Talking about the business development in the social networks, it is necessary to mention the basic model of brand promotion — SMM. SMM (Social Media Marketing) is the promotion of the site or the company’s services through social media marketing, that is, through communication with the target audience through social resources. Thus, this method allows the user to draw traffic to the site directly, rather than through search engines. SMM covers not only social networks but platforms such as blogs, forums, online communities, and various media resources.
Basics of SMM
One of the main advantages of SMM is its durability: this method works for the future, creating the desired image or a positive perception of the brand among the target audience. The SMM optimization tool came with the emergence of major social networks like Facebook (2004) and Twitter (2006), in Russia -. “Classmates” (2006) and “VKontakte” (2006). Of course, social networks emerged before – for instance, Classmates.com (1995) and Livejournal.com (1999), but they were not so significant, and the number of users of these sites was limited. There are many popular social networks that you can choose from and they change over time, so make sure to keep an eye on it.
Today, when the Internet is so popular, the SMM has a huge range of tools to promote (according to some estimates, there are more than 100), which can be divided into categories:
- Creation and promotion of brand communities – Community companies, meetings and events in social networks, communities, the development of each company’s product, support groups and communities of employees like Edubirdie promotes edubirdie essays.
- Promotion of niche social networks – in closed social networks, the promotion of media content, promotion of news on news services (News2, Newsland), marking the brand in the geo-services (binding to a specific geographical point), promotion of social networks through mobile applications through recommendatory websites.
- Creation and development of own information platforms – corporate blogs and video blogs, online TV, writing guest posts on thematic resources, RSS marketing, placement on the social bookmarking resources, management of corporate sites on Twitter, Instagram, update status on Facebook and the official page in other social networks, building partnerships in social networks and so on.
- Promotion of content – audio content, video content, photos, the spread of social releases, writing articles for the Wikipedia, the unique distribution of free content (such as e-books).
- Conducting interactive shares – virtual flash mobs, webinars, polls, consulting shares (with experts), testing stock of games in social networks, as well as exclusive conditions for the company resource users (free visits, discounts, etc.)
- Creation and promotion of interactive elements – promotional applications, widgets, promotion of “representatives” of the company in the social networking applications.
- Work with opinion leaders – to attract a famous person in a blog or a forum to discuss, organizations or offline events for bloggers, initiating a controlled “leakage” of the data in the blog-sphere, etc.
- “Viral” marketing – creating content, viral sites, spread memes (information objects – pictures, video, character – which quickly disperse over the Net and RL and become widely known).
- Personal Branding – popularization of the personal profile (or profiles of employees), the promotion of promotional character, personal blog manager, site promotion through business linkages.
- Active communication – communication with the representatives of Central Asian forums, hidden marketing, promotion services of the company in question-and-answer posting articles on communication resources, the creation of “hot lines” thematic online communities.
And this is not a complete list of SMM tools. The most basic thing to remember, using such methods is a thorough preliminary study of the social networking audience, which the company plans to engage, lay emphasis on the target users and attract them. It requires a considerable time, but is extremely effective.
Also published on Medium.
[…] and there, but it also highlighted how much diversity there is worldwide. As well as you want to make your company stand out from your competition, so everyone wants to be perceived as unique and […]