SMM Promotion: A Step-By-Step Guide

What is SMM and what is it for

The abbreviation SMM stands for Social Media Marketing, that is,  promotion on social networks . It includes a whole range of actions, one way or another aimed at finding new customers using social networks: promotion, creation and maintenance of the necessary image, live communication with visitors, which will help to gain trust.

The goal of SMM promotion is to attract and retain people, ideally make them your regular customers and win their interest.

In order for the promotion in social networks to really work and make a profit, it is not enough just to create a group. It is necessary to fill it with high-quality content, work with different channels, invest time and energy in a page on a social network.

Only an integrated approach ensures a good result.

Today, SMM promotion in social networks combines a complex of various actions, each of which meets its own goal.

SMM strategy

Before creating and maintaining a page on a social network, you need to think about what it should be like. Working out a strategy, in fact, planning actions in the long term, for which you need:

• get acquainted with the affairs of competitors, analyze their behavior on social networks;
• find out for yourself how the company is now represented in social networks, what reputation it has, whether it is known and for what;
• determine what the target client looks like, the consumer of your product, what are his interests and hobbies, the format of communication and needs;
• create a unique selling proposition, which you will subsequently promote using social networks and which should show users why they should choose your company;
• understand how to position yourself on the social network.

Positioning

Positioning falls into three categories:

• strictly commercial , in which only information related to cooperation is published in the community;
• informal , designed for communication, in which users are attracted through interesting information, pictures and memes, and only then unobtrusive advertising and measures to engage them in the sales funnel are added to them;
• mixed , when official information alternates with entertainment and information.

Which format to choose depends primarily on the specifics and the desired image of the company, as well as on the client's portrait drawn up at the previous stages.

Graphic design

Visitors are attracted by a bright, pleasant design, which will later be associated with your company. When working out the design of the page, you should rely on your own brand books (if any) or the requests and needs of target customers. The brand should be reflected in the avatar, in the design of menu items, in other features of the visual presentation.

Create a page

Before creating and launching a group on a social network, you need to work out a few more important aspects.

1. Name. It is recommended to use the brand name in combination with popular queries entered by target users as a group name. It can be anything depending on the subject of the business: from goods for a summer residence to children's clothing.
   
2. Description. It should summarize what your group is and why you should subscribe to it at all. It is recommended to keep the information concise, without going into details: their visitor will find out later when he decides to stay in your community.
   
3. URL. A short link should be remembered and presented in the same way as the name itself does, so it should be given special attention. It usually includes the name of the company. It is recommended to make the URL shorter so that the user can easily remember the address.
4. Alerts. The included notifications and alerts are a good way to keep up with spikes in user activity and respond to them in a timely manner. A promptly responding employee evokes more sympathy among visitors than a person who remains silent for several hours or even days.
   
5. Privacy. Obviously, the group should not be closed (except for a while, while work is still being carried out in it): users are more willing to join open groups. Disabling comments is also not recommended, because clients feel more comfortable when they can communicate. To block unwanted content, some social networks have a spam filter function.
   
6. Discussions. Instagram and Facebook provide an opportunity to add thematic discussions to the community. It can be used to create a theme with reviews, customer questions, or reviews for products and services purchased from you. Let users create content for the page themselves.
   
7. Symbols. Geotags, which show users where you are, and hashtags, by which new people often come, can be used as identification marks. The community of any company is simply obliged to use hashtags with the name of this organization: this is convenient for users, as it allows you to filter content, and for the company itself, because it increases its awareness.
8. Products. Instagram and Facebook allow you to add product cards with prices and descriptions to a group, and if the organization sells something, this method is a good way to increase sales. But for it to work, the cards must be designed in a competent and attractive way.
   

Content strategy

The main direction of SMM promotion is working with content that the community posts on social networks. It needs not only to be thought over and worked out, but also to be organized in such a way that the records are published regularly and are relevant every time, and not repeated due to information hunger.

Existing content categories

Content on social networks is divided into several conventional categories:

• educational , the purpose of which is to give the user something to learn;
• news - news related to the activities of the company or any events in the world;
• commercial - content aimed directly at selling a product, such as a description of its benefits or an offer to purchase;
• entertaining - aimed at cheering or amusing the client, improving his mood;
• custom - one that is created not by the SMM specialist himself, but by users who come to the company's page.

Which type to choose

Each type of content is important in its own way. It is worth combining types based on your own image and positioning. An organization that presents itself only in a commercial way is forced to limit itself to relevant posts, and one that relies on an informal approach should focus on entertainment and educational recordings. To organize your content correctly, you need to understand what you want to say to your customers, how often you want to say it, and in what style.

What else is worth considering

It's not just what you write that matters, but how you do it and how you present it. The content should be regular: what frequency you set in the beginning, and this should be adhered to. It must be formatted correctly, so that the texts are easy to read, and the pictures can be viewed.

And remember:

Don't be afraid to speak to the client in their language and demonstrate that the same person represents the company. Visitors enjoy dealing with real people more than faceless representatives of organizations.

