And advertising on the Internet today is one of the fastest growing and most effective types of advertising. This is especially demonstrated by such indicators as the value of the target client and the opportunity to advertising campaign. This is a significant advantage over such media types of advertising as mass media, television and radio broadcasting.
The audience of social networks is constantly growing, both quantitatively and qualitatively. They are used daily by both young people and adults with different levels of income. In the face of close competition, such a one will be successful in the field of advertising, especially if it is aimed at young people. That is why social media advertising is becoming more and more popular.
What is SMM (SMM)?
Thus, there appeared new business industry - SMM marketing (SMM). In other words, promotion and advertising of a product or service within social networks. Social networks, in a sense, have become a real gift for advertisers, because they do not require a lot of labor and money to find their audience. Here the audience often finds what it needs on its own.
Now on the Internet you will hardly find a site that would not have its own group or page on such popular platforms as Facebook, Twitter, Vkontakte, Instagram, etc.
Social Media Marketing (SMM) is a set of activities whose purpose is to attract attention to a brand or product through social networks.
For clarity, you can imagine a social network as a collection of people in a certain place, for example, on the beach. Someone swims, someone sunbathes, and someone just chats with friends. The task of SMM is to find among these people those who will be interested in a particular product or service. Need to unwind your sunscreen or umbrella? We are looking for people sunburnt. Need to talk about new game outdoors? We are looking for bored companies. And so on.
And now you need to imagine back that these people are not relaxing at sea, but sitting at computers or holding phones that are connected to the same server (the same social network). And we need to use the tools that this site provides us for promotion. In SMM, this is called registering on a social platform and becoming active. And what kind of instruments are we talking about?
10 SMM tools (SMM)
Creation and maintenance of pages, groups, communities;
Creation and / or selection of content for publication on pages, groups and communities;
Direct marketing directly on behalf of the company;
Creation/participation in discussions in communities, organization of thematic discussions;
Working with comments and reviews;
Increase the audience and its involvement on the page, in groups and communities;
Participation in discussions on thematic forums/communities using hidden marketing techniques;
Optimization of the company's website for social media (Social Media Optimization, SMO).
Let's analyze each in more detail.
Creation and SMM maintenance of pages, groups, communities
You can create a personal page (account) in each social network. But with groups, things are a little different. In most social networks, the ability to create a community is present as an additional feature, with the appropriate tools (statistics of joining the group and interactions with posts, the ability to manage from multiple accounts).
What should be decided before starting publications (in other words, by drawing up a content plan):
The number of posts per day (preferably no more than 3, otherwise you will quickly become a source of irritation for the subscriber);
General style of posts (for example, the same frame for all photos or a corner with your logo);
The main audience (in what style is it better to write the text and on what basis to choose images).
Direct marketing directly on behalf of the company
How to present selling content? One of the main tools of SMM - promotion is the guaranteed benefit for the subscriber through his participation in the company's community. The likelihood that subscribers will buy something from you will increase tenfold if they see that it is also only for members.
As mentioned above, the selling content from the company should look very attractive due to the quality of the image and text. However, do not overdo it, otherwise you will be considered cheaters. Use photo editors within reason, especially if you're promoting beauty and medical services.
Creation/participation in community discussions, organization of thematic discussions
Quite often in potential clients arise additional questions about products. Therefore, the brand page should have such methods feedback like discussion and .
You can also discuss abstract topics, this will help the audience of your group to unite, but in addition to these topics, there must be topics directly related to the brand.
Working with comments and reviews in SMM
One of the main indicators of the effectiveness of SMM promotion is the presence of feedback from the community with its participants. Subscribers usually demonstrate a lively interest in products through comments.
This is also one of the factors that the social network itself pays attention to when determining its leaders. If your posts are not responded to in any way, then they will appear less often in the user's feed, according to the Facebook algorithm.
Comments generate such a thing as engagement. And its percentage is significant, not only for demonstrating the success of the community, but also for the price of advertising on this page. Thus, the presence of opinions under your posts translates into real material benefits.
