How to Become a Social Media Marketer? Guide for Beginners
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| Become a Social Media Marketer- Guide For Beginners |
World is changing and so are the trends of business and product advertisement. In the midst of this radical change, social media marketing is emerging as a successful and growing career for youth. You should also avail this opportunity and become a Social Media Marketer. It will earn you a handsome amount of money while sitting at home.
Don't know how to start a career as a social media marketer? Don't worry! This article has your back. It will tell you not only the definition and importance of Social Media Marketing, but will also teach you about different social media platforms and the basic strategies of doing social media marketing. Interested? Let's start then!
What is Social Media Marketing?
So, what is Social Media Marketing? In simple words, you have to use different social media platforms to promote other businesses or your own business. Yes! If you want to become a successful freelancer, content writer, graphic designer or whatever desired career you have, you should know the basics of social media marketing. Even in the physical businesses, you need social media platforms for advertising purposes. As a beginner, you may not have much work and money to hire other people for your social media marketing campaign, so I suggest you learn the basics of social media marketing and become one.
In it, you have to publish content related to the product, service or business on social media platforms. You have to target your audience, have to grow your following, have to make customers and have to turn your services or products into sales. You have to engage with your audience, have to publish appealing posts and contents, have to convince them to visit your targeted website and product, and have to satisfy them so that they could trust in your business. This is the main ground of social media marketing.
Now, what are the benefits of it? Well, you have got a pretty idea of its benefits, but let us dive into it so that you could have a clear mindset.
Benefits of Social Media Marketing:
Increase brand awareness:
Till now, you have got the idea that this strategy is helping you in spreading words about your targeted businesses. Let me give you an example. I shifted to a new house and wanted ideas for home decoration and renovation. I opened Instagram and Pinterest and saw different pictures and got different ideas for my home. Through it, I came across different interior designers' social media pages and sellers of home decorations. Their social media feed and their captions attracted my attention and I bought a few decorations from them. Before it, I was unaware of their names, but now I'm a customer of them just because of their social media marketing.
Drives audience and customers to your business:
In the previous example, you have got the idea how social media marketing drives the audience and customers to one's business. Instagram Shopping feature and Facebook's Shop section can help you in selling your products or services. You can publish content related to your skill or product and can drive entrepreneurs to hire you. You can increase the traffic on your website or blog through social media. You can sell your products on your website and can drive your audience there through social media marketing. Live video hostings, links, visual or written content and hashtags can drive the right audience to your platform, and can help you in growing your business.
Knowledge about competitors:
One of the great benefits of social media marketing is to know the strategies of your competitors. You can easily search their social media platforms, and can peek at their strategies through which they are growing. You can adopt those strategies too or can develop a better strategy. For example, if you are a content writer or a graphic designer, you can visit the social media pages of your peers or seniors, and can have the knowledge of what type of techniques they used to drive traffic on their websites. You can do the same or can brainstorm better ideas to engage your audience.
Develop friendly relationship with customers:
In business, good impressions on your customers also play a great role in the game. Through social media marketing, you can have direct contact with your audience or customers. Direct messages option, comment option, Whatsapp and Email buttons, Contact Us page on websites, direct emails strategy etc can foster your relationship with your customers.
These are some of the major benefits of social media marketing which you can avail for your own business or can help your client to gain these benefits.
Job Description of Social Media Marketer:
As a social media marketer, what will be your responsibilities? What do you have to learn to become a social media marketer? Have these questions? Don't worry, I'm going to answer them.
As a social media marketer, your job is to engage with your target audience, promote your client's business or websites, and have to create and post engaging posts for your audience.
You have to create thumbnails for YouTube videos, or to create instagram posts, videos or to write engaging and informative captions for your post. Messaging or emailing your target audience, creating ads, posting regularly, replying regularly, using different tools for promoting business, convincing your audience, keeping track of metrics, devising different strategies and meeting different social media influencers are the core responsibilities of a professional social media marketer.
Now, you have a pretty idea of how social media marketing works, it's time to look into different social media platforms and how to do marketing campaigns there.
Social Media Marketing Platforms:
Facebook:
Large community uses Facebook daily. There are millions of professional pages and groups on Facebook which are sharing their services and products daily. You can also join Facebook to advertise your business or your client's business, but there are some points which you should keep in mind while doing a campaign.
For a successful Facebook campaign, you should have an initial audience to start. If you haven't any, successful campaigning here will be a difficult task for you.
To engage your audience, you have to create different polls or question answers sessions to drive their interest.
Try to keep your post short and to the point. People are scrolling Facebook for pleasure, your post should appeal to them.
Post catchy and interesting images which can attract the attention of your readers.
Manually add the link of your product, service, website in each post.
As a social media marketer, you should have these basic points in your mind. Instantly replying to the customers, posting regularly, posting valuable content, managing the pages and groups of your client, keeping an eye on the competitors; these all are also included in your job.
Instagram:
This social media platform is popular among youngsters, so keep this fact in mind while posting here. Many businessmen and companies have their Instagram pages, and successful campaigns here are making them millionaires. Your campaign can also become successful here if you keep these facts in mind:
Your images and content should catch the attention of your customers. Your image should be like a thumbnail which contains the information you are going to share. For example, if you are going to promote your article, your image should have the name of your article, or the image related to it. Random images will always be ignored.
Adding a link in the story is a new Instagram feature which you can avail to promote your or your client's products.
Use hashtags wisely. You can add up to 30 hashtags in a post, so add those which are relevant to your business or product. It will help in driving the right audience to your page.
Instagram Ad feature and promoting your posts can also give you a large benefit.
