6 SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Table of Content
Unit Objectives

Introduction

Learning Outcomes

6.1 Introduction of Social Media Marketing

6.2 Tools Techniques of Social Media Marketing

6.3 Various Platforms of Social Media Marketing

6.4 Understanding Online PR

6.5 Keywords

6.6 Summary

6.7 Suggested Books and e-References

UNIT OBJECTIVES

After studying this unit, you will be able to:

• Explain what social media is.
• Explain the various tools for social media.
• Describe the different platforms of social media.

INTRODUCTION

The importance of social media can include a variety of communication to reach a target
audience with lesser time and efforts. In this daily burdensome life, people diverted from
the old purchasing pattern to the online shopping activity. Here, they can get the
information about a product through social media search engine as well as by various forms
of social media. Actually, it is very useful for the society because it reduces the time, effort
and money of the customer.

LEARNING OUTCOME

The content and assessments of this unit have been developed to achieve the following
learning outcomes:
1. Understand the concept of social media marketing.
 2. Differentiate between social media and social media marketing.
3. Explain the different tools - Techniques of social media.
4. Explain the different platforms of social media.

6.1 INTRODUCTION OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Social media is an internet-based form of communication. Social media platforms agree with

users to have conversations, contribute information, and generate web content.

Communal technologies, on a group scale, connect the nation in ways that smooth the

progress of distributing information, thereby plummeting the opportunities for marketplace

utilization—whether by charging added than a rival dealer for otherwise matching goods and

services or charging something at all for products that just do not work. Sunlight is an

authoritative sanitizer, and the collective knowledge that powers. In these new connected

marketplaces social web is the sunlight that shines in current era. The social web severely

levels the live ground by making information abundant, presently the same as it also levels

businesses and organizations that activate on the values of constructing in sequence in short

supply.

Social media marketing helps to authenticate your variety. A company's social media

attendance, when done properly, tells clients that their trade name is energetic and focused

on booming announcement with consumers. Social media marketing has the authority to

enlarge purchaser devotion.

• For customers’ feelings social media is a direct feed.

• Social media marketing emphasizes the brand’s background and individuality.

• Social media is easily accessible, and it is also the gathering point of today’s internet

know-how viewers.

• Most significant portion of younger age group, young people, and mid aged people are

key proportion of the total social media user inhabitants.

• Social media opens potential of straight admittance to patrons devoid of any third-party

involvement.

• Promotion through social media has an attractive rate responsive as it matches up to the

expenses incurred by publishing on TV or other conventional media.

 • Social media also helps in search engine optimization and boosts in rankings of any

company websites.

In short, the importance of social media can include a variety of communication to reach a

target audience with lesser time and lesser effort. In this daily burdensome life, people divert

from the old purchasing pattern to the online shopping activity. Here, they can get the

information about the product through social media search engine as well as by the various

forms of social media. Actually, it is very useful for the society because it reduces the time,

effort, and money of the customer.

Social media marketing was introduced in the mid of 20th century. But after 2001, the focus

on social media increased day by day, and now-a-days it is identified as the best practice of

promotion as well as selling technique. Accordingly, the terminology of social media is used

by many firms and industries to promote and sell their products in an attractive manner.

6.2 TOOLS FOR SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

What Are Social Media Marketing Tools?
Social Media Marketing Tools are nothing but software tools and technology that help

companies harness the full power of social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and

Twitter to conjure marketing campaigns that lure customers. Most of these Social Media

tools are focused on studying, and analyzing the patterns they find in people’s behaviour on

the social media platform. Everything like the number of likes, the number of shares, the

number of comments, etc. help these tools to design solutions to help a company’s

marketing team design.

Benefits of Social Media Marketing Tools

The benefits of using social media marketing tools are to entice many profit-hungry

companies towards them. From time flexibility to cost saving, here are some of the benefits

of social media platforms.

1. It helps businesses save time by offering automated tools that help in generating valid

and lucrative leads online.

2. It helps to save a lot of time. No more knocking door to door or flipping through the

yellow pages. Everything can be found online, and these tools help in finding it for you.
3. It helps to cut the firm’s operation costs by 60-70 percent. Companies do not have to

spend money on hiring in-house marketing talents as the tools do a much more efficient

job on its own.

4. It helps companies to achieve a competitive advantage by allowing them to be one step

ahead of their competitors.