Increase the audience and its engagement on the page, in groups and communities
There are two different approaches to measuring audience engagement:
1. by publication coverage = (likes + reposts + comments) / number of people who saw the publication
2. by community members = (likes + reposts + comments) / number of community members or subscribers
As we can see, comments are not the only measure of performance.
The first approach still demonstrates the real involvement of the audience, since the second one ignores the fact that far from 100% of the group's audience saw a certain post.
However, the participant approach also has a place to be, because it makes it easier to compare yourself with competitors. As a rule, it is not always possible to see what reach a competitor's post had. We only see interactions with a post and the number of followers a competitor has.
From this we get a logical conclusion - the community needs as many live participants as possible. Alive, because the so-called were widely used. These are accounts of fake people with real or fictitious names and personal details. As a rule, they are created to simulate a large number of participants or subscribers, and after the entry they cease to be active. And in most cases, we see communities with a huge audience and posts that collect 5-10 likes.
How to attract real people to the group? There are white and gray and black ways to increase the audience. The former are ideal, as they do not contradict internal rules social networks and do not threaten to block the account, however, they require creativity and often financial costs.
I will talk about white methods starting from the next paragraph.
Gray methods do not directly contradict the rules of social networks, however, they can arouse suspicion among the administration, which will be able to for a while. These include such approaches as mass mailing of requests to friends (Facebook, Vkontakt), mass subscription (Instagram), .
It works as follows.
Then you create a follow-up task or a friend request directed to members or subscribers of a specific page (for example, a competitor).
After the appearance of new friends, you send them invitations to your community.
What makes this method not entirely safe is that after the first complaints from people who consider your page to be spam or unwanted advertising, it can be blocked.
To avoid this, use the account of a real person - a member of your team (with his permission, of course), who is ready to communicate with potential buyers, will be able to provide information of interest about your products and explain the reason for adding. A kind of sales manager, but not too intrusive.
With black promotion methods, everything is pretty clear, the name speaks for itself. These include stealing accounts and groups, then changing the name and/or category, deleting old content and adding your own. Yes, you can get live subscribers very quickly, but for how long?
Imagine that the art education community changed the subject to music education. How many people do you think will suspect something is wrong? :) Half of them will just leave after complaining to the social network administrators. And if the content is not changed, then the owners will complain and your account will be deleted without the possibility of recovery.
Participation in discussions on thematic forums/communities using hidden SMM marketing techniques
To date, people are already tired of advertising directly from the seller. They began to trust the recommendations of the same users more. Even if the product is truly high-quality and useful - if no one but you approves of it, then the prospects for sales will not be bright.
Therefore, hidden marketing becomes a very relevant tool. The consumer should not guess that he has become the object of the influence of the advertising campaign. Most of all, it sounds like a rumor. The effect of hidden marketing is achieved by imitating or entering into a discussion of a product / service among users.
To create such discussions, multiple stuffing is carried out necessary information in different sources and its artificial or natural discussion begins. After a while, new interlocutors connect, and this discussion attracts attention and is spread by ordinary users.
It is not necessary to start a discussion with imitation, it is enough to find a community with your target audience and enter into a dialogue with it in the comments.
Explicit and native advertising on the pages of bloggers or thematic communities
As for advertising with bloggers, this is a rather old marketing model. Suffice it to recall any advertisement for perfume or expensive watches on TV or in printed edition- in almost every film, a famous movie star is filmed, who uses his popularity and fan loyalty to promote the company's brand. This format has quite an official name - influencer marketing.
In the above example, it becomes clear to buy advertising from bloggers, because thanks to the Internet, they have become modern idols not only for teenagers, but also for a solvent audience.
Thematic groups can be explained with the beach example from the beginning of the article. Just imagine it not as a social network, but as a community. It is unlikely that anyone on a hot beach will be interested in a tent with hot tea or a winter goods store. It will be appropriate to sell cold drinks and diving equipment.
Exchanges will help you quickly find and place yourself with a blogger or in a community. You can read about them. Search for a site and coordination of placement can be carried out and.
When we have decided on a blogger or placement platform, we should choose the advertising method - explicit or native. The native way is advertising in the context of the site and user interests. For example, the fitness community in the post is subtly interested in the diet of subscribers and at the same time talks about the benefits of shakes for training.
