Social Media Marketing: Guide to Work as an SMM

Social media marketing is an effective strategy for local and global enterprises in reaching their target audience. And if you are an active user of different social media platforms, you might be interested to become a social media marketing expert in the Philippines, check out this guide to freelancers or VA.

What is Social Media Marketing and How Does it Work?

Social media marketing has made conventional marketing techniques obsolete as social media has driven leads and sales dramatically while allowing businesses to generate brand followers. As defined, social media marketing involves the use of different social media platforms, such as Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, Twitter, and Instagram, to connect your brand with your target viewers, initiate conversation, and drive people to a website for possible conversion. In this marketing approach, social media marketers engage with their followers, publish interesting content, and monitor social media advertisements regularly.

Consumers no longer need to visit a brick-and-mortar store and ask any sales associate to get product information. They only use the internet to find the exact information before making an informed decision on whether to purchase the product or go somewhere else. You will need digital marketing to get in touch with your audience through various multimedia channels and digital content.

How Social Media Marketing Works?

Online businesses are now using social media marketing to support their digital marketing efforts while drawing more traffic to their website. This marketing tactic can help you increase brand awareness, customer engagement and generate more followers, which can lead to potential buyers or clients from anywhere in the world.

Social media greatly supports all of your digital marketing initiatives, from website marketing to SEO. If you develop a video tutorial, for instance, that conveys valuable information to the target audience, you can use social media to promote the video contents and drive customers to the landing page for the actual purchase.

Business owners need to understand how digital marketing is being utilized to help them maximize the capacity of their social media marketing campaigns. Digital marketing is composed of different elements that are used to help businesses reach their marketing goals within a specific timeline. These digital marketing strategies are as follows:

Search Engine Optimization

Digital age customers now use keywords to find exactly what they need on different search engines. By giving emphasis on specific keywords and topics within your site, you are able to reach those online visitors who are likely interested in seeking your products or services.

Search engine optimization involves the process of optimizing your digital content in order to rank higher on the results page and become visible to your target audience. SEO can help draw more traffic to your website while ensuring high quality leads that can be converted to sales.

Website Marketing

A business website serves as the cornerstone of your digital marketing campaign because this is where you create the first impression for your brand from target customers. Since the ultimate goal of social media marketing is to convert your leads to sales, the vast majority of your marketing initiatives should encourage customers to take appropriate actions, such as subscribing to your website or purchasing any product from you.

When designing a website, you should pay attention to its overall appearance which often includes graphic design, page layout, font sizes that, and digital contents. Customers will stop engaging to the site if they find the layout not appealing or if the contents are already outdated. Apart from the appearance of the site, it should also be designed with ease of navigation, so customers will keep moving forward down to the funnel and eventually take the necessary actions.

Since customers now spend more time using smartphones, creating a website that can be optimized for mobile devices may significantly help expand your online reach. That’s why you have to optimize your digital marketing content for mobile applications because this is where to find your prospective clients.

Content Marketing

Content marketing involves the use of marketing materials that are utilized to attract customers, enhance brand awareness, and growing more organic traffic. This can be created in various forms, including but not limited to:

1. Thank you for an email (for subscription or purchase)
2. Promotional emails about upcoming sales and new service offers
3. Informative E-book
4. Newsletters
5. Blog articles
6. Website pages, subscription pages, and service pages
7. Online product catalogs or brochures
8. Marketing videos
9. Pictures
10. Product/service testimonials
11. PPC campaigns
12. Podcast

Regardless of which marketing materials you want to use as part of your social media marketing, you will need to create unique and engaging content and link these to your social media platform. The key to a successful social media campaign is choosing topics that may seem appealing most to your target customers. Make sure to conduct prior market research about the profiles of your customers to ensure that you know them or to identify the exact contents that will keep them interested.

Why Social Media Marketing?

