What is Social Media Marketing in 2023? How to earn with Social Media Marketing in 2023?

 

Social Media Marketing

 Social media marketing (SMM) is full-fledged marketing and not just promotion through various social platforms. Maintaining accounts in social networks is part of the marketing and communication strategy.

What is Social Media Marketing in 2022? 

The main emphasis is on creating a message (text or visual) that people will distribute through social networks on their own, already without the participation of the organizer. It is believed that messages transmitted via social networks inspire more confidence among potential consumers of a product or service. This is associated with the recommendation scheme of distribution in social media due to the social ties that underlie the interaction.

Promotion in social networks allows you to target the target audience, choose the sites where this audience is more represented, and the most appropriate ways to communicate with it while affecting people who are not interested in this advertising to the least extent.

Promotion in social networks is applied not only to goods and services. Mass media actively use this technology. They create their social media accounts, post their content, and thereby collect followers (readers of their product).

The main tasks of marketing in social networks are branding (brand promotion), increasing audience loyalty and fame, PR, and increasing website traffic of various companies.

SMM tools are blogging on social networks, informational messages in various communities, communication in comments, working with forums, hidden marketing, direct advertising and viral marketing, monitoring of positive and negative backgrounds, and optimization of the media space.

Do not confuse SMM with social marketing.

The different types of Social Media Marketing

Social networks 

Social networks aim to allow friends or acquaintances to interact with each other via interconnected computer accounts. Each account can display texts, photos, news, videos, and interests. Each account holder can send messages to people in his network or solicit another account holder to establish a link with him.

Interactions are done through quick messages that are public or private. Groups and events or even games and applications also participate in these interactions. The main social network is Facebook. Even if their operations are similar, social networks (like Twitter for example) should not be confused with social media.

New competing social networks appear regularly: Instagram, Tiktok, Snapchat, WhatsApp, etc.

Networking (networking site) 

These technical characteristics are quite similar to those of social networks; this is why they are frequently confused. However, their objectives are distinct. Networking such as LinkedIn and Viadeo is indeed intended for the "promotion of the professional career".

The blogs 

The term blog is short for "weblog", first used by Jorn Barger in 1997. A blog is a form of "online personal diary" which allows its creator, called a blogger, to share his experiences and experiences through the Internet. A major advantage of the blog is its accessibility. There are indeed sites allowing you to open your own blogs, such as WordPress, Blogger, or Tumblr. It usually consists of a succession of articles, organized from newest to oldest, containing text, photos, audio, or video. Readers interact with the blogger through the comments they can post. This participation in the content of the blog leads to a social dynamic, hence its belonging to social media.

Microblogging 

As the name suggests, microblogs are small blogs, broadcasting short messages from users, dedicated to a group of subscribers. They are distinguished from socio-digital networks by the absence of community functions such as the creation of thematic groups, private messages, or the exchange of images.

On microblogging services, only the dissemination of public messages is possible. The most widely used microblogging site is Twitter, followed by Tumblr.

Multimedia Sharing 

Social networks, such as Facebook or Twitter, use multimedia sharing. Both textual and auditory, these media are characterized by videos and images allowing interaction between users and the sharing of content of their choice. Some social networks specialize in a particular type of media, such as video, for platforms such as Dailymotion or YouTube. Image sharing can be done through sites like Imgur or Pinterest.

Online Communities 

Online communities are special groups that form around common values and interests. Even if there is this type of community on all social networks, some sites (such as Reddit or Discord ) favor a form of community social dynamics. These groups can then create a sense of belonging.

Geolocation 

This service makes it possible to identify its geographical position thanks to its smartphone and to transmit it to other users or to check if other users are in the vicinity. Its objective is to "create face-to-face contacts through a virtual network". The main current location-based services are Foursquare, Gowalla, and Loopt.

Sync 

Sync are online applications that allow a large number of users to build and modify content. They use a universal collaboration logic. The most consulted Sync is SyncSpot, but there are others like Wookieepedia, Bibliopedia, or InnoCentive.

Methods of Social Media Marketing

SMM can start offline and then take hold and spread online. Social media marketing includes many methods of work. The most popular of them are building brand communities (creating company representations in social media), working with the blogosphere, reputation management, personal branding,  and non-standard tools.

SMM is a dynamic process, so you need to constantly monitor the changing interests of the audience and the emergence of new trends.

