- Social media marketing is one of the most powerful tools at your disposal for influencing your market. But why is social media marketing so important? Why should you spend time creating social media accounts for your business? And how do you actually build a social media marketing strategy that’ll work for your specific type of business? This article will explore and focus the importance and the power of social media marketing as well as helping you Determine which Social platforms you should market on. A very vital and important stage of your strategy.
Here are the 5 basic steps of creating your social media strategy
- Research your buyer personas and audience
- Determine which social platforms you’ll market on
- Create unique and engaging content
- Organise a schedule for your posts
- Analyse your impact and results
Social media marketing is all about reaching your target audience and customers where they are and as they socially interact with each other and your brand.
Here are some statistics highlighting how active people are on social media and its power.
- 71% of the overall Australian population have active social media accounts. That’s 18 million people
- 85% of the eligible (age 13+) Australian population have active social media accounts,
- Active social media users grew in Australia by 4.3% over the 10-month period Apr 2019 to Jan 2020, this is more than 3.5 time the population growth in same period.
- 98% of Australian users access social media via a mobile device.
- There are ~1.3 mobile connections for every man, woman and child in Australia.
- Australians spend an average of 1 hour 47 minutes per day on social media, and this has been increasing slowly over the past 8 years.
There are a variety of reasons why your company should use social media marketing. We have listed a few main ones there are many more.
- Boost Sales and ROI
- Generate Leads and Conversions
- Increase Brand Awareness
- Learn from your Competitors activity
- Build and Nurture Relationships
No business can afford to ignore social media as part of its marketing mix. The difficulty most organisations in Australia and around the world, face is understanding and identifying which social media channels are most effective and active locally, as well as which ones their target audience are most active on. To be most effective, companies and their marketing agencies should look to be active in two or, at most, three networks and distribute their content marketing assets in a focused way.
Social media trends and popularity of platforms change over time. When was the last time you logged into your myspace account? trends and fads with various platforms can change overnight, as well as user behaviour. Which is why it is always important to stay up to date with social media trends when strategising for your brand. Conduct research into your target market and demographic and see which platforms they hangout in most. This will go a long way in securing good foundations for reach and engagement with the correct people, saving you time and money.
While social media marketing as a whole is incredibly valuable and beneficial to your business growth your strategy will differ based on which networks your audience spend their time on. Let’s dig in and segment some of the post popular platforms based of a few different factors of importance.
Users: 1.73 billion daily active users worldwide
Audience: Generation X and millennials
Industry impact: B2C
Best for: Brand awareness; advertising
Users: 1 billion monthly active users
Audience: Primarily millennials
Industry impact: B2C
Best for: Natural-looking media, behind-the-scenes, and user-generated content; advertising
Users: 675 million monthly active users worldwide
Audience: Baby boomers, Generation X, and millennials
Industry impact: B2B
Best for: B2B relationships, business development, and employment marketing
YouTube
Users: Over 2 billion logged-in monthly users worldwide
Audience: Millennials, closely followed by Generation Z
Industry impact: B2C
Best for: Brand awareness; entertainment, and how-to videos
Users: 126 million daily active users worldwide
Audience: Primarily millennials
Industry impact: B2B and B2C
Best for: Public relations; customer service
Snapchat
Users: 229 million daily active users worldwide
Audience: Primarily Generation Z
Industry impact: B2C
Best for: Brand awareness; advertising
Users: 367 million monthly active users worldwide
Audience: Primarily older millennials and younger baby boomers
Industry impact: B2C
Best for: Visual advertising; inspiration
(Data Source HubSpot)
We must take all of the above into consideration when marketing on social media. Otherwise why would you want to run the risk of putting your time, money and efforts into your social media marketing campaigns if you aren’t even using the most effective platforms to be able to reach your target audience.
Using your market research, audience, demographic findings and your social media objectives. You now have the toolkit and foundations to begin to effectively identify and select which platforms will work best for your brand. Which in turn will work in your favour in helping drive the best results and ROI from your social media marketing efforts. You can bookmark this article and apply these tips to your strategy.
At Collabrium we have the expertise to be able to fully explore and understand the target audience. Who is your ideal customer or prospect? We’ll help you build a comprehensive persona profile that will make audience targeting a breeze. We are here to collaborate with you and to support and guide you to get the best results and more importantly the best return on your investment.