Businesses were previously sharing their marketing content on social media to generate leads and increase traffic to their service pages. The use of social media, however, has matured beyond being just an online platform where people can post comments or upload pictures. With social media, you can clearly define your business goals which must include:

• Building leads and conversions
• Enhancing website traffic and customer engagement
• Improving brand awareness and online presence
• Creating an individual brand identity
• Targeting the right social media ads relevant to the interest of the audience
• Understanding how social media marketing affects consumer behavior and sales generation
• Creating more business networks and selling opportunities
• Promoting communication with clients, customers and global enterprises
• Monitoring social media interactions by promptly responding to queries and concerns

When your network of customers on social media platforms becomes bigger, it will also become easier for you to attain every other marketing goal you may have. Consider formulating a social media marketing plan through keyword research and content planning to consolidate various content ideas that will keep your target audience enticed. You may also check out what other business organizations in your industry are doing to initiate engagement on social media platforms.

Contents play an important role in various areas of online marketing. Regular posting of digital content, including images, how-to-guide articles, videos, and infographics, can help customers acquire valuable information that they will find useful and compelling.

Where to Learn Social Media Marketing?

The digital economy is now fuelled up by the existence of social media, which provides relevant content and establishes an audience for a specific niche. You will definitely need social media marketing expertise to build your brand identity, whether you are promoting your own business or trying to expand your career horizons. Here are some useful resources which can improve your social media marketing skills and help you leverage social media to create bigger online reach:

Video Story Creation

Recorded videos allow you to connect your brand to the target audience, and they should catch their attention within a short span. There are short online courses that will train you on how to create compelling videos only using your Android phones or iPhones. These short-term courses can help you learn the basics for creating videos that draw attention from viewers, provide valuable information, and finish it with a call-to-action. Training modules may likely include:

1. Importance of video marketing and basic fundamentals for story structure
2. Creating high-quality video outputs with your smartphone or other mobile devices
3. Lighting enhancement and sound stabilization
4. Introduction of video-telling apps to get started

Social Media Marketing Blogs

Social media marketing requires excellent communication skills and creativity from someone who wants to maximize social media for business. And one effective way to enhance your social media marketing expertise is to follow the experts. Here are popular online blog resources you may check out to learn more information and develop new skills:

1. Scott Monty

Scott Monty is a well-known marketing expert who covers hundreds of interesting subjects regarding conventional and online marketing. His social media articles will surely provide vital information to keep you fresh about the latest happenings in the world of social media.

2. Social Media Explorer

The blog articles of Social Media Explorer are mostly written by renowned authors and contributors who have already published several reading materials on digital and social media marketing. SME also offers a diverse range of social media management services to global businesses that need to expand their online reach through great digital content and efficient social media advertisements. You may also check out Social Media Examiner, where you can discover tons of valuable content and social media marketing tips to keep your career up-to-date.

3. HubSpot Marketing Blog

HubSpot Marketing Blog regularly releases fresh and exciting content on every development in the world of social media networking. Right here in this platform, you can find useful content written by long-term experts in social media marketing campaigns.

• Acadium Digital Marketing Apprenticeship

Acadium features a digital apprenticeship program that lets you acquire relevant work experience while also taking online courses in line with social media marketing.

When you enroll at Acadium, you can build your own business portfolio and acquire a training certificate when you accomplish the digital apprenticeship. You may sign up for a business account if you wish to hire an apprenticeship, which you can offer a full-time position after the apprentice has completed the program.

The apprenticeship program of Acadium covers the following topics:

1. Fundamentals of Search Engine Optimization
2. Facebook Advertisement
3. Social media marketing on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Yelp
4. Email marketing

Publishing Templates for Social Media

1. Content Calendar Template

You might want to organize your content in an offline calendar tool before you upload the contents into a publishing tool. This free online template will help you sort out your social media materials in a spreadsheet that displays the actual date, time, and social media channel before releasing the contents into the platform. You may also use calendar templates to track down the performance of your social media campaigns by determining how much engagement these contents get from the audience.

2. Social Media Image Templates

Image templates allow you to monitor the engagement of your social media images. With this template, you are able to determine which among the images you have uploaded are generating more leads and conversions.

3. Instagram Templates

Since Instagram is the most popular image-oriented social media platform out there, expect your uploaded images to reach millions of online viewers simultaneously. Utilize this selection of beautiful Instagram templates to help your brand cut through the online crowd.

