and can answer your questions and discuss your specific marketing needs.

Call 408-218-2391 or Contact us today to arrange yours!