By using question stickers, keep on interacting with your audience.
Remember that posting regularly is not important. You can post only thrice a week, but the content should be of high quality. Quantity doesn't matter, quality does. But, it doesn't mean that you can take a two to three weeks break from social media campaigns. It will decrease your audience and engagement on your social media platform. As a social media marketer, it is your responsibility that you have a proper schedule of your posts.
Twitter:
A professional platform which allows 140 characters to tweet, Twitter is also the best social media platform. While campaigning here, do keep some points in your mind:
Tag the companies and people in your tweet. For example, if you are a graphic designer and have created a design for a company, or if your design's theme is similar to another company or person, do tag him/her in your tweet. Tagging likewise people will increase your audience engagement.
Do interact with other profiles. If you are a writer or graphic designer, follow other writers and graphic designers. And interact with them through replying to their tweets. It will also grow your audience.
Add the link in your tweet. If you will place the tweet in the center, there are more chances that it will get noticed.
Do attach images with your tweet.
LinkedIn:
Highly professional platform where you can find jobs too, LinkedIn is the best platform to create your resume and portfolio. Whether you are a part of online business or offline business, this platform is going to help you in growing your business. You can connect with the professionals, can be a part of 50 groups, or can make your own group. Follow the instructions of making a group, send invitations to the experts related to your niche, and initiate discussion in the group by posting questions or posts.
Optimizing your profile is also important. Select your niche, for example writer, and add the keyword in your posts, titles, content and headlines. It will optimize your profile, and you will be able to reach more people.
LinkedIn also tells you who visited your profile, and this feature helps you in determining your reach.
Social Media Marketing here will help you in connecting with the global world. Scammers ratio is also very less in this platform.
Some facts you should keep in your mind:
Choose your groups wisely. You are only allowed to be a part of fifty groups, so choose those groups which are relevant to your niche.
Don't forget to optimize your profile.
Add links in your content and profile. You can use the "feature" tab for featuring your content.
Whatsapp:
Many people are unaware of how to do marketing on Whatsapp. Mostly, Whatsapp is being used for calling and connecting with friends and family, but you can use this platform for connecting with your customers too. Adding a Whatsapp button on your Facebook, Instagram and on your websites can help your customers to connect with you. You can advertise your new product or service by sending text messages, documents, and videos to your customers. You can reply to queries of your customers on this platform. You can be a part of a group related to your company or niche, or can develop a group of your customers. You can add 256 contacts in a group, and can advertise there.
Let me give you some examples of social media marketing on this platform. There are online tuitions who have whatsapp buttons on their pages, and through it, online tutors and customers contact them. They have made a whatsapp group in which they have added online tutors. Whenever an online tutoring opportunity comes to them, they post it in a Whatsapp group, and potential tutors contact them. Through it, they are growing and advertising their online tutoring business. Also, there are Whatsapp groups of writers and freelancers where they post their services and articles to have a better reach. Many companies make a group of their customers, and whenever a new product or service comes up, they post it to their groups for advertising.
Learn from these examples and try to use them for your social media marketing.
YouTube:
You all are well acquainted with the importance of YouTube in advertising any company or website. Whenever you need any information, most of you open YouTube to watch videos and tutorials. Doing social media marketing on YouTube is quite easy and effective, if you do it with a planned strategy. There are some points to remember for doing effective YouTube marketing.
You should have a clear mindset about your channel's topic. For example, if it is about education, then your whole content on that channel should be related to education. In fact, if you are teaching linguistics on your channel, remain focused on that nitch.
Doing SEO is important. Your description, hashtags should have proper keywords to rank your channel.
Your video quality should be clear. Keep yourself and your background decent and professional.
Your thumbnails should be attractive. You can even exaggerate a bit on your thumbnail, but it still should be relevant to your content.
Don't use copyrighted images and videos on your channel.
Your videos should have a proper schedule. For this, I will advise you to record at least 10-15 videos before sharing them.
Promote your channel on different social media accounts.
You can give links to your websites or blogs in the description.
You should develop a voice and tone. For this, watch videos of your competitors and try to find out how they are interacting. In the beginning, try to adopt their style and voice. And find out what your audience wants.
Wisely use YouTube Shorts.
Pinterest:
Most of the people don't know the importance of this social media platform but to become a successful social media marketer, you should know every nook of this platform.
Pinterest is an images based platform where people share the images and pin link and description to it. You can create boards of a specific theme, say content writing board, and will post the thumbnail of your article or product, and add a link into its description. Large international audience is using Pinterest. Your appealing or light images will have more clicks and engagement.
To improve your marketing campaign here, keep some facts in mind:
Schedule your posting of pins here.
SEO is also important here. Use relevant keywords in the description.
350 words is enough.
Text and images should be overlayed.
As it is an image based platform, use appealing and copyright free images.
These are some of the great platforms with large audiences and doing social media campaigns here will give you large benefits. There are also other platforms such as Tik Tok, Snapchat, Tumblr etc which can be used for social media campaigns. But the issue there is that there is a limited audience on these platforms, so campaigning there as a beginner will not give you much benefit. Start with the above mentioned platforms, and gradually come to the other platforms.
Some of the main points which are consistent in each social media campaign is:
Remain consistent with your posts.
Keep on interacting with your audience.
Your images should be copyright free and appealing to the readers.
Your content should have a quality.
Your hashtags and keywords should be concise and relevant to your content.
Do proper SEO.
Plan your whole content before posting.
These are some of the basic points which will create a base of your social media marketing strategy. Learn to apply these points. And Congratulations! You have become a fresher social media marketer.
Having these strategies in your portfolio will earn you your first project or job.
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