Introduction to Social Media Marketing for Beginners

Social media marketing is a way of advertising or promoting your site or brand for free on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. People will always be sharing stuff on social media, so you’ll get some glare of publicity as more and more people share your stuff with their friends.

Below, I have outlined some benefits, tips and tools of social media marketing which can come handy when you setup your blog.

Not yet setup your blog? Go through my easy step by step guide to learn how to do so.

Benefits of social media marketing

Viral potential

Your website or whatever it is that you share on social media has the potential to go viral and get shared by a large number of people especially if what you post is share worthy. When people share your stuff on their pages and walls, it will also be visible to their friends and friends of friends.

Social media is a strange sort of breed where some posts go viral and reach millions of people across the globe overnight. There have been a lot of occasions where people post something on social media and it got shared by millions of other people leaving the person with sudden windfalls of traffic and fans to their pages.

Building yourself as a brand

You can build yourself as a recognized brand by posting great stuff on social media sites on a regular basis. You will also be able to get more new customers as your fans share your pages and it becomes visible to their friends.

The more people who are on familiar terms with your brand or website, the higher the chances of them sharing stuff that you post. You will have a lot of people sharing your posts as well as commenting and liking whatever it is that you post on your social media pages.

Social media marketing for beginners – getting started

What you are going to do is just create an account with one or more of the social media sites out there and start posting. They are Facebook, Twitter, Google +, and the image sharing site, Pinterest.

You are free to set up a page or a group or just use your normal account to share stuff. The key is to set up a plan for each social media campaign before you set in motion.

Social media marketing tips

1. Post what people love

You can get shared and get a substantial amount of traffic by sharing fresh information that people will find share-worthy.

Now, publishing a few posts here and there on social media and hoping it to go viral and get millions of hits overnight is being unrealistic as a beginner. Even though your posts may not get millions of shares or anything of that magnitude, trying to find out what people love and are likely to share with their social media friends and continuing to post those types of updates or tweets will help your chances.

2. Don’t dabble around

Focus on one social media site and don’t dabble around. If you are on one social media site one week and on another next week, and then on another one the following week, you won’t find much success.

3. Be active

Engage in conversations and don’t be afraid to put your oar in. That is the best way to try to make the most of social media marketing.

4. Know at what time to post

Tools like Tweroid and Buffer can help you with finding out at what time of the day your followers are going to be most active.

Social media marketing tools

Tweetdeck

Tweetdeck is a social media tool, more specifically a twitter management tool, that lets you schedule tweets and organize them in a way that is easy for you to track and follow.

It is, all in all, a tool that lets you manage your twitter account just like you would with your normal twitter dashboard. What sets this one apart is that it has so many features that you can’t find inside your twitter dashboard and it lets you see and do things that you normally wouldn’t on your account.

It also allows you to view other Twitter users profiles and send messages in a more streamlined manner, all from within your dashboard. You can also customize the design and layout of your dashboard to best suit you.

Hootsuite

This one is another top social media management tool for managing different social media profiles from within one dashboard. It lets you manage your accounts on many social media sites including, among others, Facebook, Twitter and Gooogle plus. You can post to different accounts on different social media sites from your dashboard which will save you a lot of time. Hootsuite is a paid service and registration is required.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social is another top social media management tool. It is a paid tool but a must have for serious social media marketers. Its key features are monitoring, publishing and analytics. The tool allows you to manage and schedule posts to your accounts on many top social networks sites including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and more.

Buffer

This one is a desktop application with which you can schedule posts and manage your social media accounts. Supported networks include, among others, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. It also lets you know when your social media fans are most active online and schedule your posts to be posted at that time of the day. It’s a paid software with a free version available with limited features.

Twazzup

Twazzup was lunched as a twitter search engine tool that lets you search on twitter. It has evolved into a monitoring tool you can use to monitor your mentions, retweets and many other actions on twitter.

IFTTT

IF THIS THEN THAT is the full form of IFTTT. This is a web based tool that lets you manage your brand and track where your brand or a hashtag you’re using has been mentioned by someone else on the web.

Tweroid

Tweriod is a robust Twitter tool that tells you what time of the day your followers are most active online.

What’s Your Feedback?

I hope you have found this social Media Marketing guide for beginners useful. Which social media marketing tips have you found more useful. Please leave your comments below.