Based on the name, it may seem that this is a regular spam and a black way SMM promotion, but it's not. Each of us, especially if you are an active user of social networks, has met with a similar phenomenon more than once. These are all kinds of drawings of prizes in the communities.
A guaranteed benefit usually attracts a huge number of people who are fast like a “virus”, which explains such a name.
Company website optimization for social media (Social Media Optimization, SMO)
SMO is a whole complex of actions performed not only to attract traffic to the site, but also to improve its convenience for users of social networks. The main principles of SMO are:
1. The information provided on the site should be of interest to visitors from social networks;
3. in social media it is necessary to create a group that unites people with similar interests (selection of the target audience for referral to the site);
4. community content must be submitted not only from the site, it must be diluted with general posts that visitors of social networks like (preferably viral ones);
6. On the site, you can add a form of comments from social networks, so that to write them, you just need to log in.
Who is an SMM specialist?
After we have dealt with the term SMM and its tools, let's define: what is an SMM specialist?
When determining the scope of responsibilities of an SMM manager, it is necessary to take into account the scale of the business: if the company is large, then the SMM manager organizes and delegates work to other specialists (content manager, web programmer, graphic designer, photographer, copywriter, and so on). If the company is small, then the SMM manager has to combine all of the above specialists. Accordingly, this implies the need to be:
copywriter;
proofreader;
web designer;
PR specialist;
It turns out that the SMM manager is a universal specialist whose activity is to professional management processes within the social platform of the brand, as well as other specialists.
Basic skills of an SMM specialist
Based on SMM tools, a social media promotion manager needs to have the following skills:
online applications;
communication with people via the Internet;
literacy and a large vocabulary;
sense of humor (a serious requirement of many employers).
In addition to the above points, an SMM specialist should also be aware of all most social networks. Especially the most popular ones.
Let's analyze them in more detail.
How to start SMM promotion in the social network Vkontakte
Vkontakte groups have become an integral part of the lives of many users of the social network. Every day, millions of people flip through their news feed, put likes and make reposts.
Sometimes the information that these records carry affects us more than the people around us. It shapes our needs and opinions, our style of communication and behavior in society, and sometimes even affects our worldview.
Let's go through the opportunities for SMM promotion inside vk.com
The first thing to do is to determine the type of community that best suits your tasks in SMM: a public page or a group.
Main differences:
1. The group can be open, closed and private (invitations are sent by administrators); The public page is always open for any users;
1. On the Public Page, entries are posted only on behalf of this Page, but users offer entries for placement;
2. In the Group, members can post entries on their own (if you give them access);
3. On the Public page, the blocks “Discussions”, “Photos” and “Audio recordings” are located on the right, in the Group - in the center.
4. Events are created on behalf of the Public Page, but not on behalf of the Group;
5. There is no “Latest news” block (menu) on the Public page, but you can create wiki pages;
6. The Group has a section for storing documents;
7. You can invite other users to the Group through the “Invite friends” button (valid for all participants), the limit is up to 40 invitations per day.
8. One of the important advantages of the Public Page is the display of the logo in the profiles of subscribers, in the “Interesting Pages” tab, this contributes to the natural growth of the audience.
If you are creating a platform for informing subscribers about company news, choose the Public Page. The group is intended for active interaction between participants, discussions in the "Discussions" and the exchange of materials. You can transfer the Group to Public and vice versa, but you can do this no more than once every 30 days.
So, we created a community, figured out the needs of the target audience, fill it with the right one, advertise and get customers. What to do next? We continue to do the same, but we rely on our own statistics.
We pay attention to such parameters as:
1. data of subscribers (age, gender - do we fall into our target audience);
2. audience coverage (increasing or not);
3. activity (which posts have the most engagement).
To do this, use special services for analyzing communities (not only your own, but also competitors): Popsters or JagaJam. Statistics will show whether you have developed the right promotion strategy, as well as allow you to assess opportunities for growth and adjust actions for the next month.
How to start SMM promotion on Facebook
This question is asked by many SMM specialists. Increasingly, it is difficult to answer it unambiguously, because groups and pages are becoming more and more similar.
