What is Social Media Marketing (SMM)? | Benefits and tools.

What is social media marketing?

It means advertising your business or products at social media platforms

like Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube and many others.

There are over millions of active users daily on social sites because on these sites people can easily

connect with many people at one time, that is why the more people are active there. At social media

platform you can easily connect to your audience or targeted customers. 

Why you choose social media marketing as your

greatest business tools for brand building  

Social media becomes your biggest marketing tool for you to advertise your business and  products

around the globe and also help you to create brand awareness among social media users.

Now we show you some stats that can help you to understand why you choose social media marketing
(SMM).

The below stats show monthly active social media users around the globe. 

Social site	Active, users monthly
FACEBOOK	2.97 billion
INSTAGRAM	500+ million
TWITTER	145+ million
SNAPCHAT	238+ million
PINTEREST	325+ million
LINKEDIN	260+ million
REDDIT	330+ million

• About 90% of digital consumers use social sites.
• Near about 50% of people in the world use social media which approx. 3.8 billion 
• With 376 million social media users INDIA is placed on the second position the world and China is on top with 926 million .
• People spend on average 2 to 3 hours daily on social media.
• Average internet user has 8 to 9 social media accounts.
• There are about 43% of internet user use social media for work purpose 

Overall, social media marketing is the most effective and efficient way to scale your business

around the globe in a very short span of time. You just need to create a perfect social media

marketing strategy.

Benefits of social media marketing 

• Boost website traffic.
• Help in lead generation 
• Increase brand awareness. 
• Get maximum  reach.
• Very Trusted.
• Cost effective.
• Connect with many people.
• Regular interaction with your audience. 
• Get instant feedback from your audience.

Boost website traffic 

As we know there are billions of daily active users on social media. According to Hootsuite.com 

An average social site user clicks 12 times in a month on an advertisement, so here you get an idea

of how social media can help you to boost your website traffic.

Get instant feedback 

Customer feedback is a very essential thing in business that can help you to find treats and give you

he perfect idea for improving your website performance.On social media your audience can easily

share their view about your business. 

Increase brand awareness

Back in 10 years ago, making people aware about your business was a very big task. People spent

thousands of dollars on promotion and marketing of their business. And now today social media

sites change the whole scenario of business marketing. Today social media is a very cheap way of

advertising business.

Cost effective 

Social media marketing is a very cheap and efficient way of getting amazing results by investing a

very small amount of money. As a beginner you don't have to put a large sum of money for marketing

your business. You can easily run ads according to your initial budget.

There are two ways of advertising business on social media.

Paid and free 

If you are new on social media and you want results in a very less time, then you have to spent

money on paid ads where your business profile become visible to lots of people where you run ads

and you have to pay per click to the publisher (a company how shows your ads to the peoples)

when someone click your profile.it is very cheaper than traditional marketing like (news classified,

pamphlets,paper posters, and door to door marketing)

But if you  have a large audience who follows you on social platforms then it is easy for you to

marketing your business, but it's a very time consuming process because gaining followers or an

audience organically takes lots of time.

Very trusted 

Social media marketing is a very trusted platform of advertising your business. There you found

genuine advertising channels like facebook ads, google adwords instagram.you can also choose

social media marketing agencies, According to influencer marketing hub there many trusted agencies

are out there for social media marketing the most popular are Sociallyin , LYFE Marketing and

Disruptive Advertising. All These are very trusted and ensure you amazing results.  

Classification of social media platforms

SOCIAL NETWORKING (i.g Facebook, Instagram)

What is social networking ? Social networks are a place where people can talk and share their

thinking and  ideas with each other. On social networks people can easily communicate with each

other through massaging. Here people upload pictures and others like their pic and comment on their

post. Nowadays a new feature of social networks is very trending which is called story or status
uploading in which people share all the happenings of the day.

Social networking: The business benefits. 

Here you can share the content that makes people aware about your product or service. You can put

photos and videos on these sites that help people to get information about your business.

SOCIAL PUBLISHING (i.g blogs)

Social publishing network means where people share their knowledge about a particular topic in

which they are perfect and then they upload that content of knowledge in  their website called blogs

and the person who makes the content called blogger. If a person is good at writing then he posts his

knowledge on blogs,while someone is good at making videos then he publishes his video on youtube.

In other words, influencing someone with your pieces of content is also called social publishing

networks or influencer networks.there are two type of plaforms free and paid first is Blogger where you
can publish articles free. On the other hand their is paid one which is wordpress.

Social publishing: the business benefit.

These networks are a very good source of getting traffic to your site, here you can write or make

videos about your business and tell people why your product and service are beneficial for them.

Every successful company has a blog section or video section on their website because they know

most of the customers will interact  with them through blogs or videos.

DISCUSSION FORUMS NETWORKS (I. g Quora) 

The other names of discussion forums are discussion groups, massage boards, online forums. For

every particular niche there is a specific discussion forum or group like for technology, news, health,

business, entertainment and many other different groups. Here people share their knowledge about

a topic in which they are perfect and others give their view and suggestion on that topic. If someone

is not getting an answer in which he has a problem then he can also post his question there and

howsoever knows the answer will be posted.

