With more than half the world's population using social networks, up to several hours per day per person, the largest social platforms now account for a huge percentage of all online traffic. Being seen now means being social, but heavy competition for attention means paid advertising on social networks often isn't enough - engagement is essential! Our managed social marketing services let you reap the rewards of regular, high quality posts to your social profiles, without using up your valuable time. We can also handle your branding, community management and even create your own social networking platform for you too!

What is Social Media Marketing?

Social Media Marketing utilises in-depth knowledge of the nuances of modern social networks and other social systems to engage with target audiences at scale for the purpose of lead generation, increasing brand awareness and a variety of other marketing benefits. From the Social Proof provided by reviews shared on social platforms, through to the potential for promotional posts to go viral and reach many millions of people for a relatively low cost - the potential gains from marketing with a personal touch are huge.

Since the early days of the internet, websites have been created to enable people to meet and communicate with each other in a variety of ways. Initially, sites offered simple forums for discussion, but soon moved on to a more all encompassing approach, the social network. Social networking platforms enable people to create detailed personal profiles that track their lives and allow them to share their thoughts and experiences with others in real time. Not only is this great for meeting like minded people who live far from our own geographic area, but it has provided businesses and other organisations with powerful ways to raise their public profile too.

Some of the largest social networks are now also some of the biggest corporations on the planet, they attract billions of people and businesses each day. Sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Reddit - along with communication networks such as Telegram, WhatsApp and Tik Tok - provide powerful sources of connection with audiences, so learning how to use them in optimal ways is necessary when promoting a project.
Statistic: Most popular social networks worldwide as of April 2021, ranked by number of active users (in millions) | Statista
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Marketing on social platforms can be as simple as occaissionally posting an attractive image and engaging text, however, achieving optimal results requires a multi dimensional approach, imagination, time and planning.

Social Marketing vs. Social Media Marketing

In the background of social media marketing is the wider context of Social Marketing, which has been around since the early 1970s and which specifically aims to promote changes of behaviour within the public for the benefit of society. For example, Social Marketing might include promotion of educational programs designed to inspire healthier eating, which in turn lead to improved public health and lower healthcare costs.

While Social Media Marketing may form part of a Social Marketing Campaign, the two are quite different overall. Social Media Marketing aims to make use of social media platforms in order to meet a broad range of commercial (or non commercial) marketing requirements of private organisations/individuals, whereas Social Marketing aims to achieve societal change for the benefit of society itself.

Social Media Marketing Strategies

Successful social media marketing involves a combination of stages, including research, clear goal setting, performance monitoring, content creation and community engagement. Many of the skills from traditional advertising can be combined with more personal sales techniques and high tech tools to ensure that engaging text, images and multimedia content reaches just the right people in just the right ways.

It is essential to understand your target audiences and to identify the content and brands/people that they are currently most responsive to. Knowing why your audience values the social channels that they do is key to success here. Research leads naturally to design and this is where imagination and creativity step in to generate attractive content that equals or beats your competition. Sometimes the right combination of imagery, style, language or philosophy can go a long way in causing an audience to prefer you over your competitors.

Social media posts can contain a wide variety of types of content, from videos and images to podcasts, ebooks, links to webpages, plus associated text - so there are many ways to grab people's attention. Creating a series of posts, which break down larger ideas and content into smaller chunks is a great way to sustain interest, gain subscribers and increase the efficiency and reach of your posts. Most forms of content marketing compliment social campaigns very effectively.

Paid Ads on Social Media Platforms

The majority of social media platforms allow for purchasing of paid adverts which can take the form of specially placed static or video ads or even native posts that are designed to blend in with organically created posts in people's post/news feeds. These can be a highly effective way to reach large numbers of people and can be scientifically improved in numerous ways as more data from the campaigns becomes available. Paid social media posting campaigns can generate explosive results, provided they are carefully managed and designed - however, alternative approaches also exist that can compliment or even improve on their performance.

Organic Social Marketing

Alongside paid ads, you can also rely on the organic reach of your profiles - provided you are already generating visitors through other means. Typically, this approach relies on the attention generated through other activity, such as other forms of marketing campaigns which direct people to the social profiles. Carefully optimising posts for search engines (SEO) can, in some cases, yield good results too - since social networks tend to rank highly in search engines by default. Sharing your posts to groups on social networks is another low cost or free way to promote your content; just be careful not to break any group rules regarding 'spam' posts that are unwanted or you risk creating a negative image of yourself and your brand or even being banned.

Influencer Marketing

An interesting alternative to paying the social media networks for ad space directly is to instead hire an influencer that fits your brand's profile and who has an appropriately large social media following already. Influencers tend to be mainstream celebrity figures or others who have made a name for themselves online and have amassed a significant list of followers or subscribers. Offering benefits or direct payment to such people in exchange for them posting about your project or sharing your promotional material can be a very effective way to generate significant attention for a reduced cost.

Of course, you are unlikely to get a megastar to agree to promote your project without paying a mega fee, but none the less, if they are aligned with your brand and have the respect of many like minded people then the return on investment can make the fees worthwhile. There's no need to jump right to the top levels of fame and notoriety when arranging influencer posts, however. Many influencers with smaller and medium sized followings can be hired for fees that are well within the budget range of most projects.

The benefits of working with influencers, rather than relying on the advertising mechanisms of social media corporations include:
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Social Proof & Enhanced Credibility: Seeing respected people promoting your brand will inspire others to investigate you and perhaps become a customer.

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Personal Responsibility: By dealing directly with a person, rather than the automated systems of a social media platform, the responsibility of the success of the outcome is shared with someone who may care more than the corporation does.

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Highly Focused: The specific interests of an influencer's audience are usually quite clear, which means that your campaign can be highly targeted and optimised.

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Search Engine Value: If your influencers have their own website that has a high domain authority, your own site can receive a nice SEO boost when the influencer's site links to yours.

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Cost Effective: Many influencers will makes posts on your behalf for less than $500USD or may do so in exchange for services. Some will even serve as affiliates for you and voluntarily market your project on their own. In many cases this will be more efficient than paying social media networks directly.

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Helps With Content Creation: Influencers tend to be quite creative and are in the business of creating engaging content for social media. They will therefore help to boost your own content marketing efforts too!

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Reach New Audiences: If you are looking to expand your marketing reach into new areas, influencers can provide a great way to do so in a measured and focused way. They can help to establish your brand in ways that can otherwise be quite challenging.

CRUCIAL Social Media Marketing

We at Crucial Web can provide a full suite of social media marketing services, from profile optimisation, competitor research, regular custom post creation, paid ad campaign management, management of influencer marketing and even community management for your brand. We always assess the unique needs of each project in order to direct our clients' budget in the most effective and efficient way as some approaches may be suited to your needs and some may not.

A fully managed social media marketing campaign begins with detailed research of your competitors and investigations to identify the strengths and weaknesses of each possible social media strategy for your own unique situation. We will ensure that your website and social profiles are in sync with regards branding and user experience and then look to devise a posting and content generation strategy.

Typically, we will arrange for numerous quality posts to be made to your profiles every week and also create fresh content as needed. We work with third party agencies when needed to connect brands with the perfect influencers too.

We are happy to arrange Social Media Marketing as a standalone service but also include regular posting as part of our service packages too - so if you are looking for a full spectrum of marketing support then why not take a look.
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