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Social Media Marketing (SMM) is a form of digital marketing strategy that uses Social Media platforms to connect a brand/business with their audience(s). A business will be able to build awareness, relationship, drive traffic, increase visibility by reaching more audiences. Ultimately, to drive sales and conversion.

How Effective Is Social Media Marketing ?

Social Media is the fastest way to create awareness, especially when contents go viral. There is plenty of audiences and plenty of different type of audiences from the sheer number of active users. Unlike placing billboards, advertisements in the newspaper, etc., Social Media Marketing is very effective in how consumers prefer to consume content today.

Find out why Businesses today should invest in Digital Marketing.

Social Media Statistics in Singapore

Social Media Statistics in the World

Major Types Social Media Platform (as of 2020)

Facebook

Who’s using Facebook ?

Majority of users are age between 18 to 44, spending an average of 58 minutes a day.

What type of content Works Best on Facebook:

Contents that are interesting and engaging are more likely to go viral. Users on Facebook lean towards short videos, eye-catching images and attention-grabbing headlines. For Facebook groups, interactive content and conversation-starters are ideal while live streams and polls create real-time engagement with a business’s followings.

When to Prioritise Facebook:

Facebook is ideal if a business is looking to reach an audience of adults aged 18 to 44. Use engaging visuals contents to grab their attention and invoke an immediate emotional response.  Encourage consumers to share your content. Consider creating Facebook groups to gather your audiences into one online community to create “buzz” around your brand.

YouTube

With over 2 billion monthly users and 1 billion hours of videos watched every day, YouTube is the second most popular Search Engine in the world today, behind its parent company, Google.

Who’s using YouTube:

A whopping 85% of global users are from age 13 to 64, spending an average of 40 minutes a day.

What type of Content Works Best on YouTube:

Long-form and short-form video content only ! Product review videos, how-to videos, vlogs, educational videos, unboxing videos are the top video categories on YouTube. A business should consider creating contents in these categories if it aligns with their business offerings.

When to Prioritise YouTube:

YouTube is ideal when your audience uses video content as form of education or entertainment. Video tutorials tend to be easier to follow for complication processes.

Instagram

With over 1 billion users monthly, Instagram is one of the most popular Social Media for visuals contents.

Who’s on Instagram:

Instagram has become one of the most popular social media platforms for people age 18 to 34, spending an average of 53 minutes each day.

What type of Content that Works Best on Instagram:

Bold, attention-grabbing, stunning visual, infographics, photography, selfie-styled videos that speak directly to your audiences appeal to consumers on Instagram.

When to Prioritise Instagram:

Instagram is ideal for lifestyle, E-commerce and photography brands. But, it is not limited industries as long as contents are visually appealing.

TikTok

Tiktok, Douyin’s international counterpart, is the new powerhouse in Social Media platforms. With 800 million active users, Tiktok is just 200 million users away from taking over Instagram in the top 3 spots.

Who’s on TikTok:

41% of users are age 16 to 24, spending an average of 52 minutes per day. About 50% of TikTok’s users are based in China.

What type of Content Works Best on TikTok:

Video contents that are 15 to 60 seconds long that are entertaining, comedic usually with popular songs.

When to Prioritise TikTok:

Tiktok is ideal for business to each younger target audience, especially in China. Contents are usually made solely for entertainment purposes without much connection to a business’s offering.

Twitter

With 340 million monthly active users, Twitter is a platform where users share small pieces of information (280 characters) with the use of hashtags with their followers. This format keeps content focused and straight to the point.

Who’s on Twitter:

About 90% of users are between the ages of 18 to 50+, half of which are males. 40% of users check Twitter multiple times a day, making it easier to engage with your followers.

What type of Content Works Best on Twitter:

Twitter allows businesses to ‘tweet’ small pieces of content. The ability to communicate directly with your followers in real-time is one of the fortes of Twitter. Visuals such as images and videos tend to be attention-grabbing. However, well-written and well-timed content works well, especially those that are related to trending topics.

When to Prioritise Twitter:

Twitter is ideal for businesses trying to reach audiences that are predominantly males, ages from 18 to 50+. The use of simple, digestible content with hashtags helps a business convey their message easily.

Pinterest

Pinterest is a Social Media Bookmarking platform to look for creative ideas and pin them to their board; in layman terms, save for later use. With over 320 million monthly users, Pinterest plays an essential part in product discovery.