For example, the advantage of the pages was the ability to study statistics. Groups now also has a built-in analytics tool. And advanced SMM-shchiki you can get such a tool as.
Let's look at the advantages of these two types of communities.
Page on Facebook:
1. Built-in statistics.
2. Call to action button (for example, "More" or "Book").
3. Promotion of the page and posts with Facebook Ads
4. Likes and comments on behalf of the page.
5. Ability to add apps and services to make it easier for customers to order a product, find out the price and contact support.
Facebook group:
1. Built-in analytics
2. Set the group as public, private, or secret.
3. The ability to post documents, create surveys, and even buy and sell in a group.
4. Group chat function.
Facebook group options
Choose a name for the group;
Enter the names of the friends you want to add or addresses Email people you want to invite (you must add or invite at least one person);
Select your privacy settings (public, private, or secret).
For example, a public or private group might be a good place for your customers to communicate, while a secret group is more suitable for exclusive groups like VIPs or beta testers.
If your group is public, it's worth noting that even people outside the group can see posts and comments. If you want to protect the privacy of your members, then it is worth creating a closed or secret community.
Once you've decided on your privacy settings, click "Create".
Instagram account
The Instagram mobile app can be downloaded on iOS and Android phones and tablets, as well as Windows phone 8 and newer versions.
Download the Instagram app for iOS from the App Store, for Android from the Google Play Store, and for Windows Phone from the Windows Phone Store. Or visit his website.
Tap Register with email. address or phone number, enter your email. address or phone number (verification code required) and click Next. You can also sign in with Facebook to sign up with an existing account.
If you signed up with an email address or phone number, create a username and password, then fill in your profile information and click Done. When registering with Facebook, you will be required to log into your account if you are currently logged out.
Images are already almost the main content for social networks, but on Instagram you cannot publish anything without posting a photo. And your avatar or profile product image is the first thing a potential subscriber will see. A short text is also required - personal data, a description of the company or product.
For many, the design and first impression of the profile is a decisive factor. Looking at the image, people decide whether to follow you or not. If you treat your profile photo casually, you will scare away the target audience.
The description should be concise but informative. Indicate your location, type of activity, subject and a link to the main site, if any. This is the only place on Instagram where you can put an active link.
Instagram is only available through . It looks like this.
Conclusion
More and more time modern man spends on social networks. In a free moment, people often take out their smartphone to scroll through the feed and chat with friends and strangers. Almost everyone has a social media account these days. And this opens up huge opportunities for advertising (in this case, SMM promotion).
A company that keeps up with the times and uses social networks and SMM is more open to its customers. Inspires more confidence. And what, if not the trust of the client, is a source of inspiration and real profit for the brand?
This article will expand over time as we see new features inside social networks every month. Follow us and stay up to date with what's new. Good luck!
Email marketing and SMM are two of the most popular online marketing tools on the Internet. this moment. Experts from both one and the other areas vied with each other to praise either one or the other channel, measuring the speed of collection. But why choose when you can combine both tools?
On the company's social media page, you can communicate directly with the audience. If you respect your subscribers and do not bombard with promotional offers, but entertain and educate, then users will be happy to help you distribute content using Like and Share. And the more your content will be in social networks, the more recognition of your brand will be.
By sending email campaigns, you can maximize the offers for each user, which will increase the likelihood of a purchase.
That is, both tools allow you to communicate with users, increase brand awareness, spread the word, etc.
The main reasons for using both tools are:
- significant expansion of the audience;
- a deeper study and understanding of the interests, as well as the preferences of the target audience (for further constructive proposals);
- new means of communication with customers (promotions and contests in social networks, trigger and automatic mailings using email marketing)
Thanks to this symbiosis, a new audience is covered and there are more chances to expand the client base without applying, at the same time, special efforts. An important advantage of using two tools is the presence of an “alternate airfield” in case the client unsubscribes from one of the channels.
Social networks allow you to post announcements, links from which lead further to the site where the information is posted. Users are happy to read such announcements and share them on their walls. Thus, a large number of network users will learn about your news/services/product/company.
