Can you imagine what we did without Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok or any other social media platform? Do you even remember what it was like not posting every little tidbit of your daily life for it to live online for ever and ever? Yeah, me either. While social media has changed our personal lives for the better (not really but that’s for another post) its also changed how we do business. Social media has become the go-to window for learning, discovering new job possibilities and expanding the brands and goes to show just how crucial social media marketing is.
Using social media for business is vital because it offers a unique approach for businesses to connect with their consumers and followers.
As a result, social media is an important part of any marketing strategy. In fact, 93 percent of marketers say social media is essential to their business. But why is it so crucial for business expansion? Read on to learn why social media marketing is important.
80% of consumers report that social media, especially influencer content, significantly impacts buying decisions.
From 2004 (when MySpace became the first social media site to reach one million users) to 2022, the dramatic growth of interactive digital channels took social media to levels that challenge even the reach of television and radio. In the first quarter of 2022, there were 3.96 billion social media users worldwide. That’s just over 50% of the world’s total population!
As the use of social media trends upward, marketers are perfecting strategies to capture the significant competitive advantage that engagement with this key audience can deliver even more rapidly and more effectively than traditional marketing.
What Is Social Media Marketing (SMM)?
Social media marketing (SMM), or digital marketing, is the use of social media platforms to help users build social networks, share information to build a company’s brand, increase sales and drive website traffic. SMM provides companies a way to engage with existing customers and reach new ones.
Why Is Social Media Marketing So Powerful?
Social media marketing is a powerful marketing tool that focuses on three core marketing areas: connection, interaction and customer data.
Connection: With an extraordinary range of avenues to connect with target audiences from content platforms (YouTube) and social sites (Facebook/Instagram) to microblogging services (Twitter), social media enables businesses to connect with customers in ways that were previously impossible.
Interaction: Social media offers a dynamic nature of interaction, enabling businesses to leverage free advertising opportunities from eWOM (electronic word-of-mouth) recommendations between existing and potential customers. The positive contagion effect from eWOM is a valuable driver of consumer decisions and makes them measurable by them happening on social media. Businesses can measure their “social equity”, or ROI, from their social media marketing campaigns.
Customer Data: A well-designed social media marketing plan delivers another invaluable resource to boost marketing outcomes: customer data. Rather than being overwhelmed by the 3Vs of big data (volume, variety and velocity), SMM tools have the capacity not only to extract customer data but also to turn this gold into actionable market analysis, or even to use the data to crowdsource new strategies.
An effective marketing campaign is paramount to the success of your business and social media marketing is just another valuable tool in your arsenal. If you’ve thought about adding SMM to your marketing platform, let the SMM and SEO experts at Flash Global Media help you achieve your goals. We’re just a click or Facebook post away.