Facebook Advertising Blueprint

Facebook Ad Blueprint is a free online tool that offers everyone the basic skills at setting up Facebook advertising campaigns. Resource topics may provide valuable training for putting up, monitoring, and optimizing Facebook Ads in an effective manner. Such topics include:

1. A Beginner’s Guide to Finding Images for your Ads

2. How to Create an Ad on Facebook

3. How to set a budget and schedule your Facebook Ad campaign

4. Instagram for Business

EBooks for Social Media Marketing

Apart from blog articles, social media marketing EBooks are also considered great sources of valuable insights and information about the use of social media for business and professional life. You may check out these online reading materials to get more ideas on how social media marketing can help your business grow:

1. How to Use Instagram for Business

2. A Visual Guide to Creating the Perfect LinkedIn Company Page

3. How to Get More Twitter Followers

4. How to Attract Customers with Facebook

5. The Beginner’s Guide to Social Media

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free analytics tool that monitors expenditures for online advertising. Though learning the Google Analytics may require technical expertise, this also helps you establish conversion goals to determine which social media marketing campaign produces the most leads and definite sales.

Resources for Google Analytics may include the following topics:

1. Google Analytics for beginners

 2. Advanced Google Analytics

 3. Google Analytics for Power Users

 4. Getting Started with Google Analytics 360

5. Basics of Google Tag Manager

Business Website and Professional Portfolio

Building your own website allows you to differentiate your social media marketing skills from other market competitors.

You will need a professional online portfolio to highlight your skills, work experiences, case studies, and academic credentials.

There are free online courses that will teach you how to create an impressive WordPress website and a digital portfolio with case studies that clearly demonstrate your business solutions.

Key portions of the training module include:

1. Setting up WordPress and installing third-party themes

2. Applying drag-and-drop visual builders

3. Creating unique blog articles that are optimized for search engine

4. Creating your email list for communication purposes

5. Setting up Google Analytics for the website

Hubspot Inbound Marketing Certification

Hubspot offers a free certificate training program for Inbound Marketing, focusing on individuals who are interested to learn everything about content marketing. In this program, you only need to watch training videos at your own pace and strictly follow the course outline. Upon completing the course framework, just take the qualifying test to get an Inbound Marketing Certification from Hubspot.

The course outline will include:

1. The essentials of an effective inbound strategy

2. Website optimization

3. Fundamentals of blogging

4. Enhancing your social media content and digital marketing

5. Fundamentals of landing pages, lead generation and conversion process

Aside from the above-mentioned sample resources, you may also learn from other social media marketing tutorials, such as:

• Social media podcasts
• Slideshows & infographics about social media application
• Video tutorials or lectures from social media experts

While learning from these free templates, eBooks and courses can become your stepping stone towards a successful marketing campaign. You may always get better when you share videos, picture-perfect shots and informative articles on a regular basis. When you start creating original content, you can definitely build a powerful social media platform not only for your professional career but also for your brand.

Where to Apply for Social Media Marketing?

As a social media specialist, you are expected to plan, enforce, and manage the social media strategy of your client in order to build brand awareness, improve sales and establish rapport among online customers. To become qualified, any candidate should at least possess a Bachelor’s degree in communication, marketing, business administration, new media or any other related field. You may look for job vacancies from popular online job portals and freelancer sites, such as:

• Jobs.ph
• Jobs Search Philippines
• Jobstreet
• Glassdoor
• Myfuturejob
• Google for Jobs
• Pinoy jobs
• Jobfinderph.com
• JobIsland
• Job finder Philippines
• HireMe
• BestJobs.ph
• Kalibrr
• Jora
• Outsourcely
• Jobs Bulletin
• Jobsphilippines
• HiringVenue
• Indeed
• Craigslist
• Onlinejobs
• CareerJet
• Monster
• Itproasia.com
• Upwork
• Truelancer
• Freelancer.com

As you can see, social media marketing is essential for businesses since the internet greatly affects the purchasing decision of every consumer. Social media contents also create a huge impact on the credibility of every product or service, making it imperative for businesses and freelancers to boost their online visibility at all times.