There are three key strategies within SMM:

• Work to build a community around the promoted brand;
• Use of advertising tools and crops on the sites for the purpose of direct sale of products and increasing awareness;
• Combined product promotion strategy.

When starting work on promotion in social networks, the key point is the development of a work strategy. The classic SMM strategy consists of the following points:

1. Definition of goals and objectives;
2. Analysis of the current position of the brand in social networks, as well as analysis of competitors;
3. Analysis of the target audience of the brand in social networks;
4. Selection of key platforms for promotion;
5. Tone of voice of the brand in social networks;
6. Rubricator;
7. Visual selection;
8. Strategy for promoting and using paid tools;
9. KPI.
10. Analysis of work performed and reporting.

Currently, the classic SMM strategy is being transformed and social networks are being built into integrated marketing communications. This is due to the emergence of new communication channels that take over part of the audience and with which you also have to work. To develop a unified communication strategy for promotion across all channels, there are several models, one of which is the PESO model. Its name encodes four main groups of information dissemination channels - Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned.

In the PESO model, SMM is considered within Shared channels.

Platforms of Social Media Marketing

Social networking sites 

Social networking websites allow individuals, businesses, and other organizations to interact with each other and build relationships and communities online. When companies join these social channels, consumers can interact with them directly. This interaction can be more personal to users than traditional methods of external marketing and advertising. Social networking sites act as word of mouth, more accurately, electronic word of mouth. The internet's ability to reach billions worldwide has given online mouths a powerful voice and far-reaching reach. The ability to quickly change purchasing patterns, as well as the acquisition and operation of products or services for a growing number of consumers, is defined as a network of influence. Social networks and blogs allow subscribers to "retweet" or "post" comments made by other people about the product being promoted, which is quite common on some social networking sites. By repeating the message, user connections can see the email, allowing you to reach more people. As product info is posted there, gets repetitive and more traffic goes to the product/company.

Social networks are based on the creation of virtual communities that allow consumers to express their needs, desires, and values on the Internet. Social media marketing then connects these consumers and audiences with businesses that have the same needs, desires, and values. Through social networking sites, companies can keep in touch with individual subscribers. This personal interaction can instill a sense of loyalty in followers and potential customers. Also, by choosing who to follow on these sites, products can reach a very narrow target audience. Social networking sites also contain a lot of information about what products and services potential customers might be interested in. With the help of new technologies of semantics through analysis, marketers can detect buying signals, such as the content people share and questions posted online. Understanding buying signals can help salespeople target relevant leads and marketers run micro-targeted campaigns.

In 2014, more than 80% of business leaders indicated that social networks are an integral part of their business. Business retailers increased their social media marketing revenue by 133%.

Mobile phones 

More than three billion people in the world are active on the Internet. Over the years, the Internet has steadily gained more and more users, growing from 738 million in 2000 to 3.2 billion in 2015. Approximately 81% of the current population in the United States have a social media profile that they use frequently. The use of mobile phones is very beneficial for social media marketing because these devices allow people to surf the web instantly. and access social networking sites. The use of mobile phones has grown at a rapid pace, which has revolutionized the buying process, allowing consumers to easily get real-time pricing and product information and allowing businesses to keep their subscribers updated and reminded of great deals and new products. Many companies are now placing QR codes (Quick Response) along with products for individuals to access the company's website or online services from their smartphones. Retailers use QR codes to facilitate consumer interaction with brands by linking the code to brand websites, promotions, product information, or any other mobile-enabled content.

In addition, the use of real-time bidding in the mobile advertising industry is high and growing due to its value for web browsing on the go.

In 2012, Nexage, a provider of live bidding for mobile advertising, reported a 37% increase in revenue each month. Adfonic, another mobile advertisement publishing platform, reported a 22 billion increase in searches in the same year.

Mobile devices are becoming increasingly popular with 5.7 billion people worldwide using them, and this has played a role in how consumers interact with the media and has many other implications for TV ratings, advertising, mobile commerce, and many more. The use of mobile media, such as streaming audio or mobile video, is on the rise, with more than 100 million users predicted to access online content through a mobile device in the United States. Mobile video revenue consists of pay-per-view downloads, advertising, and subscriptions. As of 2013, the number of mobile phone users worldwide was 73.4%.

In 2017, figures indicate that more than 90% of internet users will be accessing online content through their phones.