Advertising

Once the content is created and published, you need to make sure that the target audience sees it. The hashtags and algorithms of social networks themselves are clearly not enough for this, so the best way is to use advertising accounts that provide  targeted advertising . Its main advantage is that it is shown only to the category of users for which you configure it, so that non-target customers will be eliminated immediately, and you will be able to win the attention of those for whom your offer is relevant.

Advertising cost

Payment depending on the choice of advertising strategy can be charged per click, per view or per interaction with the post, and it is worth choosing a method depending on the specifics of your business. 

Advertising cost depends on:

• on the number of competitors : the higher it is, the more expensive;
• on the relevance and quality of content : if it is good and really useful for users, the price will be lower;
• on the amount of text : the more, the higher the cost.

It is worth calculating an advertising strategy so as not to go into the red. The main thing is to remember: 

Commercial results will not come immediately, and you should expect a return on content and advertising no earlier than three months after the start of SMM promotion.

Types of advertising

1. Targeted. You can target by gender, age, list of hobbies and groups that the target audience visits. First of all, you should promote commercial posts, and secondly, informative and interesting posts that will attract curious people interested in new information.
2. In communities. In addition to targeted advertising, there are several other sources of advertising:
3. collaboration with large communities, during which they publish your posts or advertise your product with their own publications;
4. buying advertising from special companies that already have their own agent network of communities where they will post your posts.

The choice of the group in which you will advertise is also important. It will be better if it turns out to be similar to yours in the general direction, but at the same time without a pronounced commercial focus. You should choose communities with good activity, whose subscribers are real people, not bots, and leave likes and comments on the page. You should make a list of suitable communities, send commercial offers to administrators, wait and familiarize yourself with the terms. With the right choice of groups, such advertising can give no worse effect than targeted advertising.

Return on advertising

To understand if an ad is performing well, you should monitor subscriber growth, number of unsubscribed users, visitor activity, and reach. In addition to them, it is important the number of commercial actions that users have performed (asked how to buy a product or what is its price, etc.), the ratio of likes, reposts and views both in specific posts and in general.

• If you have a website, important indicators are the number of clicks to it from social networks, the conversion for this traffic and the quality of the flow of visitors from the group.
• Based on the data obtained, the payback is calculated. It should turn out to be a plus in a few months after the start, and if time passes, and the payback does not grow, then something in the SMM strategy is being done wrong, it is worth tracking what it is and making adjustments.

Working with reputation

Reputation on the Internet is more about SERM specialists, but the formation of the necessary image is directly related to SMM. This is not only the style of communication, the format of the group and the reaction to news feeds - it is also the way company representatives behave with their potential customers.

Good manners

To form an optimal reputation on the network, you should adhere to the rules of good form:

1. process the incoming negative, if possible, resolve the existing conflict situations;
2. do not ignore brand mentions, both in a positive and negative way;
3. giving feedback to group visitors, answering their questions, communicating - this will give you the impression of a person who is genuinely interested in the client.

Why negative reviews are useful

When properly handled with negative reviews, they can even be beneficial. If you leave them unattended, the person who published them will try to spread the negative to the maximum number of sites, but if you extinguish his dissatisfaction in advance by offering a discount or compensation, there is a chance to get a grateful client instead of an angry person. In addition, the interaction of a company representative with him will be visible to the entire network, and third-party viewers will appreciate the professionalism of the organization when working with negative, which will have a good effect on the reputation.

Collaboration with opinion leaders

Popular bloggers and media people are able to advertise a product or service perfectly. Ordering advertising from them can be expensive, but their fans usually listen to such people, and therefore the effectiveness of such PR will be higher than if an advertising post was published by an ordinary group. Thus, you can make people recognize your brand, trust you, you just need to find a blogger whose articles topics are relevant to the target audience.

Contests

One of the methods of SMM promotion on social networks is conducting contests that allow you to make yourself known.

Popular options

This can be a giveaway of any product for a repost or creative competition: from writing a review to publishing a photo with a company hashtag. If the competition involves the creation of something (a story, a drawing, a photograph), it also becomes a source of user-generated content and an additional advertising channel: usually participants also post their work on their personal pages.

Good competition rules

1. The competition must be relevant to the target audience. You need to find the right prize and conditions that will interest potential customers.
2. It is worth watching the seasonality: events can be timed to coincide with an event or date.
3. The prize must be consistent with the effort the person put in to participate. Obviously, for a creative contest, it must be more valuable than for a regular drawing on reposts.

What else is useful to know about social media promotion

SMM promotion is relevant for almost any direction, but it is important to take into account the specifics of the topic. This is not only filling the group with posts, but also advertising, working with reputation, assessing payback and interacting with users - a whole range of measures that are difficult to carry out without cooperating with a competent SMM specialist. Events are often lengthy and complex, especially the creation of specialized content.

If you cannot afford to hire a professional on the staff,  seek help from representatives of large companies . They will gladly help you with reliable promotion on social networks.