BUS502: Strategic Marketing

When you decided to study social media marketing, you must have defined a few objectives. You may be exploring the social marketing world to work as a social media marketer for a business or get familiar with the concepts so you can implement the learning on growing your own startup. At this stage, many people may think "Which social media website is the best option for a business?"

It's a never-ending debate and you can waste your time in the argument. But the simplest answer to this debate is that every network is important. As for the decision of choosing which platform will work best for you; it entirely depends on your goals.

Social websites were developed to serve different purposes. For instance, Facebook brought together people from different parts of the world, LinkedIn facilitated online business networking, and Instagram enabled people of different age groups to capture important moments and share them with each other. So, before you reach the conclusion, it's crucial to understand the benefits of each platform and then decide which website has the highest capability of meeting your business goals.

Who Lives There?

Social media attracts marketers due to its plethora of targeting options. Traditional marketing mainly focuses on mass marketing, but with social marketing you can efficiently decide the audience you intend to target with your marketing campaigns.

Before you launch a marketing campaign, it's essential to set goals. During this goal-setting phase, you need to define what type of audience should view your ads and how they should interact with the business. For this purpose, you should know what kind of internet users you will find on each social platform. So, let's learn more about the audience on popular social media websites.

Facebook

Facebook is populated mostly by adults of 25-34 years age group. The second largest group is 18-24 years who make up 23.8% of Facebook's population and only 4.8% of users fall into the senior age group. The biggest country present on the platform is India, while users from the US and Canada are only 10% of the total Facebook population. As for gender, males dominate the platform with 56% of the total population. Also, 51% active users visit the website several times a day and 75% of Facebook users are at least college graduates.

Twitter

With 500 million tweets sent every day, Twitter is one of the busiest social platforms. Talking about age groups, 25-34 year olds make up 28.9% of total users, while 35-49 year olds are 28.2% of total users. Lastly, the smallest age group on Twitter is 13-17 years with only 9.1% of share.

80% of users are affluent millennials from all around the world who use the website to get information. Most users come from the US, Japan, India, and Brazil respectively. As for businesses, $913.8 million were spent on ads in 2019. Furthermore, 93% of Twitter users engage with brands by retweeting their posts or sharing their thoughts and experiences about brands of their choice.

Instagram

On Instagram, the highest population is of 25-34 year olds who make up 33.1% of all users and age group of 18-24 years is second with 29.6% share. Most of them come from the US, whereas India and Brazil hold second and third positions respectively. 43% of these users are college graduates and 42% earn over $75,000 per annum.

Over 510 million users are females and males are behind with a difference of 20 million. These users spend around 28 minutes a day on Insta. Most users follow at least a single brand on the app and 73% of teens in the US find Instagram the easiest way to reach and interact with a brand.

TikTok

TikTok is a customer favorite app and stands second among the most popular free apps of 2019. Its users are present in 141 countries while China, India, United States, and Turkey are among the countries where it is more frequently downloaded and used.

44% TikTok users are females and 56% are males. Out of these, 41% users are aged 16-24 years who spend at least 52 minutes every day on the app, watching videos related to entertainment, dance, pranks, fitness and other categories.

90% of TikTok or Douyin users access the app via Android smartphones and maintain a healthy engagement rate of 52%. In 2019, people spent $115.3 million on the app for in-app purchases, influencer marketing, etc.

This was a brief overview of some popular social platforms. You can opt for the platform that suits your business needs.

What Language Do They Speak?

Whether you're talking to friends in a party, communicating with little kids in social gatherings, or sharing thoughts with business associates in a professional setting, you should always be aware of your audience. When you choose the language or tone they understand, you can conveniently communicate with each other without misunderstandings.

Don't forget this rule when communicating with your audience on social media. Creating a profile on social websites is easy. What's difficult is to spread your message and get people talking about the brand in a positive manner. However, this objective can be achieved by determining what type of content the audience prefers and creating posts accordingly.

Hashtags (#)

Hashtags were introduced by Chris Messina in an attempt to organize content on social media. Twitter platform first introduced this unique feature in 2007, but it was later adopted by Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, and LinkedIn due to its usability.

A hashtag categorizes content on the basis of topic. If you want to reach the right audience for your business, you need to target popular and relevant ones. Moreover, you can also create custom hashtags to promote your products.

Let's discuss this concept with an example. Imagine that a roofing service provider hires you as a social media marketer. To build their business online, you need to come up with suitable hashtags for the social marketing strategy. Here are a few trends and hashtags that may prove useful:

#roofing #roofingcontractor #construction #greenroofing #roofrepair #roofgutters

Long Form vs. Short Form Content

The internet users tend to have short attention spans. They easily get distracted and can ignore your posts if they don't find it interesting. This is why content marketing in digital media focuses on captivating and concise content that can keep readers hooked till the last line.

If we need to keep the content short, how can we share important information or news with the target audience?

It's common for social media marketers to get confused about the length of content. But you should remember that the content length depends on the interest of your audience as well as the platform where you intend to post it.

If you are planning to set up a company blog, it's best to opt for long-form content. The purpose of blogging is to educate people about a relevant topic and offer comprehensive solutions to problems. For example, if you are an expert in providing electrical installation and repair services, you may want to write posts about safety tips for customers. Blog posts can be 500-1,000 words, but you should aim for publishing blogs of 2,000-2,500 words to boost SEO score.

LinkedIn is also suitable for posting long-form content. You can write about your area of expertise and experiences to share knowledge with other professionals.

Other social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. may be suitable for short-term content. Whether you are thinking of creating text posts, videos, or images, it's a better option to keep the content short for better engagement.

Also, don't forget that long form videos aren't compatible with most social websites. Instagram supports videos of up to 15 seconds. So, if you are creating long form informative videos, it may be a good option to post it on YouTube and share a brief snippet on Twitter and other social websites. Your followers who find the topic interesting will visit your YouTube channel to watch the entire video.

What's Their Favorite Dish?

Back in the day, social media marketing was all about text posts and still images. With technology advancements, a wide variety of content is now available to internet users. Let's first take a look at the most popular types of digital content. After that, we will discuss which content goes well with popular social websites.

• Blogs or articles
• eBooks
• Images (still images, GIFs, 360° images)
• Videos (recorded videos and live streaming)
• Infographics
• Testimonials
• Contests
• Polls
• Podcasts
• Webinars
• How-to guides
  

Instagram is an image-based platform. To promote your brand, you can share high-quality images of products, team members, as well as stills from networking events. Adding relevant captions and hashtags is also essential. A similar strategy is suitable for Pinterest where you can capture attention via images.

As for Facebook, videos perform far better than any other type of content. This includes live streams as well as processed images for coverage of organizational events. You can also post videos developed with the aim of advertising on your Facebook page.

With the increasing population of TikTok, you shouldn't ignore its importance in the marketing plan. You can complement videos with captions and can include links to your website to increase web traffic.

Twitter network is known for its credibility when it comes to news and information. Users of this platform show more interest in professionally processed content which includes informational infographics and videos.

For LinkedIn, you can turn to long form articles, user guides, and eBooks to increase engagement. We all know YouTube is one of the most popular video streaming websites. So, you can post videos on this platform regardless of their size or length.

Source: Cheryl Lawson, https://open.library.okstate.edu/introtosocialmedia/chapter/every-network-is-an-island/
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.