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Why is it essential to include social media marketing in your marketing plan?

Why is it essential to include social media marketing in your 2020 marketing plan -FINAL for website

Scrolling through social media is the last thing most people do before they go to sleep and the first thing they do right after they wake up.

Let us have a look at some interesting average social media user stats.

  • Daily time spent on Facebook is 58 min.
  • Daily time spent on Instagram is 53 min.
  • Daily time spent on Twitter is 1 min.
  • Daily time spent on LinkedIn is less than 1 minute. (17 minutes monthly for the average user)

With people spending so much of their time in a day online the chance that your posts or ads will appear on their screens is pretty high. For example, 928.5 million people can be reached by ads on Instagram and Facebook ads reach 1.95 billion of the platform’s 2.5 billion monthly users.

The list of benefits of social media marketing is quite lengthy, but here are a few of the more important ones:

Creating brand recognition – Brand recognition is extremely important because consumers want to buy brands that they are familiar with. In this case, social media benefits over traditional marketing because you can get your brand in front of people much faster and easier.

Traffic – Social media marketing directs more real traffic to your website or blog than traditional marketing.

SEO – Although social media marketing doesn’t improve your search engine rankings directly, it does drive traffic to your website and it is proven than 58% of marketers who have been using social media for longer than a year continue to see improvement in their search engine rankings.

Low cost – Signing up or creating a social media profile is free for almost all platforms.

Customer service – Social media allows for immediate interaction and feedback. This also helps in case of negative engagement and addressing negative feedback before it gets out of hand.

Connect with your audience – Social media marketing gives you the opportunity to connect with your audience via social listening.

Data gathering – Social media marketing allows you to gather data from audience research to improve your content and mould it to fit your target audiences needs better.

With all the benefits that stand out there is one thing you should always remember: “If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends” – Jeff Bezos. Weak or inappropriate ads can create a negative emotional response towards your brand in a blink of an eye and if there is any negative publicity to do with your brand on social media, it will spread like wildfire. A great example to look at is Clicks and their Tresemmé advertisement.

So how can IMM help you master this incredible channel?

IMM has an excellent, recently updated short course just for you. Our Social Media Marketing course will help you to understand and apply the power of social media, whether you are a small business owner, a marketing manager, co-ordinator or an aspiring media manager.

The overall goal of the course is to give you an in-depth understanding of several social media platforms, and the online marketing tools, segmentation capabilities and metrics they offer. In addition, you will learn about communicating with and reaching your customers via social media. Best of all, this practical course will equip you with the skills to set-up and manage your own social media accounts, helping you become a socialite extraordinaire.

Feel free to sign up for our “try before you buy” option.

For more information on our new social media marketing online short course follow the link https://www.immonlinecourses.co.za/courses/introduction-to-social-media-marketing