Today's digital world has taken over human civilization. Society is very dependent on the internet. One of the things that most people love when they are using the internet is social media. There are so many types of social media. However, everyone has at least three types of social media on their smartphone.
In Indonesia alone, the internet penetration rate in 2023 is ranked 15th among Asian countries. Meanwhile, the most used social media is YouTube with 88%. Followed by WhatsApp (84%), Facebook (82%), Instagram (79%), and Twitter (56%). New social media platforms such as Pinterest (34%), Snapchat (28%) and TikTok (25%) also recorded significant penetration figures (According to Muller 2020).
This is the basis why social media marketing is currently one of the surefire ways to increase sales and engagement of a company or business. Business and brand owners are also expected to understand the importance of advertising on social media.
Well, this article will answer your needs for an understanding of social media marketing. It will be explained comprehensively starting from what social media marketing is, the importance of social media marketing, its types, how it works, to tips and tricks for using Social Media Marketing to bring in more customers.
What is in a Social Media Marketing?
The term social media marketing refers to the use of social media to market the products and services of a company or business. Simply put, Social Media Marketing is a marketing strategy carried out through social media, such as Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. Social media marketing targets an audience from social media with a wide demographic and various age ranges.
With social media marketing, companies can directly interact with existing customers and reach new customers while promoting their products and services. Social media marketing is also equipped with analytics tools (such as Snaplytics, Google Analytics, Sprout Social, and Curalate) that allow companies to monitor the success of their campaigns.
In simple terms, social media marketing is a marketing process carried out via social media. Usually the social media used are Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. However, the meaning can be broader. According to Hubspot, social media marketing is the act of creating content. This content will later attract people's attention.
Meanwhile, according to Neil Patel, social media marketing is the process of attracting people's attention so that they are engaged with the content presented. If it is connected, the possibility that the content will be shared will certainly be greater.
What is the Purpose of Social Media Marketing?
The main goal of social media marketing is to expand the reach of the target market. With a wider market, the opportunity to get new customers is greater. Apart from that, there are still many social media marketing objectives, including:
1. Establish Good Customer Relations
Social media makes it easier for you to build customer relationships. Through social media, relationships are more transparent and interactive, like with friends. This builds a closer relationship with customers.
2. Building Brand Awareness
Your social media accounts can be used to spread information related to your business. For example, by introducing the products you sell or the advantages of your business compared to competitors.
3. Do promotions
You can use social media to promote the products you sell. For example, by offering exclusive discounts for followers of your social media platforms. This can encourage your customer loyalty.
4. Publication
You can use social media platforms as free publicity media to introduce your new products. Apart from that, you can also encourage customers to spread business information through their social media accounts.
5. Market Research
Social media makes it easier for your business to learn about customer and competitor behavior. This makes it easier for you to understand customer needs. You can use the results of this research to develop a more effective social media marketing strategy.
What is the Importance of Social Media Marketing?
Citing the results of research published in "Digital 2023: The Latest Insights Into The State of Digital", that the average Indonesian uses social media for 3 hours 14 minutes a day. In January 2021, the total population in Indonesia is 274.9 million people. Where 61.8% of them (or around 170 million people) actively use social media in their daily lives.
The facts above prove that in the digital era like now, social media has a massive influence on people's lives. So that marketing strategies using social media are considered effective in reaching various potential consumers in Indonesia with various age ranges. The following will explain other reasons why social media marketing is very important to use.
1. Increase Brand Awareness
Brand awareness is a condition in which consumers or potential customers from our business immediately recognize and remember the brand, even if they only see a logo, image, color or product sample.
Potential customers initially only glimpsed our products via social media, but because these products are continuously uploaded on social media and visible, people will slowly start to pay attention. Or even feel interested and want to buy and use the product.
2. Increase User Engagement
With more and more people starting to know and pay attention to our brand or product, more and more potential customers will be obtained. Uploading our products or services on social media is also able to improve communication and interaction with potential customers.