Who’s on Pinterest:

29% of users are age 25 to 34. 71% of users are female, making Pinterest the highest concentration of female users amongst all Social Media platform.

What type of Content Works Best on Pinterest:

2:3 aspect ratio, vertical format images are optimal due to Pinterest’s user browsing experience. Usage of keywords for search terms is essential to make an image discoverable. Visually appealing product pictures, DIYs, food/recipe with well thought copywriting that relates to a user’s search intent.

When to Prioritise Pinterest:

Pinterest is ideal for reaching a female target audience age 25 to 34, especially if a business is related to lifestyle, fashion, food, decorating, or DIY.

Snapchat

With about 300 million active monthly users, Snapchat is one of the best short video storytelling apps to use. Snapchat allows users to share updates and communicate through images and short videos that disappear after it is seen. With over 210 million snaps, a term for messages on Snapchat, created daily, 40% of users discover brands from business or influencers.

Who’s on Snapchat:

About 62% of users are between the ages of 18 to 34, with the majority of users being females. 63% of users use Snapchat daily, 49% of which uses Snapchat several times a day.

What type of content Works Best on Snapchat:

Video-driven storytelling and compelling (usually selfie-style) short videos are ideal for entertaining and educating a young audience on Snapchat.

When to Prioritise Snapchat:

Snapchat is ideal when businesses have the ability to create short, engaging video content that appeals to a young female audience.

Social Media Marketing Step by Step

Planning a Social Media Marketing Strategy

“Plan your work and work your plan.” – Napoleon Hill

Before a business starts posting content on any Social Media platform, take a step back and look at the bigger picture.

“What do you want to achieve out of using Social Media ?”

What are your business goals and how can Social Media help achieve your business goals ?

There are many different Social Media goals that a business can to achieve.

Many businesses use Social Media as a platform to connect with their audience and increase their brand awareness while some businesses use Social Media to drive traffic to their website and generate leads.

One major advantage of Social Media is that it allows businesses to engage their target market directly. They are able to build relationships that form a community that serves as a support platform for its audiences.

Self-Audit on Social Media Profiles

Before jumping into content creation, a business should do a self- audit on their current Social Media strategy across all their Social Media Channels.

 

 

Key areas to look out for:

1. What Social Media platforms are you currently on ?
2. What is working for you ?
3. What is not working for you ?
4. What can be improve ?

When a business knows its strength, weakness, opportunities, they will be able to plan their Social Media Marketing strategy accordingly. Start by identifying top-performing post and in different categories (images, video, entertainment, information, blog, etc.)

From there, a business will be able to leverage on top-performing contents and replicate its success to improve weakness and create opportunities.

With well-defined Social Media goals, it will be much simpler to take the necessary steps to move closer towards these goals.

“Spy” on Your Competition

Self-auditing is not sufficient to make Social Media strategy successful; it is highly advisable to also study their competition.

Third-party tools allow businesses to analyse their competition. However, a simple Google search on a business’s best performing keywords, phrases and market-specific terms is sufficient to gain useful insights and benchmark themselves against their competition.

Compare and contrast the types of content, engagement, success and Social Media Promotion strategy with oneself.

The goal is not to copycat or steal ideas.

But use these data to optimise one’s own Social Media Strategy. Research, compare, improve, repeat.

Even though two businesses are in the same industry, they can be implementing different strategies. Do not be afraid to venture and explore other possibilities.

Research on Your Target Audience

“Assumptions are dangerous things to make, especially so for marketers.”

How do I know which Social Media is best for my business ? Do I just pick and choose at random or to my preference ?

A marketer should never make assumptions on their target audiences. Cold hard facts and data from thorough research must be done on a business’s target audience/ideal customers. Create a buyer persona and map out how to reach out to them. Find where they are at and use those platforms to reach them.

A business should never choose a Social Media platform because they like them. They must choose based on the best way to reach their target audience and business goals.

There is no one-size-fits-all Social Media platform:

1. Facebook is ideal for adults with some form of spending power.
2. YouTube is ideal for product review, instructional videos.
3. Instagram is ideal for audience aged between 18 to 34 who are looking for appealing visuals.
4. Pinterest is ideal for female based targeting.

 “Know thyself. Know thy enemy. Know the customer. Innovate.”