Social Media Strategies

There are two main strategies for engaging social media as marketing tools:

Passive approach 

Social media can be a useful source of market information and customer feedback. Blogs, content communities, and forums are platforms where people share their feedback and recommendations on brands, products, and services. Businesses can use and analyze customer social media voices and reviews for marketing purposes;  In this sense, social media is a relatively inexpensive source of market intelligence that marketers and managers can use to track and respond to. For example, the internet erupted with videos and photos of the iPhone 6 "bend test" that showed the coveted phone could be bent by hand. This has created confusion among customers who have been waiting months for the latest iPhone to be launched. However, Apple immediately issued a statement saying that the problem is extremely rare and that the company has taken several steps to make the body of the mobile device stronger and more reliable. Unlike traditional market research methods such as surveys, focus groups, and data collection that are time-consuming and costly and take weeks or even months to analyze, marketers can use social media to get "live" or " real " information about consumer behavior and views on the company's brand or products.

Active approach 

Social media can be used not only as public relations and direct marketing tools but also as communication channels targeted at very specific audiences with social media influencers and social media personalities, as well as effective customer acquisition tools. Technologies that predate social media, such as broadcast television and newspapers, can also provide advertisers with a fairly precise target audience, given that ads placed during a sports game broadcast or in the sports section of a newspaper are more likely to be read by sports fans. However, social networking sites can more accurately target specialized markets. Using digital tools such as Google Adsense, advertisers can target their ads to very specific demographics, such as people who are interested in social entrepreneurship, political activism associated with a particular political party, or video games. Google Adsense does this by finding keywords in the posts and comments of social media users. It would be difficult for a TV channel or paper newspaper to provide advertising aimed at this purpose.

Social media is in many cases seen as a great tool to avoid costly market research. They are known for providing a short, fast and direct way to reach an audience through a person who is widely known. For example, an athlete who is supported by a sporting goods company also brings their support to millions of people who are interested in what they do or how they play, and now they want to be part of that athlete through their endorsements to these particular companies. At one point, shoppers used to visit stores to view the products from famous athletes, but now you can browse the latest clothing from celebrities like Cristiano Ronaldo., at the touch of a button. He advertises them to you directly through his Twitter, Instagram m, ism, and Facebook accounts.

Facebook and LinkedIn are the leading social networks where users can target their ads with hyperlinks. Hyper targeting uses not only public profile information but also information that users submit but hide from others. There are several examples of firms engaging in some form of public dialogue to improve customer relationships. Marketing professionals have noticed that business leaders such as Jonathan Schwartz, President, and CEO of Sun Microsystems, and Vice President of McDonaldsBob Langert regularly post on their executive blogs, encouraging clients to interact and freely express their feelings, ideas, suggestions, or comments about their posts, the company, or its products. Using influencers (such as popular bloggers) can be a very effective way to launch new products or services. Among political leaders in office, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has the most followers at 40 million, while US President Donald Trump comes in second with 25 million followers. Modi has used social media platforms to bypass traditional media channels to reach India's young and urban population of 200 million.

Keys errors

Experts have identified some of the main mistakes in the use of SMM for the media:

1. Publications without niche analysis, competitors, and content plan development
2. Lack of interaction in comments (discussions) with subscribers;
3. Unethical behavior of administrators in response to negative comments from subscribers;
4. Removing negative comments. All comments must be answered, even the negative ones. This way you show users that you care;
5. Failure to comply with principles and laws;
6. Maintaining the wrong proportion of “informative content: entertaining content” The generally accepted norm is 80/20, where 20 are promotional posts and 80 are entertaining/engaging;
7. Use of one type of content;
8. Lack of a common marketing strategy.

SMM Specialists

Basic requirements for an SMM specialist:

