Strategic Social Media Marketing: How to make it work for you?

This is the first part of my series of starting the Social Media Strategies course from EDx. Here I am going to be documenting my insights and learning from the course and applying it on a practical level.

I’ve signed up with Catchafire where I am currently volunteering with an organisation that helps veterans get free dental care in the USA. My role here is to do the following:

• Setup of professional social media profile(s) consistent with the Organization’s brand messaging in platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram, etc.
• Training for the Organization’s staff on how to manage social media account(s)

I’m going to be applying what I learn from this course to see if I can help this particular organisation develop an online presence by creating a social media account on the right platform for their needs.

And I am going to be sharing/writing my ideas here to see how it works.

The course has started on 23rd Oct, 2020 and will run for six weeks. So far here is what I’ve taken from it and how I am answering this from my work as a volunteer.

Social Media Marketing (SMM) can be overwhelming. When starting to work on a company’s SMM strategies, there are a few questions to ask.

1. What platforms to be active on?
2. What content should we be sharing?
3. How/When to respond to customers (read: engagements)
4. What sort of message will resonate with the audience.

To answer all these questions, we need ‘Social Media Listening’. The course then goes on to talk about other areas like ‘What is and not SM’, Steps in SM, Difference between paid/owned/earned media. (these topics will be covered in the following weeks so do stay tuned)

I like the idea where we talk about SM is not a platform but is an understanding of how various digital technologies facilitate interactions between consumers and other consumers and between consumers and companies. (In other words, Facebook, Snap are platforms).

We now move to discuss the five steps involved in the SMM process.

1. Develop objectives: have a specific marketing objective in mind. What are you trying to do eg: increase awareness, website visits, app installs, etc
2. Identify target network: who are we looking at targeting and have a clear understanding of the segment’s beliefs and attitudes.
3. Create/Curate Content: SM is about engaging customers. It is two ways, unlike traditional medium. What is unique here is that SM is not about directly advertising the brand but could be about other issues in which the brand is portrayed. Eg: we could talk about going for regular walks to keep fit and then talk about a particular brand of shoes.
4. Technology: This comes in later and depends on our objectives, audiences, etc. The below quote is imp to understand.

Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram are not social media. They are merely software platforms that enable social media — media that are shared among people.

We now come to learn about the differences between paid, owned and earned media. This is handy to know and can be useful to use such formulas for your social media strategies.

1. Owned is what a company has — website, FB page, Twitter account
2. Paid — advertising on social media platforms
3. Earned — word of mouth and this is probably the best way form of marketing.

All these can be used in either way and it is good to know-how. We can use paid media to bring customers on to your owned platform. And if the content/product is good, then they will share it making it earned.

This concludes a small part of the course and I am now moving on to take the quiz. Do come back and read on how this goes.