Plan, Create and Publish Engaging Content

Almost every Social Media platform revolves around content; YouTube revolves around video content, Pinterest revolves around images while Instagram revolves around both of these. Planning, creating and publishing content is a critical process.

Consistency is one of the critical factors for a successful Social Media Marketing strategy.

With 3.8 billion active Social Media users each month, being present in Social Media platforms allows a business to reach out to many potential consumers.

By now, a business should have a good idea of what type of content and which Social Media platform to post to best appeal to their target audience.

However, one of the toughest things to do is to create high-quality content regularly. It is a challenge that many Social Media strategies face.

“Content is King.” – Bill Gates

A content theme helps with consistency and guides what type of content to post. By building a content calendar with content themes, it will be easier for a business to section out the types of content to publish for different days. An example of a cycle: Memes, product pictures, user-generated content with a different background/colour themes for each type of content.

A Social Media management tool aid in keeping a content library organised and schedule of posts for different days and time. Publishing content at prime time increases the likelihood of reaching a target audience when they are most likely to engage with a business’s content.

Listening and Engaging Interaction with Customers

Since Digital Marketing allows a business to be open 24/7, expect customers to engage with a business at any point in time. It is crucial to always be available to respond to any interaction. It is even more critical to engage after publishing.

Respond to your customer queries and mentions as soon as possible !

A business should never leave a customer hanging.  Customers expect quick responses from the business. The business should take this opportunity to respond and build a relationship with that customer.

By being present and quickly responding to customer through Social Media, the business/brand starts to gain credibility and keeps the customers satisfied and more likely to be a repeated customer.

According to Sprout Social, the average response time for a business to respond is 10 hours while a consumer only expects to wait up to 4 hours !

Losing a customer in the sales funnel is the last thing a business wants !

As a business’s Social Media following grows, interaction with consumers on Social Media grows as well. From sharing, tagging, commenting to direct messaging. There is a high possibility for followers to discuss a business/brand outside of Social Media as well.

Acknowledge positive feedbacks; thank them for taking the time to leave a positive comment. Savage negative comments, find out what went wrong, solve the consumer’s issue and have some form of service recovery.

Analysing and Reporting on Your Social Media Marketing Campaigns

After creating and posting consistent, high-quality content for some time, a business would be curious about how Social Media Marketing is helping to achieve their business goals.

Are your Social Media followings growing ?

Are you reaching and getting more engagement compared to previous months ?

Are you getting more positive mentions ?

A business will not be able to answer these questions if they do not actively track the progress of their Social Media campaigns. It’s essential to monitor and analyse your Social Media accounts. Without monitoring, a business will not be able to find out what is going right, what is going wrong and what can be further improved.

Having a bird’s eye view of your Social Media activity helps put things into perspective. In other words, look for your top-performing content find ways to make it even better. Improve the current strategy and replicate these successes onto the next campaign. By doing so, this also allows a business to adapt their Social Media strategy throughout the year.

Advertising on Social Media Platforms

As a business grows and reaps more benefits from Organic Social Media postings, they should look to inject funds to widen their exposure of business Social Media platforms.

Social Media advertisements allow businesses to reach a boarder audience, and target audiences are not following you.

Social Media platforms are capable of precisely targeting different groups of audience and exposure an advertisement to them. Different types of audiences can be targeted based on interest, demographics, behaviours, etc.

Social Media advertising tools are recommended to make monitoring easier, make bulk changes, automation and optimisation.

 

All in all, Social Media Marketing, one of Big Three of Digital Marketing, is a ‘must-have’ for every business who is looking to start/invest Digital Marketing. It makes perfect sense to implement a Social Media Marketing strategy in this technology-driven age. Social sharing is the new word-of-mouth today.

When a business decides to use Social Media Marketing, thoroughly planning and research must be done. It is not recommended to rush to implement a Social Media Marketing strategy as it may backfire and cost unnecessary loss of resources which could be easily avoided.

Social Media Marketing is not a plan, implement and enjoy its returns type of strategy. Social Media Marketing requires many rounds of A/B testing and trial-and-error. By monitoring real-time campaign metrics that are essential to a business, small changes are to be made easily rather than restarting the entire campaign.

Enjoy what you read ? Let me know what are your thoughts on Social Media Marketing. Are Social Media platforms effective for businesses to drop ? Drop me a message or hit me up in LinkedIn.