• Development of a strategy for writing a content plan: determining the target audience, researching the interests of the audience, determining the behavior of the audience, analyzing the client niche, developing a base for the audience, selecting a site with a high concentration of the target audience, developing a general strategy for presence in social networks, selecting tools and channels, optimally solving problems, developing a customer loyalty system, determining the impact of SMM, integrating SMM activity into the overall marketing strategy of the company. Placing publications on social networks, analyzing user engagement, holding contests, and working with the audience.
• SMM skills: correctly position the community, manage targeted advertising on Vkontakte, Facebook, and Instagram, understand advertising mechanisms, predict the budget of targeted advertising, optimize it, hold contests and flash mobs, develop applications for social networks, create and promote events, manage viral marketing, work with geo-services, work with a system of offers, design and conduct special projects, professional social networks, understand the principles of forming ratings and tops, create channels on video hosting sites, build affiliate programs in social networks, use services to optimize work.
• Community management: steer the discussion in the right direction, neutralize negative user attitudes, increase user activity in communities, increase content re-visits, organize and host online events, and organize a support service through social networks.
• Content management: create a content map for various sites, adapt existing content to the format of a blog, video hosting, write texts to fit a social network, blog, distribute social releases, prepare newsbreaks, and create scripts for videos.
• Working with interfaces: branding the community, creating community design, integrating the site with social networks, integrating social networks with an electronic store, introducing incentives for joining, creating landing pages, creating start pages, creating tabs, and working with stand-along blogs.
• Work with opinion leaders: identify opinion leaders of the target audience, organize events for opinion leaders, conduct sampling campaigns, and work with communities of civil marketers.
• Analytics: use monitoring, monitor social networks, and blogs manually or with the help of special services, conduct newsworthy analytics, conduct sentiment analytics, find the source of negativity in social networks and blogs, analyze company performance, work with major web analytics systems, generate unique links, track sources, and quality of traffic, calculate the cost of a target action, analyze changes in the information field, conduct research in social networks, determine the nature of the negative, use social network statistics tools.
• PR on the Internet: negotiate with online media editors, understand the basics of social psychology, conduct marketing analysis, engage in media planning,and  media trade, formulate publications of materials, understand the specifics of working with a brand, use classic Internet marketing tools.
• General management skills: understand key audience needs, negotiate, monitor trends in SMM, find partners and manage the process of working with them, formulate templates based on successful campaigns, prepare presentations, company calendar plan and stick to it, prepare reports, defend concepts in front of management, organize brainstorming in the project group, manage projects.

Due to the constant complication of SMM strategies and the increasing requirements for brand pages on social networks, there is a trend to divide the responsibilities of SMM specialists into many different narrowly focused managers:

• Project manager
• Content Manager
• Copywriter
• Designer /motion-designer
• Moderator
• Community Manager
• Targeting
• Photographer / Videographer
• SERM aka Reputation Management

Key performance indicators

Let's take a look at the general indicators that allow you to evaluate the effectiveness of marketing on social networks.

Organic Follower Growth (OFG)

OFG (organic growth followers) are users of social networks who have subscribed to a page, public, or group without advertising communication with them. This indicator may indicate the quality of the content posted, and the brand/personal brand recognition.

OFG can be calculated manually, and on the social network Facebook it can be viewed in the "Statistics" - "Subscribers" section.

Organic-like growth (OL) 

OL (organic likes) is an indicator of "likes" for one publication or publications posted over a certain period, in the case when the publication is not promoted using targeted advertising tools or paid placement of an informational message in communities or with a blogger. This indicator can indicate the quality of the posted content, as well as loyalty to the brand/personal brand. Organic Like Growth can be manually calculated to compare the number of likes for another period (for example, the previous month) and draw conclusions about the interests of the audience, regarding the most popular content.

Community Audience Growth

The indicator allows you to evaluate the effectiveness of the content and the quality of interaction with subscribers for a certain period and is measured as a percentage. It is calculated as the ratio of new subscribers to the number of former subscribers.

Cost per subscriber

This is the cost of one attracted subscriber through the use of advertising communication channels on the Internet. It is calculated as the ratio of the advertising budget for a certain period to the number of attracted subscribers. [19]

ER on Instagram account

ER (engagement rate) is the level of engagement in an account. Most often it is calculated by the formula:

Her followers are the number of account followers, and interactions are the number of interactions (likes, comments, private messages, clicks on the "share" button) for a certain period over which the average is made.

Approach to SMM in different countries

Approach to SMM in different countries

Methods and methods of promotion on the Internet in different countries are different primarily for a number several:

• platform popularity. For example, Facebook in Russia is positioned more as a business platform. While in the US it is more comparable to Odnoklassniki.
• Content form. Even on the same platforms, the format of the content provided is different, which is taken into account when drawing up a content plan and strategy as a whole. For example, in Russia, Instagram posts with fairly voluminous texts remain popular, while in other countries the number of characters is reduced to a minimum.
• Different budgets (cost of the company, clicks, etc.)
• Mechanics to get involved. When building a strategy, an analysis of the target audience is carried out. And depending on the location of the user, marketers conclude that this or that scheme of audience involvement is necessary.

