What is social media marketing? | Social Media Strategies | Ameya eMarketing

What is social media marketing?

Social media marketing refers to the process of gaining traffic or attention through social media sites.

Social media itself is a catch-all term for sites that may provide radically different social actions. For instance, Twitter is a social site designed to let people share short messages or “updates” with others. Facebook, in contrast, is a full-blown social networking site that allows for sharing updates, photos, joining events and a variety of other activities.

Why Social Media Marketing is Important

According to Social Media Examiner, 97% of small businesses use social media to attract new customers, but 85% of business owners aren’t sure what social media tools to use. Unsettling is the statistic that 63% of consumers who search for businesses online are more likely to become consumers of brands with an established social media presence.

This demonstrates a huge potential for social media marketing to increase sales but a lack of understanding of how to achieve those results. The consumers are there, itching to become brand ambassadors, but where is your business?

Social media marketing helps to validate your brand and it’s no longer optional. It’s an essential way for companies to reach consumers, and when done correctly, it tells those consumers that their brand is active and focused on communication.

The longer you wait, the more you have to lose. When done effectively, social media marketing can lead to more customers, more traffic, and more engagement. Having a social media presence without an active social media marketing strategy can be just as catastrophic for your business as having no plan at all.

Before we get into how to build an effective social media marketing strategy and Social Media Services, here is a look at a few of the ways social media marketing can improve your business. For the ultimate list of benefits.

Key Principles for Social Media :

Social media is about conversations, community, connecting with the audience and building relationships. It is not just a broadcast channel or a sales and marketing tool.
Authenticity, honesty and open dialogue are key.
Social media not only allows you to hear what people say about you but enables you to respond. Listen first, speak second.
Be compelling, useful, relevant and engaging. Don’t be afraid to try new things, but think through your efforts before kicking them off.

Popular Social Media Tools and Platforms:

Blogs: A platform for casual dialogue and discussions on a specific topic or opinion.

Facebook: The world’s largest social network, with more than 1.55 billion monthly active users (as of the third quarter of 2015). Users create a personal profile, add other users as friends, and exchange messages, including status updates. Brands create pages and Facebook users can “like” brands’ pages.

Twitter: A social networking/micro-blogging platform that allows groups and individuals to stay connected through the exchange of short status messages (140 character limit).

YouTube & Vimeo: Video hosting and watching websites.

Flickr: An image and video hosting website and online community. Photos can be shared on Facebook and Twitter and other social networking sites.

Instagram: A free photo and video sharing app that allows users to apply digital filters, frames and special effects to their photos and then share them on a variety of social networking sites.

Snapchat: A mobile app that lets users send photos and videos to friends or to their “story.” Snaps disappear after viewing or after 24 hours. Currently, we are not allowing individual departments to have Snapchat accounts, but asking that they contribute to the Tufts University account.

LinkedIn Groups: A place where groups of professionals with similar areas of interest can share information and participate in a conversation.

Decide the key times to post

Much research has been done on when brands should be posting. By understanding when your audience is most active on social, you can post content at the optimal time for your brand, ensuring the highest levels of engagement.

Data collected from a wide variety of sources has enabled us to identify the top days and posting times on social media. Let’s take a look…

Facebook – The best days to post are Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, with the key time being 12 – 4 pm.
Instagram – The best days include Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, while the key time is 11 am – 1 pm.
Twitter – The best days to post are Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday around 12 pm.
LinkedIn – Look to post between 5 and 6 pm on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday.

 Check out your competitors

The last step to creating a social media strategy is to check out your competitors. You should identify…

Who are your closest competitors?
Which social channels are they using to connect with their audience?
What are they doing well and not so well?
What content are they producing and how is it performing?
Where do they need to improve on social?
The most effective way to do that is with social media listening.

Monitoring the sentiment around competitor's brands and within your niche is also important. This will help you to understand which key industry terms are trending, what content and campaign audiences are responding too, and how competitors’ strategies are changing over time.


By understanding your competitors and how they are interacting with their audiences, you will gain a better understanding of your market. You can then use these insights to better inform your social media marketing strategy.