Importance of Social Media in Digital Marketing

Social media plays a significant role in any digital marketing campaign. Failing to include social media in your campaign can lead result in a failure to meet your objectives.

There are numerous benefits to including social media in digital marketing.

Cost

Regardless of your budget, social media can form the basis of any digital marketing campaign. In addition, it does not cost anything to create a presence across social media.

The expenses associated with using social media are a result of content, promoted posts and advertisements.

Using social media in your campaign allows you to produce content for a broad audience and target your content to a specific audience.

A successful social media campaign can be developed and executed with almost any level of budget.

Brand Awareness

For any brand, creating brand awareness is one of the most critical elements of a marketing campaign. While consumers are more likely to purchase products from a brand that they recognise, 50% of consumers are willing to try a product if they recognise a brand.

Social media can be one of the most cost-effective ways to create brand awareness due to the ease of spreading content across social platforms. For example, a post that features images receives double the shares of posts without pictures, while adding hashtags can assist in creating conversation around your brand.

While there is no one way to create brand awareness, maintaining a good presence across various social and digital media platforms can assist.

Ensuring that your campaign works to create awareness has the potential to generate a level of brand recognition. One of the benefits of gaining brand recognition is having your brand name become the generic term for a product, such as Band-Aid, Kleenex, and Esky.

Brand Authority

Establishing brand authority allows your business to become a trusted source of information. In addition, this type of marketing is indirect as the more relevant content you post, search engines start noticing and can boost your search ranking.

Red Bull has successfully developed a reputation for producing exceptional content that continually engages with various target audiences. All the content seen is generated internally by Red Bulls own media company, Red Bull Media House. Almost all of the content produced focuses on the various extreme sports and events sponsored and rarely feature the energy drink. What gives Red Bull such success in digital marketing is the focus on telling a story throughout the content while staying true to its core brand.

Create Conversation

As with any content posted online, the conversation surrounding your content can become one of the most important forms of marketing you develop. Word of Mouth marketing is considered the most crucial form of marketing, with 92% of consumers believing their friends and family over advertising.

While you cannot force conversations to take place, there are some things that you can do to assist in its development. When you include images in social media posts, you are automatically increasing engagement. A Facebook post with an image gets 2.3 times the engagement than posts without pictures, while Tweets with images gain 150% more retweets than tweets without images.

Feedback

Social media is one of the most excellent tools a business has access to for a digital marketing campaign.

At the same time as putting your content out there, social media allows you to receive instant feedback regarding both your campaign and products. This feedback will enable you to modify your content to relate to the most people within your target market.

There are numerous ways to incorporate social media in your digital marketing campaign. However, it is essential to remember that what works in one campaign may not work in another, but that is the beauty of social media.