Like services of varies digital marketing firms, SMM and SMO are becoming powerful strategy and campaign to leverage business goals and targets. Since most customers are now online, it’s a must for companies to diversify their marketing strategies.

Why Invest in Social Media Marketing (SMM)

On average, Facebook has 2.2 billion active users in the last quarter of the year 2017. Instagram has 800 million monthly active users where 80% of its population comes from different parts of the world. Twitter has 330 million monthly active users. These numbers show users who can be your audience and customer. Signing up for a social media platform enables you to build an account to reach these users to market your products and services as well as inform them of your brand. Thus, social media is a communication channel. It provides content while establishing engagement with your audience.

There are several social media sites, but these five are the most popular among users:

• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Instagram
• YouTube

There is no right or wrong social media platform, but it pays to be in an online community where a brand can acquire most of its audience. Thus, it pays to ensure that the business and the user will be using the same platform. That way, the firm takes the highest return on investment (ROI) from its niche.

How To Integrate SMM to a Business Strategy

Start by setting up accounts on chosen sites. Signing up is free while deleting the accounts is simple so it’s a quick way out in case the marketing strategy doesn’t work out. Still, some social media sites offer targeted campaigns through paid ads and promoted posts. These features help the company concentrate on specific demographics which is helpful in gathering data for crafting campaigns.

The bulk of the work of SMM comes in maintaining the feed. The content will be the users’ basis to know, like and trust the business. Content planning must be part of the process for SMM to become successful. Other than the consistent posts on social media accounts, engagement is a must to maintain relationships with customers and share information about the product or service. Using a post automation tool keeps the social media feeds updated without struggling to catch deadlines. Combing the tool with an editorial calendar takes off the pressure of pulling off the marketing campaign.

The audience will grow along with the business so outsourcing a social media manager will be beneficial to manage campaigns. An additional hand efficiently builds a highly visible relationship with prospects and spread content to turn visitors into loyal followers of the brand.

Social media sites have billions of monthly online users, an untapped market by several brick-and-mortar businesses. Though users have preferences, having them as part of your audience is better than losing the opportunity to increase your online network. Integrating SMM into company marketing strategies results to high ROI especially when a campaign is a hit

Now that SMM is out of the way, what about Social Media Optimization (SMO)? What is the difference between SMM and SMO? Does an enterprise need to implement both online marketing strategies?

What is the Fuss about SMO

Social media optimization (SMO), which is also called search marketing optimization, is the process of improving a website to make it “sociable.” Digital marketers and webmasters optimize their site to make it visible on the web. SMO provides the audience ways to connect and interact with the business.

The techniques in SMO aims to drive traffic to the site through the brand’s social media presence. The process boosts site ranking which may also increase conversion rates. Furthermore, it solidifies the business’ brand as quality content and engagement become consistent across all channels. SMO focuses on a website’s traffic and data with the help of SMM. Meanwhile, SMM centers on publishing content, spreading awareness, and maintaining engagement on social media platforms.

Business must implement both to support their digital marketing strategies. SMO will not exist without SMM while the latter can stand on its own. However, practicing SMM without the support of SMO doesn’t maximize the influence of your brand.

Social Media as a Powerful Marketing Tool

Like everything on the Internet, social media transforms with the blink of an eye. Platforms started out as online messaging systems until they became tools to publish content real time. It pays to invest on SMM and SMO to gain access to markets and industries across countries. Before diving into a marketing strategy, remember to take the guesswork out of working on an online network. Knowing the stipulations of each platform is the key to successful marketing implementation.

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Custom audiences

Facebook adds a new feature called ads manager and power editor. Ads manager allows customization of the kinds of audience you want the ad to be advertised to. For instance, any business can target previous visitors of your website or those who have visited only a very few pages on the site.

Another new feature is the capability of choosing limits on a new audience. Such a feature allows segmenting target audience of different product categories. On the other hand, the feature also allows building audiences automatically based on past activities on the website.

Multiproduct ads

Facebook also introduces multiproduct ads for the purpose of displaying up to three products with own image and description within a single ad unit (as a slideshow). Businesses can choose between desktop and mobile.

Such ad unit is specifically useful for ecommerce sites that want to reach users who visit the website, but did not make a purchase. Further, multiproduct ads is more beneficial if tied with custom audiences so the business may display items that the visitors view before he or she leaves the site in the form of news feed.

Making sense of custom audiences and multiproduct ads

For one, the enhancements made by Facebook empowers marketing in general, not just remarketing. This is more so for those users who have already visited the site. These users are already further in the sales funnel. This means they have viewed and explored the product but did not buy it.

More than building brand awareness, the updates can build more brand mindshare. When we say ‘mindshare,’ this refers to user’s top-of-mind brand or company upon the mention or sight of a particular product (e.g. smartphone – Apple).

With these features, Facebook increases the chance that previous site visitors will see a previously-viewed product and click on the ad further. Seeing products simultaneously in a not-so intrusive way will feel more like online shopping and not necessarily advertising. Notably, this is how users want advertisements – not forced, not invasive.

The bigger picture

Both changes offer an opportunity for Facebook to compete with search as well as the direct responses that this provides. As a business entity, Facebook is now offering free and paid services though some of us might say the platform is quickly evolving as a prominent advertising platform in the same capacity as Google AdWords.

What we are witnessing today is Facebook’s initiative to develop more advertising features that both users and advertisers are comfortable with. Moving towards conversion is thus more apparent on the platform.

If there is one company that changes how we see ‘social’ that would be Facebook. Facebook has come a long way now as it ventures into advertising. Why not? Facebook is not only strong with more than 1 billion active users, but it also presents itself as a venue where you can connect with your target audience in a personal level.

As Facebook puts it, matching the right message to the right person at the right time is a must. Indeed, the enhancements can be very powerful in turning previous visitors into paying customers. After all, it is the goal of advertising wherein it is not enough that the users are aware of your brand. What’s more important is they will buy from you and not from your competitors.

If you are the social media marketer, the best benefit is evident – you are in control of who to target with what. Now that’s true remarketing! Remarketing is critical in capturing both mind and market share.

Source: Search Engine Journal | Inside Facebook | Business2Community

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