By communicating via e-mail, you can send much more information to subscribers than you post on social networks. Using specialized services for mailing lists, you can list subscribers in such a way that each of them receives letters only on topics that interest him.
We transfer subscribers from the newsletter to social networks
In order to transfer a subscriber from a mailing list to a social network, you can do the following:
When forming the database, it must be remembered that mailing is carried out only with the consent of the subscriber, and the collection of addresses in social networks is illegal.
Transferring friends from social networks to newsletter subscribers
- offer the user to subscribe to a regular mailing list of a certain company (product or service);
- use the reviews of customers who have already used the services of the company or purchased the product, with a call to receive regular information through the mailing list;
- invite the client to take part in a quiz, where the result will be posted in the account with the company hashtag;
- invite users to fill out a questionnaire that contains information about the company (thanks to which, in turn, you can get more detailed data about the client and his interests).
The use of both channels, in any case, involves communication. There is a fine line between being persistent and obsessive. It must be remembered that the efficiency of work depends not only on the combination of channels, but also on your sense of proportion and tact.
Optimizing work with social networks
Work optimization involves a set of measures that will increase the effectiveness of work without increasing, at the same time, the amount of resources (time, performers, budget, etc.)
The easiest way to optimize your social media experience is to use specialized services and applications.
For example, auto-posting services.
If you are promoting one company in several social networks at the same time, the auto-posting service will help you save a lot of time and effort. There are a lot of such services at the moment and you can choose any of them that works with the social networks you need. For example, feedman.ru works with networks such as Vkontakte, Odnoklassniki, Facebook and Twitter. Here you can set the time not only for posting, but also for deleting a post. It is possible to upload multiple images at once. In addition to the auto-posting function, you can set up an RSS feed to automatically publish all the news from the site to your pages on social networks.
It is convenient to create a content plan using online documents. Such an opportunity is available for Google and Yandex search services. 
Working with the online calendar, you can give access to the content plan to all members of your team and the customer. This will make the delegation of duties and the approval process as easy as possible.
You still do all the work in the social. networks by hand? Then this collection is for you! Today I will introduce you to powerful SMM services that will help automate routine actions (posting, community analysis, tracking comments and trends, audience selection, and so on) and increase the return on social media promotion. So, meet 16 powerful services for SMM.
Powerful SMM services: TOP-16
Instapromo
A service that allows you to automate promotion on Instagram. Instapromo combines features such as mass following and mass liking, delayed posting, sending a message, autocommenting, and more.
In addition, the service is indispensable if you start promotion from scratch and you have no subscribers at all. In the Instapromo store, you can buy the required number of followers and likes so that the target audience is more willing to subscribe to your account.
Tariffs. The service has 4 standard packages: Promotion, Direct, Comment Tracker and Posting. The cost is 790 rubles / month. This allows you to select the desired functionality and pay only for the functions you use. Try Instapromo >>>
This service is used to determine the popularity of groups, publics, profiles in social networks. Specializes in data analytics. Popsters helps to evaluate the popularity of various posts (reach, activity, engagement, ER) and identify the most effective ones. One of the advantages is the ability to upload reports in various PDF, PPTX, XLSX formats.
To the pluses you can also include a trial period of 7 days and an analysis of 10 social networks.
Minuses: per account - one social. net. With the cost of access to the service for a month of 399 rubles, it turns out to make an analysis of the main social. networks need to pay more than 1000 rubles.
SMM planner
This service allows you to automate the publication of posts. You can set the publication time yourself and publish the same post on several social networks at once. The main advantage is the ability to publish posts that include both photos and videos (video posting service is paid) on Instagram. With the help of SMM planner, you can make delayed posting in 8 social networks, including Viber, Telegram and even Pinterest.
Tariffs. There is a trial period for 7 days, and you can also receive 100 free posts monthly. Further, the minimum cost is 450 rubles (posting on no more than 5 different pages or accounts). For an additional fee, you can purchase proxies, post videos and watermark images.
Minuses. Lots of rates and paid services that create confusion.
Program for automating work with Instagram. Allows you to parse the audience not only in Insta, but also in VK. Set up delayed posting, automatically like the selected parameters (for example, by geotags), collect popular hashtags, and automatically register new Instagram accounts.
