A Completely Different Look On Social Media Platforms
Social media platforms have become more integral in people’s lives in a very short period. Even though it is not an essential utility, it has become a more unavoidable entity in the life of many people. The important reason for this integration of social media in people’s lives is the features and freedom it provides for the users.
Social media platforms are usually considered as a distraction by more people more than by their other benefits. This is because they are seen only as an entertainment entity. But over the years they have become more than an entertainment entity. They have proved that social media can provide more commercial and social benefits than just entertainment.
From being entertainment and networking platforms, social media have evolved to provide solutions for people’s commerce and business to creatorship needs. The main reason for this evolution is the branching out of social media platforms in recent years.
Social media have branched out in many different domains. Some of the main domains they have branched out are,
Social Networking Platforms:
The first and foremost reason why social media was created was to make networking easier. Since their creation, they have grown to provide different networking solutions among people. There are social media sites in these domains.
Most famous social networking media include platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn. We mostly use them for connecting with other people. With Facebook, people can share their important events with their friends and peers. They are useful in conducting surveys and creating campaigns and groups.
LinkedIn provides professional and career-based networking. We can also use them to show career achievements and get a job. The networking platforms work in this way and provide better connections among people.
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Video Platforms:
The most famous platforms in the current trend would be video platforms. They are usually video-sharing platforms. They also allow people to share their video creations.
The video platforms that provide freedom for people to create and share their videos are the most popular. This is because they allow people to showcase their style and creativity.
The famous video platforms include YouTube, Vimeo. These platforms have videos from various domains and serve their purpose very well.
Blogging Platforms:
With these platforms, people can share their writing skills online with other people. The blogging platforms are often known less than the other platforms but they are usually better than most other platforms.
The blogging media platforms allow users to showcase their writing skills mostly for free. For this reason, they are used mostly by people wanting to show their writing skills.
Platforms like Medium are famous for blogging. These platforms have creativity as well as connectivity features.
Photo Sharing Platforms:
These platforms are like video-sharing platforms but they are used for sharing photos. Photo sharing platforms allow people to share their artistic and photographic skills.
The photo-sharing platforms include Instagram and many more like it. They are most popular in early adults and people who like to share most of their life events through photos.
These are some of the branches of social media platforms. They are used in various forms by people from different domains for their benefit. Social media offer this versatility with better perfection.
At the current time, social media platforms are used mostly in the business domain. They offer better marketing tools and provide a better strategy for businesses.
Even being a part of digital marketing they have become an inevitable one in the marketing sector. The reason for this would be a rapid increase in the number of social media users. With more than a billion social media users around the world, they are becoming the hotspot for marketing.
So one of the most useful features of social media would be marketing. They provide tools for every step of marketing. This helps the marketer to get a clear picture of the market and helps in planning the future marketing strategy.
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Social Media Platforms For Marketing
The marketing ideas have evolved more in recent years owing to the new innovative business formats. The evolution in the business has been more on the online side than the offline one. This growth has created many new branches of business that involve online presence.
The important branch of these businesses would be marketing over the internet. The digital world offers more ways to market efficiently new or existing products.
Digital marketing may sound simple but they have more sub-branches within them and have more number of things to consider for effective marketing.
The major contributor to digital marketing is social media platforms. They were created to connect with people online. But in recent years they have served more than connecting and interacting with people. They are being used for promoting products by companies and making products more popular.
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Ways For Better Marketing In Social Media Platforms:
Marketing in social media has many effective methods that would give more rewarding benefits if followed properly. Some of these methods are,
Strategy
The fundamental step in social media marketing would be the planning of a marketing strategy. The strategy should involve the goals of the marketing and the proposed number of customers they must reach.
The strategy should also include the periodical release of the advertisements and also the alternative methods ad ideas to provide uninterrupted and effective marketing needs.
Identification Of Users’ Needs
The next step would be the identification and gathering of users’ needs and interests. This would give a better idea of the type of products the user is interested in. With these data, the advertisements can be tailored and best-matched advertisements can be displayed for the users.
This identification research can be done in a few methods. Some of them are,
- Getting feedback from the users.
- Surveying users.
