Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is a powerful way for companies of all sizes to reach prospects and customers. Your customers are already interacting with brands through social media, and if you’re not talking directly to your audience through social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest, you ‘re missing out. Great social media marketing can bring remarkable success to your business, create dedicated brand advocates, and even drive leads and sales.

Social media marketing, or SMM, is a form of internet marketing that involves creating and sharing content on social media networks in order to achieve your marketing and branding objectives. Social media marketing includes activities such as posting text and image updates, videos, and other content that drives public engagement, as well as paid social media advertising.

The Five Core Pillars of Social Media Marketing

Before you start creating social media marketing campaigns, consider the objectives of your business. Starting a social media marketing campaign with no social strategy in mind is like wandering around a forest without a map — you might have fun, but you’ll probably get lost.

Here are some questions that need to be asked when defining your social media marketing objectives:

  • What do you hope to achieve through social media marketing?
  • Who’s your target audience?
  • Where would your target audience hang out, and how would social media be used?
  • What message would you like to send to your social media marketing audience?
  • Planning and Publishing
    Social media marketing for small businesses usually begins with a consistent presence on social media. Nearly three billion people use social media. By being present on social media platforms, you are giving your brand the opportunity to discover your future customers.
    Publishing on social media is as simple as sharing a blog post, an image, or a video on a social media platform. It’s just like how you share your personal Facebook profile. But you’re going to want to plan your content ahead of time instead of spontaneously creating and publishing content. Also, to ensure that you are maximizing your reach on social media, you need to publish great content that your audience likes, at the right timing and frequency.
  • Cloud ERP
    The cloud has been advancing steadily into the enterprise for some time, but many ERP users have been reluctant to place data cloud. Those reservations have gradually been evaporating, however, as the advantages of the cloud become apparent.
  • Social ERP
    There has been much hype around social media and how important —or not — it is to add to ERP systems. Certainly, vendors have been quick to seize the initiative, adding social media packages to their ERP systems with much fanfare. But some wonder if there is really much gain to be had by integrating social media with ERP.
  • ERP Vendors
    Depending on your organization’s size and needs there are a number of enterprise resource planning software vendors to choose from in the large enterprise, mid-market, and the small business ERP market. Gartner’s annual market share reports put SAP, Oracle, Sage, Microsoft and NetSuite among the top vendors, but Capterra’s data suggests that SAP and Oracle are easily the biggest two, with Epicor, Infor and Microsoft on their heels in a shifting line-up. The top small business ERP vendors include names like NetSuite, Exact Max, Epicor, and Syspro.