Tariffs. Test period 7 days. The price is 33 rubles per day.
Pros. Replaces many other services (auto-posting, like + subscription, parsing, auto-commenting).
Minuses. You need to download and install on your computer. Continuous operation requires a constantly turned on computer or a rented server.
Canva
An ideal service for creating graphics for social media. networks: in addition to all known formats for various networks, supports the creation of images with arbitrary size. You can create infographics and presentations.
Minuses. You cannot create images with transparent background(.png).
The system allows you to control new comments on posts or videos (for YouTube). The service automatically sends notifications (by email or telegram) in case of new comments. It allows you to track not only comments, but also the mention of a brand or any keyword.
Tariffs. Test period 7 days. The minimum tariff is 190 rubles / month and tracking comments in only one community in any social network available in the service (VK, FB, Insta, Odnoklassniki, Twitter, YouTube).
Pros. No need to enter your passwords, so you don't have to worry about security. It is also powerful to track comments in the communities of competitors and write them to subscribers or send them invitations / offers.
Minuses. The main disadvantage is the inability to respond to comments through this service. If the developers make changes and improve the service, then there will be much more users.
Supa
With Supa, you can quickly create short videos for social networks in a very simple constructor, using ready-made elements or uploading your own. Video is now just one of the trends in SMM, so the service is growing and developing very quickly.
Tariffs. There are unlimited free version, which will include the SUPA logo on your video and limit the length of the video to 40 seconds. The unlimited package costs 990 rubles per month.
Pros. A handy constructor for creating videos.
Minuses. Few ready-made templates.
The system works exclusively with Instagram. Perfect for those who have. The service collects information about the interests and preferences of your subscribers, about their publications, joining various communities and activity in groups. Allows you to track activity by hashtags, audience growth, as well as the effectiveness of Stories. The finished report is exported as a single PDF document.
Tariffs. There is a free 14 day trial. Further, the minimum tariff is $20 for the analysis of accounts that have no more than 20 thousand subscribers - the more subscribers, the higher the cost of the packages.
Pros. Detailing the subscription audience.
Minuses. Available only on English language. Analyzes only Instagram. Expensive.
The program is perfect for professional targetologists and everyone involved. The system collects users and forms a single base for community administrators, active members of competitor groups, and so on. The platform has a rather complicated mechanism, but the result is effective.
Tariffs. 20 features of the creator service give the SMM community free of charge. The standard tariff includes 90 functions for collecting target audience and costs 799 rubles for 30 days.
Pros. Qualitative audience collection for targeting or . In a separate publication, we reviewed everything.
Minuses. Weak tech. support. Authorization via VK is required.
Kuku
A multifunctional platform, the capabilities of which are auto-posting, content plan creation and social media analytics. networks. In addition, the service allows you to combine different accounts into groups or projects, adapt content for different networks, as well as automatically like new publications of friends. It is an official partner of 10 social networks. networks. Reports are downloaded in PDF format.
Tariffs. There is a free 14-day trial period. Further, the minimum tariff costs 399 r (no more than 5 accounts and no more than 500 posts).
Pros. Replaces several other services.
Minuses. Not detected.
Brand Analytics Express
The platform was created to track brand mentions both in social networks and in the media. Thus, you will not miss a single angry comment or laudatory review. Reports are produced in online mode, Further information is processed and content is transferred in a convenient format.
Tariffs. Demo mode 7 days on request. Further, from 700 rubles for 100 mentions or from 22,000 rubles / month.
Pros. Real-time monitoring of mentions.
Minuses. narrow functionality. Very expensive.
This platform allows you to automatically generate beautiful reports for clients based on data , , advertising cabinets VKontakte and Facebook. It is convenient because it exports data to any of the selected formats (pdf, doc, html) according to a ready-made template and sends it to the mail. It will be useful not only for targetologists, but also for context and seo specialists.
Tariffs. Free for 14 days. The minimum Freelancer tariff is 800 rubles, but there are only 5 projects and there are no report templates.
Pros. Reporting automation.
Minuses. Not detected.
