What is social media marketing - Types of social media

Social   Media Marketing: 

•        Social media marketing (SMM) is a form of Internet marketing that utilizes social networking websites as a marketing tool. The goal of SMM is to produce content that users will share with their social network to help a company increase brand exposure and broaden customer reach.

Social Media:

•        Social media is an umbrella term

  That  defines  various activates that integrate technology, social interactions and the construction of words , pictures ,video , audio.

•        Social media refers to online tools and services which allow an exchange of ideas, information, videos, pictures, and graphics — just about anything you can name.

•        Social media also allows easy sharing and distribution of existing content to others so that professional work can be shared through networks.

Types of Social Media:

•        Social Networks

•        Bookmarking sites & Social News

•        Multimedia Sharing

•        Blog

•        Micro blogging

•        Ecommerce site

•        Discussion forums

•                    

Social networks:

A social network site is a social media site that allows users to connect and share with people who have similar interests and backgrounds. Facebook is the most popular example of a social network website.

Bookmarking sites & Social News:

•        BookMarking  sites allow users to save and organize links to any number of online resources and websites. A great feature of these services is the ability for the user to “tag” links, which makes them easier to search, and invariably, share with their followers.

•        Social News site  allows its users to post news links and other items to outside articles. Users then vote on said items, and the items with the highest number of votes are most prominently displayed

•        http://digg.com/

•        http://www.pinterest.com/

•        http://www.reddit.com/

•        https://delicious.com/

 Blog:

•        A BLOG refers to a public webpage which is published by either an individual or a group of individuals. BLOGS are used to comment on all sorts of topics, depending on the interests of the blogger (author). Originally, blogs were the work of a single author, or in some cases several authors.

•        Most popular are blogger and wordpress

Microblogging:

•        These are just what they sound like, sites that allow the users to submit short written entries, which can include links to product and service sites, as well as links to other social media sites. These are then posted on the ‘walls’ of everyone who has subscribed to that user’s account. The most commonly used microblogging website is Twitter and Tumblr .

Ecommerce site :

•        A big trend emerging across all types of social media is the ability to view and purchase desired goods with a click of a button. e-commerce elements have been adopted by many networks whose primary functionalities place them in different categories, such as Pinterest, Twitter, and Facebook.

•        Amazon and  flipkart

Discussion forums:

A   meeting   or  medium where ideas and views on a particular issue can be exchanged.

http://www.flickr.com/help/forum

http://www.sba.gov/community

http://www.forums.mysql.com

http://www.bbpress.org/forums

http://www.addthis.com/forum

#4 Digital Marketing Tips for Startups in Early Stages

Image credit: Shutterstock

Neeraj Vijayvargiya

Contributor

Digital Marketer, Jaarvis Accelerator

• 155 Shares  March 3, 2017

Startups have limited funds during the bootstrapping stage. One of their crucial goal is to woo the investors so that they can market and grow their product or service. In order to justify their reach, digital presence is an important factor to consider these days. Here are some ways by which one can leverage digital marketing and social media to grow their business.

1) Make Real Fans (Don't buy the fake one's out there)

Social media is a great channel to raise your brand's voice, but when you choose to go for fake likes (Gigs like 20k followers on Instagram/Facebook at Fiverr) it remains unheard. If most of the followers are fake then even publishing the best of your posts will hardly get noticed by anyone. Most social media platforms serve as ad/post to a group of people who follow your page (not all the users) but if they turn out to be fake users and no engagement is involved, these platforms will not spread the post to the next batch, hence lowering the reach for subsequent posts as well.

2) Focus On Your Target Customers

At the beginning, it is obvious for startups to get overexcited and reach out to everyone. However, as exciting as it may sound it is very important to stay focused on your target audience segment which is likely to give you business.

If you don’t narrow down your market according to your niche, your message will reach a larger irrelevant audience which is unlikely to grab their attention and thus it will not meet your intended goals. For example, if you are a brand selling stationary products and your audience is set to everyone, that way you might get some sales but not as many as you expected. It’s wise for you to segment the target customers according to age, region, gender etc. to maximize the returns of your digital marketing campaigns. Instead of attracting random customers, you should reach out to people who will help you meet your short-term goals i.e. your immediate reachable customers.

Tip - A business which has just started and don’t have a large customer base can target custom and lookalike audiences in Facebook marketing.

3) Engage Your Audience

They say, marketing should not look like you are doing marketing. Your posts need not be always business centric, engaging your audience is a more important job. Run unique contests with few giveaways, do Q&A sessions for a better interaction, tag relevant people in the curated content, ask your audience interesting questions using creative graphics, convey information using infographics etc. We have seen visual communications play a great deal in engaging your audience.

Tip - UGC or User Generated Content is an excellent way to showcase brand’s connection with the audience. When your customers/users contribute to the content on your page, they’re likely to engage their friends too.

4) Content Is Still The King

There’s no denying in the fact that content is still the king but people tend to undermine it time and again. While developing the content keep these things in mind:

• What is relevant in your industry?
• What is your target market?
• Who are your existing customers?

Develop a content strategy and follow it consistently to engage your audience. Don’t always talk about the product features and benefits rather talk about the user’s benefits in that piece of content. If the content is not clear and messages not well-formulated, you will undoubtedly struggle to communicate with the targeted audience. Someone truly said, “Content is the reason the search began”.