- Researching about the user’s interests.
- Conducting proper analytical research.
Tailored Content
Once the user’s needs and interests are found, the next step would be tailoring or targeting the specific type of ad according to the user’s suitability. This would make the user only receive the ads that are related to them.
This type of ad targeting would also make the marketing strategy effective and provide better planning for future marketing strategies. This also lowers the budget of marketing by cutting out unrelated users.
Feedback
After the ads are posted, the effectiveness of that ad can be found by getting feedback from the users. This straight feedback from the users could give more insight into the tailoring part of the marketing.
This would also help in the planning of the future marketing strategy. The feedback part also helps to eliminate unrelated users.
Better Advertisements
This is the basic need of the marketing strategy and content. The advertisement should be good enough for the product depicting its full specification and features. The advertisements should also be altered according to the type of platform on which they are about to be posted.
The advertisement can also have coupons and promo codes in them. This type of ad can grasp people’s attention. The effective reach of marketing could be easily achieved by better advertisements.
Usage Of Video Platforms
The most and highly used social media are video platforms for their vast and more versatile content. So focussing on these platforms for marketing would contribute more to the marketing strategy and this platform should not be ignored or considered of less value.
The ads placed on these platforms would be more convenient to the users if they are also placed in the video content format. Video ads have more popularity than other advertisement forms for their better reach among all kinds of people and this makes the video platforms the best marketing place in social media.
Innovative Ways For Social Media Marketing
Even with different and new tools available on social media platforms, the marketing strategy should be unconventional and creative. This type of marketing would be very helpful in making the marketing strategy stand out from the regular crowd.
The social media pages with better and innovative posts have more followers in numbers. These follower numbers can easily be converted to customers of the business if social media marketing is very effective.
There are various ways to do this type of social media marketing. Some of these methods are as follows:
1. Respond To The Customers
This may sound like a conventional way but in recent years the businesses responding or replying to the customers are trending more in social media. The reply part can alone act as an alternative marketing strategy.
The users and customers can get a better trust value on the brand if they are very close. This can be achieved by proper interaction with the customers. They can also serve as a feedback part of the marketing strategy.
2. Start A Contest
The customers respond more to the advertisements if there are rewards or prizes involved. Starting a contest and giving away prizes to the winners can get the customers involved more in the marketing practices.
Another way for this type of marketing would be giveaways. They help get the customer’s attention and also to follow the social media pages regularly.
3. Customer Review
Periodical posting of customer reviews on the social media page can also help very much in the marketing strategy. The review could also be done on the live page with the help of creating a review section on the social media page.
The best form of these reviews would be posting video reviews rather than written ones because they look more closer and personal. The reviews with better opinions about the product can boost the marketing value of the social media page to a whole new level.
4. Going Along With The Trend
The marketing strategies may look very fresh if the social media pages are updated along with the recent trends. Adding posts with the recent trend contents or with the recent trend styles may also make the page looks up to date.
This type of fresh content may attract more people to social media and increase follower numbers. The increase of followers may also help in increasing the number of customers and the business.
5. Creating Polls
Creating polls can help in making the product stand out from the crowd. The customers attracted towards the product are shown in numbers in polls and this will make the customers know the product with better popularity.
The polls can be conducted in various aspects of the product or services. They can be used for finding out about real-time popularity or reach among various people.
6. Periodical Social Media Posts
The pages with more and current posts have better follower numbers. The pages should be updated frequently with new posts and improved content. This would keep the followers engaged more in the social media pages of the business.
The post can be added according to a schedule or with the current updates from the business. This would make the followers visit the social media pages of the business more often and keep them close to the business brand.
7. Conducting Photo Contests
Asking the followers to post photos from them along with the recent trends or content related to the business can make the followers get pretty interested in the social media page of the business.
This could also be made more interesting if the best photos are rewarded with gifts like products related to the business or new product launched. They can also be made more engaging with the ranking of best photos.
8. Posting More Live Content
The best way for keeping the page current is by adding more live content. The live content usually includes video formats and is done live on social media pages. Conducting these kinds of live events may help the followers get a better view of the business.
This can also help get them better clarity and more information about the business. The live content may also include interviews with the customers and this type of content may reflect ideas from both the business and the customers.
Live content may also help the businesses to know the current expectations from the customers and the ways to fulfill them. This would also make the followers get to know more about the plans of the business.
9. Discounts Based On Social Media Posts
Giving discounts based on social media posts can give a better boost to marketing strategies. This can be done by giving away promo codes or gift cards along with social media posts.
This can make the customers follow the pages more regularly and often lean towards the businesses giving these types of discounts over the ones that don’t give them.
Making the discounts available for regular followers and top interactors with the page can increase the follower activity on the page. This type of marketing strategy is more beneficial for essential needs products.
10. Sharing Follower Posts
Another type of follower interactive marketing would be sharing the follower’s post to the social media page of the business. This would make the social media page more attentive towards the follower’s posts.
This will also give followers a friendly environment. They can also increase the trust value of the followers towards the business.
11. Hosting A Query Session
Hosting a query session can help the followers to get their doubts resolved and get information about the business. The query session can also help the businesses to know the follower’s interests.
This type of query session hosted periodically can make the followers closer to the businesses. They can also help in follower growth.
12. Posting Exclusive Content
Posting exclusive content on the social media pages may make the followers more engaged in the page. The exclusive content may include behind the scenes about a product or exclusive information about the business.
This type of content tends to give a fresh insight into the page and make the page more exclusive.
13. Partnering With Other Pages
Partnering with other pages for the promotion of the business page can also give better output. This method includes Partnering with a famous page from other domains like the entertainment page will give the business better reach across social media.
This type of partnering will double the marketing efforts and help to attain the marketing goals in a very short period. This type of partnering can be done with a simple advertisement on their pages or hosting any partnered events.
14. Posting More Entertainment Friendly Content:
The important feature being looked upon in the content these days are entertainment. The content with more entertaining features can gather more audience than the other type of content.
Making the post more entertaining can be done by adding captivating features like memes. These types of features are understandable by more people and hence they would have more range of audiences.
Getting entertained when visiting a page can make us stay on the page for a longer time and get more positive vibes about the business.
These are some of the innovative methods to make social media marketing more fresh and effective. We should encourage these types of innovative methods more than the conventional ones since they can provide better results than conventional methods.
Benefits Of Social Media Marketing:
With the increasing number of social media platform users around the world, they are becoming the best place for effective marketing. There are more than a billion users around the globe using social media and this gives the larger audience for the advertisements. The most popular benefits are,
Easier To Use:
The most important benefit would be an easier and convenient way of marketing. The person who likes to market any product can post their ads themselves and does not require any middlemen.
They require less technical knowledge to use. They also provide users with convenient timings and places. so, they could be used anywhere and anytime according to the user’s convenience.
Budget-Friendly:
Another important feature of social media marketing would be the cost. They require less budget than most of the other forms of marketing due to their ad targeting concept.
They can also reduce the cost by cutting the middlemen out since the person in need of marketing can do the ad posting part themselves.
Wide Range Of Audience:
The ads in the olden days needed various ways to connect with the people. But today most of us are connected to social media and this will give more range of reach towards the people.
This lowers the effort to make the marketing range bigger and also provides this at a considerably less cost than the other media platforms.
So Are The Social Media Platforms An Essential Need?
Nothing apart from food and living needs are essential to human beings. But on the current trend and scenario of society, social media is becoming a very integral part of daily life.
social media are used by almost every person on the earth and hence they are required for connecting and interacting with them both socially and professionally. This makes a higher number of working professionals join social media.
The early adults and adults with more technological grasp are also inclining towards the use of social media in every type of platform they are available. The abundant number of social media applications and their increased features have also added advantages to social media usage.
Are They Beneficial Or Not?
The most asked question or debate about social media is are they beneficial or not. Like all other media social media also have their pros and cons. The planned usage or controlled time of usage of social media is always beneficial.
social media can be used for productive purposes and are serving businesses with more productive results than anticipated. They can also be entertaining if used in a controlled amount of time.
So in conclusion like all other digital resources, social media also has its own limitations. They are useful in connecting people and providing better social life if used with caution and a limited time.