Measurements and Performance Monitoring

Marketing actions on social media take different forms, which makes the analysis of their performance more complex. For this, there are measures, some objective and others subjective.

Objective measures

In terms of objective metrics, businesses can measure their social media exposure, which is the number of people who connect with the business through social media.

To measure this impact, various figures must be taken into account3 :

• The number of page views and unique visitors coming from the social platforms where the company operates. It's about knowing how much of the traffic to the company's website comes from social media.
• The number of fans and followers on social media pages. This, therefore, takes into account Facebook and Myspace fans or Twitter subscribers.
• Shares and bookmarks. This is to check how many upvotes or even bookmarks the company has received and to see how often the content is shared by users of these social media. This particularly concerns sites like Digg or even Delicious (website).

Al this allows the company to compare its exposure between all social media and to know which is the most effective in terms of visibility.

The second objective measure concerns engagement, that of our audience through social media.

• The first indicator of this involvement is the exposure measurement seen above. This refers to the number of unique visitors or page views to your business site from social media. These figures will indicate to the company if the public is xpoexposed their messages on Facebook, to their tweets has the motivation to go to the company's website.
• The second indicator concerns the bounce rate. These are visitors to the company's website who leave it instantly because it does not correspond to what the public is looking for and thought they would find after the first contact via social media. This is very negative because it means that the image that the company wishes to convey via its site does not satisfy its target.
• We then find the number of comments that a company's publications have generated. Involvement is then proportional to the number of comments posted. The higher the number of comments, the more positive it is for the company.
• Finally, the company can rely on the visit time and the number of pages visited by the target. The more time the visitor spends on the company's site, the more it leads to a strong relationship between the visitor and the company. This means that the first link created through social media has a favorable outcome. It is the opposite of the bounce rate.

All the same, the company must remain vigilant because certain social media, such as the sharing of bookmarks, do not allow this visitor involvement to be measured.

In fact, when an Internet user posts a link to our site on a community site, the number of people who visit it will not necessarily be of interest. This will therefore increase the bounce rate but also the visit rate. However, not all visitors will turn into customers.

Subjective measures of performance 

In social media, human interactions remain subjective because it is difficult to measure the value of a conversation or the sharing of a bookmark.

It seems difficult, if not impossible, to objectively measure the quality of a conversation 3. The best conversations are those that will bring customers as close as possible to the company and its products. These are in-depth conversations about the company's products, thee functions, assets, the operation: the customers seem genuinely interested. The problem is that some people will take advantage of these social media and these conversations to criticize the company and be negative. This therthereoferefore constitutes quality conversations.

Customer questions that are not answered by the company are also negative conversations. The company must take advantage of every opportunity to start discussions with its customers and create a bond with them.

In general, the key is to make the most of public exchanges to encourage potential and current customers to become more involved in the company. It is thanks to the community nature of social media that everyone will share their opinion on a company and its products which will then be exposed to a new audience.

Different measures for each social media

Since social media are different from each other, the measures are therefore different for each of them.

Measurement for social networks:

• The number of comments made following one of the company's statuses.
• The number of fans or friends of the company.
• The number of discussions started and the number of replies received to these discussions.
• The number of videos and photos uploaded by fans of the company.
• The number of videos and photos in which the company appears.
• Direct traffic to the blog or company site from a social networking site.
• The average time and the number of pages that have been visited.

Measures for sharing bookmarks:

• The number of bookmarks that reference the company's website or blog.
• The number of comments generated about bookmarks.
• The number of votes, positive or negative, for these bookmarks.
• The traffic generated to the company site by the bookmarking site.
• The average time and number of page views by visitors coming from the sharing site.

Measures for micro-blogging:

• The number of subscribers.
• The number of followers who respond to the company's tweets.
• The total number of responses received.
• The number of retweets of company posts
• The number of tweets generated by the company's hashtags.

Measures for social sharing:

• The number of times a photo or video is viewed.
• The number of comments generated by a photo or video.
• The number of reviews, positive or negative.
• The number of times a photo or video has been added to a favorites list.
• The number of times a photo or video has been added to a group.
• The number of friends or subscribers to publications on the company's site.