Social Media Marketing Plan | A Short Insight.
As per dictionary.com, Social media comprises set of websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to purchase in social networking. Unlike the broadcast media, social media is a two-way communication platform. For example Television — here you cannot participate in the content being showed to you but on social media, majority of the content rolling over is user generated. These platforms help in building a connection between users and the brand and establish their web presence.
To improve the social media networks, we should look into the fact that which platform has the highest engagement of audience.
MOST POPULAR SOCIAL NETWORKS WORLD WIDE AS OF JULY 2020, RANKED BY NUMBER OF ACTIVE USERS (in millions).
According to the report published by J. Clement, Market leader Facebook was the first social network to surpass 1 billion registered accounts and currently sits at more than 2.6 billion monthly active users.
The company currently also owns four of the biggest social media platforms, all with over 1 billion monthly active users each: Facebook(core platform), WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Instagram. In the second quarter of 2020, Facebook reported over 3.1 billion monthly core family product users 947869.
The leading social networks are usually available in multiple languages and enable users to connect with friends and people across geographical, political, economical and demographic borders.
PLATFORM OVERVIEW
Identifying the right social media platform for your business is the first step in social media marketing. Choosing your platform carefully is important for two main reasons — it enables you to expand your reach and it also ensures the best use of your resources.
For example Facebook, as it holds the maximum traffic, it is the best option one can have to increase brand awareness or generate leads.
One of the good practices in Social Media Marketing is focusing on targeting and edge rank.
TARGETING
Targeting is nothing but the ability to show you content to a specific audience based on the characteristics they acquire. Some of the targeting factors include :
(i) Geo-targeting :- Targeting audience by a particular country, region, city, metro, postal or zip code.
(ii) Demographics :- Demographic targeting includes specific gender and age group.
(iii) Keywords :- Using catchy keywords is one of the easiest technique to drive the audience.
(iv) Language :- You can also reach the audience who speak specific language. (This can be combined with geo-targeting).
(v) Devices/OS :- Reach customers using specific mobile phones, tablets or PCs.
EDGE RANK
Edge rank is a Facebook algorithm that decides which stories appear in each user’s news-feed. Some of the edge rank factors include :
(i) Overall Engagement :- It tracks the first set of people are engaging with the post/story. Maximum the engagement, more reach is achieved.
(ii) When the story is posted :- A post/story must be posted at the time of high engagement.
(iii) Story type :- Your post must have a pictorial view. It should look attractive and simple rather than lenghty details and unorganized.
(iv) Informative :- The post must be authentic and from an authorized source.
WHAT IS SOCIAL LISTENING AND ORM?
Social Listening
Social listening is about monitoring digital conversation to understand what people are saying about your brand. Here, you can directly deal the responses via complaint, comments or requests.
Social listening helps a brand in multiple ways :-
(i) Track overall brand health.
(ii) Create content that users crave.
(iii) Generate ideas for marketing campaigns.
(iv) Improve customer experience.
(v) Drive product decisions.
(vi) Perception of your brand v/s your competitors.
ORM (Online Reputation Management) :-
ORM is restoring and enhancing your reputation online. For example, if someone is searching for your brand, does he/she gets a positive feedback/rating or negative feedback/rating. ORM helps in nurturing a positive reputation online by countering or weakening the negative arguments.
Did you know that according to BrightLocal, “85% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations”? What’s more, “49% of consumers need at least a four-star rating before they choose to use a business.”
It is also about brand’s reputation being vetted by the users through the online rating tools. Here the Online Rating Tools plays a major role in building a reputation online.