The program is clear and easy to use, it parses VK users who have joined various groups. Cuts off dead and commercial accounts, and also finds users with the highest activity. The service pleases users with the presence of a convenient button, with which you can find the community of interest one by one keyword. Works for Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki.
Tariffs. Only 490 rubles per month + trial period.
Pros. Works with classmates.
The main function is the delayed publication of posts. The functionality of the service allows you to create a calendar of publications, edit community covers, avatars and pictures for posts. The service operates on a semiautomatic device, since the data must be entered independently. Covers for publications are standard and do not differ in originality.
Tariffs. With large restrictions (no more than 2 posts per week), the service can be used completely free of charge). The minimum rate is $9.
Pros. You can quickly register through FB. Lots of courses in various fields.
Minuses. The limitations of the visual editor and the incomprehensible algorithm for generating ideas for posts.
Cerebro Target
Allows not only to parse, but also to analyze the VK audience according to such important indicator like purchasing power. Analyze advertisements. In addition, find common friends of those subscribers who have joined a particular community. A very useful tool for professionals.
Tariffs. Depending on the functionality, the cost of packages is from 490 to 1500 rubles.
Pros. A large and active group in VK, where cases, service users and many other useful content are published.
Minuses. No trial.
Online service for automating the promotion of Instagram. Subscriptions, unsubscribes, automatic likes, audience filter, autocomments and, more recently, autoposting.
Tariffs. Registration of new users is currently suspended.
Pros. Intuitive and well visually designed service. Operational tech. support.
Minuses. Only one social net.
Tariffs. The package with minimal features costs $399 per month. Demo available on request only.
Pros. Support by professional analysts.
Minuses. Very expensive.
What SMM services do you use? Share in the comments 🙂
The development of social networks has given rise to a new huge business industry - SMM marketing. This is when we come with our product to some social network, find our target audience there, and offer our product to them in different ways.
Sounds easy. But there are a number of pitfalls in SMM (Social Media Marketing). They often prevent the gurus of "traditional" sales from using new opportunities.
And let's first analyze how this one is different " new marketing from the old ways of promotion.
3 differences between SMM and other types of marketing
#1 - Communication and entertainment
SMM primarily means "social". That is, all marketing through SMM is built on communication. Social networks are generally very interesting environment. People come to social networks for only two purposes:
- Communicate
- have fun
If you give them some content that is not aimed at communication or entertainment, they will “scroll through” you and not notice you. That is, all your actions related to attracting the target audience should somehow engage in communication or entertain.
I can give you a simple example. Vkontakte on the left you are shown various advertisements. It's called "targeted advertising." Do you know which targeted ads work best? The one where the picture has some funny or curious image. Which ad would you most like to click on?
#2 - The role of personality in SMM marketing
Another feature of social networks is that all your “underground” is put on public display. Previously, of course, they also tried to create a business “with a human face”, realizing that people prefer to buy from people, and not from faceless companies.
For these purposes, they hired special people who were most suitable for what they love. the target audience. Further, a special image was created for these people, and they were put as "puppets" at the head of the company. And the true owners and leaders never shone anywhere.
But only social networks made it possible to develop a personal brand so quickly and in this way. Again, we’ll talk about this a little lower, but one of the main goals of promotion through SMM is to make sure that they start recognizing you “by sight”. This is trust. And where there is trust, there are sales.
And if you are promoting your face, then make sure that it is at least visible. And even better - so that it can be seen that you are a real person, and not a mannequin. Which of the two ads based on the idea personal brand makes you more confident?
#3 - A virus is such a form of life
The main engine of SMM is a virus. New people come to your groups, and then non-selling pages after they see the repost of your post on their friend's wall. They come and also make some kind of repost or leave a comment.
And already his friends see it in their news feed, and they also come to you. On regular sites, free traffic was (and is) delivered through search engines. This is the so-called SEO promotion. And here is the virus.
However, SEO works “always”, and a new virus must be constantly launched. That is, if you wrote one good article, and it went to the TOP of search engines, then most likely it will remain there for a very long time, and will bring you traffic every day.
