Creating a Social Media Plan for SMEs
By Otori Emmanuel
“Every business that wants to create global footprints must have a clear social media strategy”
When we have a product or service to offer, we have crossed the first line and the second is to be able to find the channels to ensure that words about what we sell get across to the audience that has the money value.
People usually use digital marketing and social media interchangeably; however, digital marketing is the broad variety of activities that are performed on the internet to ensure the promotion of goods to the audience on these platforms.
Social media is one of the components of digital marketing, which we would delve into as we enlighten small business owners about its functionality and use.
Through the ages past, businesses depended solely on the traditional form of media to reach customers for their products and services; with considerations to radio, television, newspaper which were the most appreciated as they could be used to reach a large number of people over a long distance.
However, this changed with the introduction of the internet as there were many questions the electronic media could not answer, such as reaching just a particular group of people within a time frame or to be able to monitor how many people are listening or watching per time, the digital media also proves to be cheaper than the traditional media as what is spent on traditional media to digital media is 1:3.
The above metrics is for Facebook, but could as well serve other platforms.
With digital media comes the ease of flexibility, choices and options to target a particular group of people, by location, age group, sex, hobbies and interests.
In fact, the clicks and impressions on a particular campaign whether organic or paid can be ascertained, who clicked what, the location, the overall visits, and this helps to plan better and reach an audience with exactly what they want, this became personalized marketing, which relinquishes the one message to many customers which is perceived as spam and substituted with one message to one customer.
Social Media Marketing is the process of gaining website traffic or attention through social media sites. Social media marketing programs usually create content that attracts attention and encourages readers to share it with their social networks.
A corporate message spreads from user to user and presumably resonates because it appears to come from a trusted source, as opposed to the brand or company itself.
Hence, this form of marketing is driven by word-of-mouth, meaning it results in earned media rather than paid media. Increased communication for organizations fosters brand awareness and often, improved customer service.
