Lately, social media have brought a revolution in the field of online or internet marketing. As Social Media is an innovative and resourceful platform to socialize and communicate with potential customers, it’s an excellent idea to earn money with it. The objective of this article is to give you some useful tips for making money online using social media marketing.
In the year 2014, 92% of marketers gave their opinion that Social Media Marketing (SMM) was essential for their business, and 80% pointed out that their social media efforts helped to raise visitors to their websites (Source: Hubspot). In this new era, SMM has become a vital part of doing business.
What is Social Media Marketing?
The social media marketing definition is, it is the art of using social media platforms in such a way so that products/services can be promoted both online and offline. Social media marketing takes the benefits of social networking to boost up the brand exposure of a company and broaden its client or consumer reach.
The aim is usually to create engaging and appealing content (text, image, or video) that users will share it through social networks.
Why is Social Media Marketing Important for Any Business?
At this point, we will see why social media marketing is essential for business.
Community Creation
There is nothing like social media for cultivating a community. When the followers become part of your community, you can access them instantly. You can do market research as well by knowing their likes and dislikes about your offerings.
Influence
As the number of your followers increase with time, your power grows. Hence, one of the social media marketing benefits is that having a substantial social media audience can attract new visitors or customers.
Website Traffic
Social media can be a leading traffic generator. You give the audience a reason to click through and visit your site by sharing blog posts, images, videos, and other content from your website. When they visit your site, you can convert that extra traffic into business opportunities.
More Traffic = More Sales = More Profit
More Possibilities for Conversion
On a social media platform, every blog post, comment, image, or video you share is a chance for someone to interact. Every interaction can lead to a site visit, and it increases the likelihood of an eventual conversion.
Decreased Marketing Cost
Social media marketing cost is comparatively less than traditional marketing methods. Even paying advertising through social platforms like Facebook and Twitter is quite cheaper. Initiate your marketing with a small budget, and once you get a better result, you can increase the budget and thus increase your conversion.
Better Search Engine Rankings
Recently, Google and other search engines are considering social media presence as a significant SEO ranking factor. It is because strong brands almost always use social media. So, staying active on social media can turn into a “brand signal” to search engines that your brand is credible, legitimate, and trustworthy.
Do you desire to know about quick guidelines on how to use social media for SEO? Are you concerned about traditions to use your social accounts to improve your SEO? In this video, you’ll find out how to use social media to get better your search ranking.
Social Media Platforms
Social media platforms are the sites where the target audiences of your business pass their time. Various platforms are available for social networking. For doing social media marketing for business, it is essential to understand what other business promoters are doing on different social media sites to maximize their business results. It is needed for any business to discover how to use social media best to connect with customers, drive visitors, generate awareness, and enhance sales.
Social Media Examiner, a massive online social media magazine, assessing how marketers use the top social media platforms, provides an excellent and vital service to the marketing community. In the seventh annual survey for their 2015 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, 3,700 people took part.
The following figure depicts the analysis of the 2015 social media survey report, provided by Social Media Examiner:
The survey result shows that
93% of marketers use Facebook
79% of marketers use Twitter
71% of the marketers use LinkedIn
56% of marketers use Google+
55% of marketers use YouTube
45% of marketers use Pinterest
36% of marketers use Instagram
15% of the marketers use Slideshare
14% of the marketers use Forums
13% of the marketers use Social review sites
9% of the marketers use Social bookmarking
7% of the marketers use Geolocation
4% of the marketers use Vine
2% of the marketers use Snapchat
Here is a short description of the top 8 social media platforms of 2015:
Facebook
Facebook is a global and mass-market platform of social media. It was on the top of other social media entities across the world in 2014 and still in 2015. Since there are hundreds of millions of users who are doing social media marketing on Facebook, it is an excellent platform for enhancing business communication with the customers and consumers.
Facebook’s 2014 annual earnings report highlights essential facts that every business must understand and incorporate into their 2015 marketing plans. 2014 Facebook earning report shows that the number of people that use Facebook is 1.39 billion per month, and 890 million people use Facebook daily. Seven hundred forty-five million people use Facebook via mobile per month.
The figure below illustrates Facebook’s Daily Active Users (DAU) breakout by region.
Although a mix of social media platforms needed to be used by the marketers and business holders, Facebook is preferred as the ‘must-have’ site. In Social Media Examiner’s 2014 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, Facebook has been spotted as the essential social platform by 54% of marketers. Also, 90% of marketers use Facebook paid ads.
Twitter
The second best social media platform for making money online is Twitter. To get more social signals, tweets, and sharing of URLs are beneficial.
On Twitter, it is necessary to build up followers, and engagement with the followers is a significant issue. The marketers generally utilize Twitter tools and searches to find out people who might be interested in their products or services and get those people to follow them. On this platform, by using different kinds of social media marketing techniques like creating individual lists and hashtags, it is possible to extend the scope for reaching more audiences. The marketers can also monitor what other people are saying about their company, employees, and brand. They can discover the problems and questions of the customers through Twitter and solve those problems accordingly.
Notably, Twitter works best when self-promotion doesn’t get priority to the people, but they share other’s posts as well.
LinkedIn
For the past few years, LinkedIn has been the most consistent social media site for small businesses. To enhance their business, marketers use LinkedIn to make business relationships. Marketers join this platform with a social media CV that includes reviews, related content, and associations.
The best feature of LinkedIn is that any recommendations about a business from the previous customers or colleagues can be posted. Testimonials, references, and endorsements build up trust among the customers of a business.
Another great thing about LinkedIn is that here ‘groups’ can be created where professionals can join together and share their experiences, ideas, and thoughts. As LinkedIn is more about businesses connecting with other companies, it’s possible to find out like-minded people and exchange more marketing and business ideas.
Google+
Google+ isn’t much different from Facebook and Twitter, as it is also one of the useful social media marketing tools for communicating. On this social media platform, it is possible to separate people into different ‘circles.’ This makes it easier to target different people of different demographics with your messages. Google+ can be used to test the potential success of a social media marketing campaign. In recent times, marketers have kept Google+ in their social media mix as it has a close association with the search engine.
YouTube
YouTube is one of the better-known platforms used to promote businesses. It is the home of videos. Though other video options are continuing to expand, YouTube is a must social platform for the marketers. By augmenting the content with a video version, the marketers can enhance their presentations and show the customers how to use the products or services.
Pinterest
Pinterest has fantastic retention for a social media platform in 2014, and its activity continues to increase. Pinterest pins have earned great popularity and playing a vital role in getting social signals. The strength of Pinterest is that it leverages a visually-appealing way to share information with the followers.
Instagram
Instagram is a mobile-based and easy-to-use social media platform. It is a photography app that is currently sweeping the globe. For doing social media marketing on Instagram, the business owners or marketers incorporate their message into their photographs. This platform can show any business visually.
Slideshare
On SlideShare, marketers can use and share a variety of content types, including presentations, videos, and PDFs, ebooks, etc. SlideShare is an excellent way to get in front of a large number of visitors or followers. But for many marketers, it is still not the center stage.
Besides the above discussed social media marketing sites, other social platforms include forums, social review sites, social bookmarking sites, and blogs.