5. Social media marketing helps companies to understand their customer base better.

Hence, marketing campaigns can be designed catering to their needs.

6. With the time saved, costs cut, and competition beat, the natural result of all the above

factors leads to increased profits.

Image Source: heidicohen.com

6.3 VARIOUS PLATFORMS OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Since social media marketing is an important aspect of marketing in modern businesses,

there have been a number of tools created and developed for helping with social media

marketing. There are both free and paid tools. The goal of this chapter is to point out the

features you need from certain tools that will help you with tasks within social media

marketing. These features can be found in many different tools, so the decision of choosing a

perfect tool that you will use for your company will depend on your own analysis and
comparison of different tools that provide the same or similar features. Since even the paid

tools frequently offer a free trial period, you will be able to test each tool before you make

any decision. Social media tools can be divided into three major groups, based on the type of

social media marketing task the tool can help with. Tools for planning the first type of tools

include tools for planning your social media activity. The main feature of this kind of tool is

to help you with creating a plan of your social media presence. This includes the plan of the

content that is going to be published, a calendar of events and promotions that you will

organize, etc. Since planning is an important part of marketing, as a discipline it is advisable

that you plan every aspect of your social media marketing.

The tools that provide options necessary for planning include:

• Google Calendar - A tool that allows you to create interactive calendar, where you can

schedule your daily activity, and monitor the weekly or monthly schedule in order to

diversify posting activity on social networks.

• Post Planner – This app is designed for Facebook and it offers content suggestion based

on the reach and analysis of the content you have previously published. You will save a

lot of time by using the suggested content, which will help post more consistently. Post

Planner offers additional features for scheduling posts, analyzing reach and engagement,

etc. Tools for managing after the initial phase of planning is over, it is time to conduct

social media marketing strategy. This is the task that you also might need assistance

with, as you might be in a situation to manage several social media accounts

simultaneously. When it comes to tools for managing, you need options for scheduling

posts, URL shortening, etc. In this way, you will be able to automate some parts of your

social media marketing, which will help you reduce the time you need to spend on social

media.

• HootSuite – HootSuite is an online management dashboard that helps with posting

activity on several accounts, as well as with scheduling posts. With a free version of this

tool, you can integrate up to three social media accounts, in order to manage all of them

from HootSuite dashboard. Paid accounts offer additional features, such as analytics,

tracking brand mentions, additional team members, etc.

• TweetDeck – This tool helps with managing an account on Twitter. With data

distributed in the form of columns, you can track the activity of your Twitter account,

organize and schedule the posts and monitor the engagement. In order to make sure that

your social media account provides good results, you need tools for monitoring that will

help you analyze the performance of your account, as well as the results of your social

media marketing. The main options of monitoring tools will help you track the statistics,

analyze your target audience, get alerts, etc.

• Google Alerts - Monitor the web for the content you are interested in. Besides topics,

you can get alerts when your brand is mentioned on the web as well.

• Google Analytics - This is a very in-depth monitoring tool that should be an essential

part of your marketing, but since we are interested in monitoring the social media

activity, we will highlight the importance of a particular option inside Google Analytics.

Choose the group “Acquisition” from the menu on the left and find the option “Social”.

This is where you can access referrals from social networks, landing pages, etc. You will

also get insights about the visit which resulted from someone clicking on the link of your

website posted on a certain social network. In this way you can monitor the performance

of each social network and compare reach and engagement of different social networks.

• Social Insights: Insights available on social networks can also help with monitoring the

activity of a specific social media account, in terms of visits, referrals, engagement, etc.

Since all of these tasks, planning, management, and monitoring are inseparable parts of

social media marketing, you will need at least one tool from each group to help you with

your daily tasks. Regardless of the tools you choose, regardless if you choose one of

these suggestions, or you decide to use tools you find more suitable for your business,

the goal of using those tools is to help you reduce the time necessary to invest in social

media activity.

6.4 UNDERSTANDING ONLINE PR

Defining online PR in 2007, the Chartered Institute of Public Relations in the UK defined

online PR as: “Communicating over the web and using new technology to effectively communicate

with stakeholders.” That is a broad statement that encompasses a huge array of different
disciplines. From a digital marketing perspective some of the things it would typically

include are:

• Raising the profile of your business or brand using online channels.

• Monitoring conversations and managing your online reputation.

• Developing online word of mouth and creating ‘buzz’.

• Identifying online advocates and detractors (fostering the former and minimizing the

impact of the latter).

• Identifying online trends and issues in your industry.

• Managing information flow.

• Seamless integrations with other elements of your digital marketing campaign.

Essentially it distils down to two key things:

1. Raising an online profile of your business, products and services by contributing

positively to the online community; and

2. Managing your reputation by monitoring, assessing, responding, and influencing

online conversations about you.

Promoting Your Business Through Online Channels

When it comes to getting your business and brand out in front of online consumers, there

are a number of tools you can use. First and foremost, of course, you can and should use

your own website as a vehicle to make your PR-related content available to both media

professionals and consumers. It is perhaps the only place online where you have direct

control over every aspect of your content: how it looks, how it is presented, and how people

interact with it. Your site is also the ideal place to host added value content that supports

your broader off-site PR campaign, enticing people to click back to your own online real

estate, where you can track and measure their engagement. But having compelling content

on your own site is only a very small part of the online PR story.

The whole point of online PR is to raise awareness of your business and brand among the

broader online community. Online PR and reputation management generates interest that

exploits the viral potential of online social media. When word-of-mouth marketing meets
online social networking, the result is a massive latent potential – a groundswell that savvy

online marketers can tap into. To do that effectively, of course, you need to know who your

customers are, where they congregate online, and what turns them on. Use your knowledge

of your customers to find them online; then join them. Engage with them on many different

platforms as you can effectively manage. Your ultimate goal may be to guide visitors to your

site but, rather than relying on them coming to you, go out to them. Seed your best creative

content and put it to work for you in the places where your customers are already engaged.

By adding genuine value to the conversation on sites that your customers frequent regularly,

you not only raise your online profile but you also establish a willingness to enter into a

productive two-way relationship with them. That in turn, it builds trust and makes them far

more likely to engage with you. As your network of contacts grows and your relationship

with the community develops, you can begin to generate a bit of buzz around your brand,

build advocacy, and develop that groundswell of positive influence we mentioned earlier.

Getting the word out with online press releases is just like their offline equivalent. Online

press releases are a way of getting prominent, newsworthy stories about your product,

brand or company out in front of as many eyeballs as possible. In many ways, they are

similar to the standard press releases.

When Writing Your Online Press Releases Bear the Following Points in Mind:

• Tell a Story – This is no place for a sales pitch; that can come later when the reader clicks

through to your website. Your press release is designed to inform publishers about your

story and encourage them to write or comment about it online. Think beyond your

immediate readership and write your press release to appeal to the publisher’s readers.

• A Story Worth Reading: If you are going to pique the interest of online publishers and

make them want to pick up and run with your story, you will need to do more than

simply announce a new product, website, or special once-in-a-lifetime offer. Your press

release needs to be compelling, interesting, and relevant.

6.5 KEYWORDS

• Social Media: Social media are interactive Web 2.0 internet-based applications.
• Social Media Marketing: Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms to

connect with your audience to build your brand, increase sales, and drive website traffic.

• Social Media Tools: Social media is any digital tool that allows users to quickly create

and share content with the public.

• Social Media Platform: Using websites and applications to communicate informally

with others, find people, and share similar interests. Allows users to directly connect

with one another through groups, networks, and location.

• Google Analytics: Google Analytics lets you measure your advertising return of interest

as well as track your Flash, video, and social networking sites and applications.

• Google Alerts: Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results

(web, news, etc.) based on your queries.

6.6 SUMMARY

Social Media Marketing Tools are nothing but software tools and technology that help

companies harness the full power of social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and

Twitter to conjure marketing campaigns that lure customers.

6.7 SUGGESTED BOOKS AND e-REFERENCES

• Suggested Books
1. Understanding Digital Marketing by Damian Ryan and Calvin Jones
2. Internet Marketing
3. E-Marketing by Rob Stokes and the Minds of Quirk
4. E-Mail Marketing Fundamentals by emarketinginstitute.com

• e-Reference
1. https://www.britannica.com/technology/Internet
2. https://www.bigcommerce.com/articles/ecommerce/
3. https://www.searchfit.com
4. https://optinmonster.com/beginners-guide-to-email-marketing/
5. https://mailchimp.com/email-marketing/
6. www.emarketinginstitute.org