Discussion forums networks: The business benefits.

The online forums create a space that connects customers with companies and customers with

another. These networks can really help to grow your business reach. On these networks businesses

post the questions of their customers about the product that they manufacture and on the other hand

people give the answers of their question. And this process of questioning  and answering makes

other customers clear about your product and services. 

CONSUMER REVIEW NETWORKS (i.g yelp,choice)

Customer review means a review on product and services purchased by a customer . Another word

we can say that it is feedback or experience of a customer on a particular item that he bought. and a

consumer review network means a site where people share their experiences about the product with

other people who are planning to buy that particular item. On these networks people get rough ideas

about a product or a service before buying it.

For example, You going for a holiday at hill station and for stay you looking for an hotel but you don't

know which hotel is provide good customer service and fit in your budget, then at this movement you

can browse consumer review site where people talked about their past experiences in that hotels and

also found the price comparison at these site. So you see how beneficial these sites are beneficial for

you during choosing any product or service.

Consumer review networks: The business benefits

By using these networks you can divert a huge flow of customers to your side. But it's all possible only

when you provide a great quality product or service to your customer. If your business has maximum

positive reviews on any review site then you can’t imagine the mind blowing result you get, the average

internet user visits a review site  before purchasing something online or offline and if he finds that the

rating of the product is better than other product then surely buys your one.

SOCIAL SHOPPING NETWORKS (i.g amazon, ebay)

These networks are also called e-commerce and it is the most popular term on the internet after social

networks. Over 75% of people shop online at least once a month worldwide. Because these sites 

provide you with ease of buying everything you want from your smartphone or PC, and deliver to your

doorstep. A large flow of customers shift towards online shopping because it provides great offers,

facilities and most important quality. 

Social shopping networks: The business benefits.

Social shopping networks or e-commerce are great tools to getting more sales in your business. Here

you can lisited your product on popular e-commerce sites people buy your product if they like it.  The

sites like amazon provide a free listing of your product on their website  and delivering responsibility is

taken to these sites. You can also run your own e-commerce website of your product and services.

Social media marketing tools.

What are social media marketing tools?

To keep moving with the latest social media trends,it's time to upgrade your social media strategy to

the new bunch of tools that supercharge your social media marketing efforts. If you really want to grow

and manage your social media marketing strategy  then you have to choose the perfect marketing

tool. These are the tools that give you ease to market your business systematically and consistently

on social media platforms. From creating and publishing to analytics and reporting all these

tasks a lot of time, but at this point there are some marketing tools that can help to save your time and

ensure your content reaches the right audience at the right time.

Types of social media marketing tools.

• Social media management tools.
• Visual media creation tools.
• Analytics and insight tools
• Content creation tools. 

Top 8 social media marketing tools 

Social media management tools.

1. Hootsuite

Description:

this the most trending and popular social media management tools and suggested by many experts.

It allows you to schedule and track your many social media channels and can enable you to monitor

what people are saying about your brand and helps to update or reply to them directly.

Pricing: 

free plan, $29, $129, $599 per month, and enterprise pricing (with a 30-day free trial)

2.Buffer.

Description:

It has a clean and unparalleled user-friendly interface, also they provide satisfying customer service.

And it is trusted by brands, businesses, agencies and individuals. The tools are very simple and

effective people don't find any trouble during using.

Pricing:

 Forever free plan, $15, $65, $99, per month (with a 14-day free trial)

Visual creation tools.

1. Canva.

Description:

In short canva is an image layout software, in which you can design business cards, flyers,

infographic, book covers and many more graphic works. This software is fully based on artificial

intelligence and easy to use interface that allows users to work conveniently.

Pricing:

 forever free plan, $9.95, $30 per annum 

2. Adobe  spark.

Description:

This is another popular visual creation tool, which is fully based on latest trends and fashion.

Here you found awesome templates and graphics to frame your business identity very nicely on social

media channels. Here you don't need to put much effort to create anything on it, their AI based system

does all the work from itself and gives you satisfying results. 

Pricing:

Analytics and insights tools.

1. Audiense:

description:

It is the most known tool in the world of social media marketing and it is trusted by the biggest

companies around the globe. It helps the marketer to create segments and help to understand

consumer behavior. This will help to optimise the engagement of the audience with your customer and

track the report of both organic and paid campaigns.

Pricing: 

2. Keyhole:

Description:

It is a hashtag tracking tool that measures performance of certain keywords on both twitter and

facebook.it provides real time analytics, influencer metrics and  also suggest keywords to drive more

traffic to your social media channel.

Pricing:

Content creation tools

1. Buzzsumo.

Description: 

It is a  best tool that allows users to find out what content is popular by topic on any website on the

internet. This tool helps in giving you influencer information, content insights, alert and competitor

analysis. 

Pricing: 

2. Feedly.

Description:

Here you can customise your news  feeds according to your customers or your audience interest.

It is also available as a cloud-based service.It compiles news feeds from a variety of online sources

for the user to customize and share with others.

Pricing: