What is SMM and why is social media marketing important?

What is a social network and how are they related to internet marketing?

First, some facts:

According to the Digital 2022 October Global Statshot Report, as of early October 2022, the global population reached 7.99 billion people, and the percentage of social media users is now 59.3%, which is 5.07 billion people. The average annual growth of new users is about 10%, and each spends nearly 2.5 hours online daily. Social networks attract adults, children, and elderly people alike. One social network can replace several narrowly specialized resources, as it allows you to:

• Meet new people and communicate with friends and relatives;
• Promote and sell goods and services;
• Download favorite music and books;
• Watch movies;
• Find the necessary information.

A bit of history:

The first network "Classmates.com" appeared in 1995. It allowed finding friends, classmates, and comrades-in-arms. It was then that LinkedIn, MySpace, and Facebook were launched. 25 years later, there is a very large and diverse selection of applications available, catering to all tastes and preferences, with various features and capabilities. Let's look at a couple of examples:

• YouTube - has become the most popular video hosting site and the second most visited site in the world, although it was originally a dating site. It is visited by more than 122 million users daily.
• Facebook - a social networking site where users can leave comments, share photos, and post links to news or other interesting content on the Internet, chat, and watch short videos. FB has also become popular as a solid platform for business development. Here, companies meet with consumers directly. In turn, buyers of services and goods have the opportunity to ask questions, leave reviews about the quality of work of firms and stores.
• TikTok - a very simple entertainment social network for content with an unreal rate of development. As of December 2022, the platform has 1 billion active monthly users and is considered the most downloaded app. And all this in just 6 years.

Let's delve into the psychology of users:

People like to talk about themselves: we dedicate 30-40% of our speech to conversations about ourselves. However, on social media, this figure reaches 80%. When we post content that is "correct," we gain social approval, which contributes to an increase in self-esteem. This is a strong impulse, and the mere realization that a person is sharing something important with others activates the so-called "pleasure center" in their brain. For some, social media is a great way to demonstrate their power: they are interested in observing how their provocative actions cause a wide resonance. At the same time, some people need feedback, reactions, and evaluations from friends, while others are monologic: they post as if throwing a message in a bottle into the ocean. Frequent updates to statuses and posts are a manifestation of a strong need for a constant (albeit virtual) interlocutor. Such people cannot stand loneliness, and they even find it difficult to identify themselves. They perceive themselves primarily through the reactions of others. Communication is not an instrument, but a goal for them. Any information spreads very quickly through social media, so some users post videos with the goal of becoming famous and gaining popularity among their followers. Some read the news, while others choose entertaining or educational content. Our activity on social media involves what makes us human: our preferences, desires, anxieties, and joys. This knowledge makes it possible to create an accurate portrait of the target audience and sell anything on social media! Have you not yet taken advantage of the opportunities of internet marketing and SMM?

What is Internet Marketing?

As usual, it's simple! Internet marketing began to be used in 2008, when well-known personalities and brands realized that their potential and real customer audience was located precisely in social networks. The goals of online advertising are to increase audience loyalty to the brand and to sell goods and services.

There are various types of internet marketing, let's consider their tasks and goals:

1. Content marketing: aims to introduce the audience to the brand and give a general idea of it using text, photos, and videos;
2. Search engine marketing - deals with attracting customers to the website;
3. Affiliate marketing - is a model in which companies pay intermediaries with a suitable target audience a percentage or fixed payment for promoting their product;
4. Email marketing - one of the most effective business tools. It is a way to promote products or services through email newsletters.
5. Social media marketing. The goal of SMM is to attract customers from "VKontakte", Facebook, Instagram, and other social platforms to the website and establish direct communication between the brand and potential or existing customers. Thanks to social networks, you give your audience the opportunity to feel involved with your brand and increase demand for services.

Let's take a closer look at SMM tools:

1. Community building - primarily involves communicating with brand users. Here you can handle customer questions, objections, and negative feedback, and share all the events happening in the company.
2. Working with influencers - this SMM tool is often used for promotion on Instagram, as well as on YouTube, VKontakte, and Facebook. The goal of such collaboration is to build loyalty to the product through trust in a well-known personality with a large number of followers.
3. Organic advertising or paid promotion - this involves placing paid publications in already popular groups and communities. The publication may contain information about the promoted company, a promotion, or a contest post. Such publications can be conveniently placed through special post exchange platforms. Working with such platforms allows you to pre-calculate the reach of the publication. Choose groups with related themes and the most loyal audience to your business.
4. Hashtags - also a useful SMM tool. Using a #hashtag displays all content in the social network related to a specific topic, with the goal of attracting an audience interested in that topic. These platforms can help you choose hashtags: Hashtagify.com; Websta.me.
5. Live streaming - the fastest growing type of content in all social networks. The advantages of this type of communication are that the action or contact happens in real-time, allowing the brand to communicate with its audience directly and answer their questions of interest.
6. Social media optimization (SMO): All social networks, like Google and Yandex, have their own internal search engines, so groups and communities, like in SEO, need to be optimized to rank higher in social network search and make your page easy to find.

In the next article, we can take a closer look at case studies (pages) in social networks, but for today, there is already a lot of information!