3. Mapping the Target Market
With the increasing popularity of social media among the public, of course many companies and brands are switching to using social media in marketing their products. Therefore, it will be easier for us to study competitors, starting from the marketing strategies used to the product innovations issued.
4. Knowing Customer Responses To Products
Social media provides various useful features to find out customer response to the products we sell. For example, through the comments and likes features, it can be seen how many satisfied customers are seen from the feedback they provide in the comments column.
What are Types of Social Media Marketing?
There are various types of social media that are suitable for use in carrying out marketing strategies. So, what social media is it? Read more in the discussion below, OK!
1. Instagram
- Daily Active Users (DAU) : 500 million (2021)
- Total Users : 1.386 billion (2021)
- Age Range : 18-35 years old (most)
- Social media rating: four (based on the number of users in 2021)
Instagram is currently very loved by most young people. Instagram is a mobile-based visual platform that is equipped with many supporting features to support marketing strategies. Features from Instagram that can be used to market products, including reels, IGTV, stories, live IG, and feeds.
2. Twitter
- Daily Active Users (DAU) : 211 million (2021)
- There are a total of 1.3 billion accounts on Twitter today
- Age Range : 18-45 years old (most)
- Social media rating: five (based on the number of users in 2021)
Twitter is very suitable to be used to build the image of a brand. Because currently Twitter is known as a platform for sharing tweets of information that are considered viral and important. Actively interacting with consumers via Twitter will increase brand awareness and sensitivity of potential customers to our business.
3. WhatsApp
- Daily Active Users (DAU) : 2 billion (in 2021)
- Total Users : 1,600 billion (2021)
- Age Range: 15-45 years (most)
- Social media rating: three (based on the number of users in 2021)
Maybe you are wondering why WhatsApp can be classified as a social media for marketing strategy. Indeed WhatsApp does not have a wide range of users like Instagram or Twitter. Because Whatsapp can only reach users that we know and are registered on our phone contacts. However, WhatsApp is one of the chat platforms with the most number of users.
Joining the same company group as Facebook and Instagram, WhatsApp is very suitable to be considered as a media marketing option besides Instagram and Twitter.
4. YouTube
- Daily Active Users (DAU) : 283.5 million (2021)
- Total Users : 2.290 billion (2021)
- Age Range : 18-55+ years (most)
- Social media rating: two (based on the number of 2021 users)
YouTube is a social media platform for sharing video content online. The growth of Youtube users every year continues to increase rapidly. Until now, YouTube is the most popular search engine in the world after Google. Those of you who have a brand or business can create attractive promotional content in the form of videos and then upload them on YouTube.
5. Facebook
- Daily Active Users (DAU) : 1.9 billion (2021)
- Total Users : 2.850 billion (2021)
- Age Range : 18-45+ years (most)
- Social media rating: one (based on number of 2021 users)
Facebook currently tops the ranking for social media worldwide based on total users for 2021. With a very wide distribution of Facebook users, your business will be able to reach new potential customers very easily. You can regularly share content, ads or interact with potential customers via Facebook.
How Social Media Marketing works?
Today's young generation is an instant generation that doesn't really like complicated things. Instead of using different platforms to chat, read news and shop, they prefer to use only one platform to do all of these activities. And a platform that can be a place for the younger generation to carry out all their activities is social media.
For example, Instagram has billions of accounts on it. Apart from individual accounts, there are also many official company accounts (eg Netflix, Gojek, and others), media accounts (eg detik, coverage6, and others), business accounts (online shops and e-commerce), or community accounts and social activists. Social media is a gathering place for all levels of society with different goals.
So, in this discussion, we will explain how social media marketing works so that you can use it for the right target market.
1. Define Strategy
The first step that must be taken to start social media marketing is to determine a strategy. The strategy in question is determining the goals, target market, social media channels to be used (YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, or others), and the type of content to be shared. The type of content shared can be in the form of photos, videos, Q&A (questions and answers), or content with prizes in the form of giveaways.
If you want to share promotional content in the form of photos, then you don't have to bother finding content ideas. Because now there are many logo and content design services available that are ready to help prepare your promotional content.
2. Planning and Publishing
After the business strategy is mature and the social media platform to be used has also been determined, the next step is publishing. Determine when you will publish promotional content via social media. It's also best to schedule an effective posting time, such as on weekends, in the morning when people are just waking up, in the afternoon, or something else.
You can also use online social media marketing tools that can publish content automatically according to the schedule we have set. For example using Facebook's dlvr.it or Facebook Instant Article.
3. Using Words That Invite the Reader
One of the secrets to social media marketing success lies in the wording. Copywriting is very necessary in the process of creating promotional content so that when reading and viewing the content, customers become interested and curious.
To produce good copywriting, you can use the services of a professional copywriter. Copywriter is of course different from Content Writer and UX Writer. Then, what's the difference? Check out the following article, OK! The difference between Copywriters, Content Writers, and UX Writers.
4. Monitor and Observe
The next step is to monitor customer feedback on the content we publish. We must pay attention to customer response because if customers feel annoyed or don't like the promotional content that is created, it will have the potential for the existence of our brand.
5. Reporting and Analysis
Now many online tools have appeared to assist in analyzing data from our customers, for example Google Analytics. How many clicks and conversions to our products that come from social media will also determine the marketing strategy going forward. Therefore, the use of social media marketing tools in terms of reporting and analysis is very important to do.
6. Paid Ads
Well, the final stage of social media marketing is using paid advertising to increase the intensity of product promotion. Buying ads on social media is a pretty powerful way to further promote and develop your brand.
Easy enough, isn't it a way for social media marketing to run smoothly? So, if you are new to and confused about social media marketing, then you can first read one of the following Erzedka articles: How to Build a Digital Marketing Business.
What tools do you use for Supporting social Media Marketing?
Of course, the presence of several supporting tools will really help the performance of the marketing strategy. The following will mention some of these supporting tools. Please pay attention!
1. Google Trends
Google Trends provides various keywords from content that is being searched for and viral. By using Google Trend, content can be adapted to keywords that are currently popular so that it will attract the attention of users.
Buffer is a tool to schedule the publication of your content regularly. In the midst of your busy life, you can still upload content for promotional media on social media using this tool.
2. Awario
Awario is a social listening tool that offers various features for social listening purposes. The feature offered is knowing how many mentions customers have sent to your social media accounts compared to competitors.
3. Talkwalker
Almost similar to Awario, Talkwalker is used as an analytical tool for businesses to find out user behavior and traffic from social media.
What Skills need for Social Media Marketing?
Knowledge about social media marketing is not obtained in college. However, there are several online sites that provide short courses on social media marketing. You can try it without having to go to school anymore.
Apart from that, to understand this job, you certainly have to be active on social media. From there you can see people's habits and when people use social media.
From there, you can analyze what kind of content can attract the audience's attention. In essence, to be someone who understands social media, he must understand good content and know what is currently being discussed on social media. That is the initial preparation for becoming a social media marketing expert.
A reliable social media marketer must also have the ability to write and think creatively. Other skills that must be possessed include strategizing, analyzing and good communication.
Conclusion
Social media marketing is one surefire way to increase sales and engagement of a company or business. Social Media Marketing is considered important because it can increase brand awareness, user engagement, map target markets, and find out customer response to products.
The types of social media marketing itself are very diverse. Some of the most popular are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Meanwhile, other examples of social media marketing are using Linkedin, Pinterest, TikTok, and Snapchat. There are several supporting tools that can help in running social media marketing, namely Google Trends, Buffer, Awario, and Talkwalker.
Well, that's enough discussion this time about social media marketing. Hopefully useful, yes! For those of you who want to read other interesting articles about websites, digital marketing, email marketing, email hosting, or about the digital world, you can visit the Erzedka blog..