And social media is more difficult. If you once made a cool viral post, then it will work for you for 2-3 days maximum, and then everyone will forget about it. Because during this time there will be another hundred thousand cool new posts. By the way, this is one of the main reasons why I don't like doing SMM. I love it when the result "accumulates". But of course, I have my own VKontakte group. Join.
In the meantime, let's look at the stages of promotion through social networks and SMM.
4 stages of promotion through SMM
#1 - Choosing a social network
It would seem - why do people need so many different social networks? This is VKontakte, and Facebook, and Instagram, and classmates, and Twitter, and much more. Why not all be in one network. And the point is that they are different. And the people who are there are also different.
For example, it is considered that facebook audience- more intellectually developed and serious than VKontakte (on the Russian-language Facebook, of course). And so it really is. People there prefer to discuss complex issues of world politics and economics, and all that kind of stuff. It is these people, by the way, who more often use Google as a search engine, and not Yandex.
Vkontakte audience- lighter and more fun. She prefers to like cats and funny pictures, without deep social overtones. This does not mean that "only schoolchildren are in VKontakte." You just need to approach them the same way - easy and fun.
Instagram audience- these are mostly girls who post their pictures and discuss pictures of other girls. And if your product is for a female audience, you will find it in abundance on Instagram. Sellers of courses and trainings on women's topics feel especially at ease there.
Classmates audience- this is what is usually called the "average resident of Russia" - with an average salary, pension and life expectancy.
Residents of urban-type settlements and factory outskirts of large cities for some reason prefer to communicate there. And from all this network it blows with very simple folk humor in the spirit of Petrosyan. I would come there with “novelties” (which have long been known on the Internet to everyone except the inhabitants of classmates).
All other social networks are not very common with us, so they can be omitted in this review. Your task is to choose the social network where exactly your target audience lives. Even if you yourself prefer to communicate with other people, nothing can be done. Mohammed must come to the mountain.
And after choosing a network, we need to make a "collection point" for our audience.
#2 - Create a platform for communication
Vkontakte, for example, is forbidden to conduct any commercial activity through your personal page. But I know people who are not at all embarrassed by this ban. They post content in their account and make sales there.
Another important point- do not spread yourself between several social networks. You need to choose only one site, and pay all attention to it. So you will have more chances of success.
#3 - Create Viral Content
At the first stage, you need to make a lot of interesting posts so that people share them and attract a new audience. In total, I highlight 4 types of viral content that people are most willing to share:
- Content is provocative
- Content - instructions
- Content is a medal
- Content is bullshit
You can read more about all these content types and how they work in the article.
You will also likely need to invest money if you want your community to grow faster. Almost all social networks have built-in advertising mechanisms. If you prefer "slowly but surely", then you can not pay. The main thing is that the content is really viral.
#4 - Monetization
Here it is immediately very important to understand that attracting an audience and making money from this audience are completely different, unrelated things. You can have a group of 100 thousand people, and you will earn a penny.
And vice versa, a group of 2-3 thousand active participants will give you huge profits. It all depends on what monetization methods you use. There are only three main options for making money on the Internet on your content sites:
- Advertising (the most common and unprofitable occupation)
- Affiliate programs (here as lucky)
- Selling your goods and services (a gold mine, but you have to plow a lot).
Think in advance how you are going to make money on your site, and based on this, prescribe a strategy. Free social media content plan templates will help you a lot with this.
Summary
- SMM marketing is the promotion of goods and services through social networks.
- SMM differs from other types of marketing in three ways: the emphasis in content is on entertainment and communication, a huge role is played by a personal brand, and promotion is based on the virality of content.
- All social networks are different, and you need to find the one in which your target audience lives.
- In the selected social network, you need to create a platform where your audience will come for new content every day. It can be a group, community or your personal page.
- To promote, try to make each of your posts as viral as possible. You can read more about this in the book Contactless Sales.
- If funds allow, pay for advertising in social networks to move faster.
- Think in advance how you are going to earn from your audience. Otherwise, you risk sharing the fate of those who spent two years gathering a huge group, and then could not earn anything from it.
Hope. the article was helpful. Don't forget to download my book. There I show you the fastest way from zero to the first million on the Internet (squeezed from personal experience over 10 years =)
See you later!
Your Dmitry Novoselov
