Week 4 Social Media Midterm

Marketing and Customer Needs

• Marketing is the process of creating value for customers and building strong customer relationships to capture value from customers in return.
• Customer needs are categorized into three types:
  • Need: a customer feels deprived of something necessary physically, socially, or individually.
  • Want: the form needs take as they are influenced by culture and personality.
  • Demand: wants that are actionable with buying power.

Social Media and its Benefits

• Social media enables brands to:
  • Be more accessible to potential customers.
  • Showcase products, services, and offers.
  • Build relationships with prospects and customers.
  • Engage customers with a mobile-first experience.
  • Gain insights about audience demographics.
• Social media attracts an audience, strengthens trust, and builds relationships.
• Successful social media requires planning, preparation, strategy, and commitment.

Social Media Marketing Strategy

• A social media marketing strategy outlines the strategies and tactics for incorporating social media into a business.
• Social media marketing objectives ladder up to overall marketing objectives and digital/content marketing objectives.

Social Media Marketing Plan

• A social media marketing plan is a living document that outlines an organization's social media goals and guides the actions needed to achieve them.
• A customer persona is a representation of a customer's target market based on data collected from existing and target markets.
• Social media listening involves monitoring the internet to determine what is being said about a particular brand, topic, or industry.

Conducting a SWOT Analysis

• Strengths: strong brand presence, consistent social media posts, and a high number of followers.
• Weaknesses: lack of social media management tool, low engagement, and inadequate content.
• Opportunities: target market likely to engage on social media, emerging social media management tools, and partnering with suppliers.
• Threats: high competition, slow adaptation to new technologies, and declining organic reach.

Social Media Metrics

• Awareness: the number of people exposed to a message.
• Reach: the number of times a message was displayed.
• Factors influencing reach: posting frequency, well-timed posts, participating in trending topics, and advertising.
• Engagement: the number of times people interact with posts through reactions, comments, shares, and clicks.
• Ways to generate engagement: posting relevant content, asking questions, seeking feedback, and running ads.

Creating and Optimizing Social Media Networks

• Complete each section of the social media profile.
• Update cover photos and profile pictures.
• Ensure consistency across all networks.
• Add company website URL and links to other social media networks.
• Include relevant industry keywords and hashtags.

Distribution and Content Strategy

• Social media distribution strategy determines the network and frequency of posts and content types.
• Social media content strategy involves planning, development, and management of social media content.
• Content should deliver value.
• Social media content calendar allows for planning, creating, and scheduling content.

Tuning and Adjusting the Social Media Marketing Plan

• Continuous process of adjusting and improving the social media marketing plan.
• Determine if goals and objectives were met and make changes as needed.
• Determine what topics and content performed best on each social media platform.

Benefits of Social Media Advertising

• Brand awareness
• Greater reach
• Increased social and website traffic
• Improved search engine rankings
• Increased leads and higher conversion rates
• Highly measurable
• Audience targeting
• Marketplace and customer insights
• Increased brand loyalty
• Increased revenue

The Customer Journey and Advertising

• Emotional appeal and rich imagery: awareness
• Education and user testimonials: consideration
• Promotions and exclusive offers: conversion
• Best practices in social media advertising:
  • Select the right goals, platforms, and ad formats
  • Target the right people
  • Consider the ad funnel and buyer's journey
  • Use high-quality and engaging videos and images
  • Include clear call-to-actions and corresponding call-to-action links
  • Embed tracking pixels and use UTM parameters
  • A/B test everything
  • Automate wherever possible
  • Continually monitor performance and make adjustments as needed