Advertising promotion in social networks. Comprehensive promotion in social

Hello, dear readers of the blog site. Today I want to talk about such a channel website and business promotion like social networks. The topic is very relevant and gaining more and more popularity. A little earlier, I wrote an article where I listed and compared all available at the moment (including social networks). After that, I published a general article on and began to have a specific conversation about .

In a nutshell, you need to get the target audience by any possible means, which will be ready to accept and possibly purchase the services or products you promote. Another question, who benefits from social media advertising And is this method suitable for everyone?

Which site is suitable for promotion in social networks?

I recently published an article about the modern one, where I said that it was pointless to start promoting a site without preparing it for this action. In social networks, the situation is exactly the same. Not every site or business project can be promoted through this channel. Let's see which website (business) is suitable for promotion in social networks and what characteristics it should have.

I think that we will develop this topic in future publications. Don't switch.

Good luck to you! See you soon on the blog pages site

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Today, in the form of an overview, we will tell you how to organize promotion in social networks, which platform to choose for promotion and how to prepare content.

Is your target audience on social media?

Different people sit on social networks - with average incomes and good incomes, from large cities and small towns, young and old. Well-known artists, Youtube bloggers, ordinary residents and even politicians have their own pages in social networks. According to a study by Levada Center sociologists, more than a third of Russians - 37% of respondents - access social networks every day. And more than half of Russians are active users of social networks.

There is any target audience in social networks - young mothers who will be interested in children's things and toys, directors of large companies who are interested in business training, busy people who often use cleaning and home delivery services. The main thing is to be able to correctly search for your target audience and work with it.

Materials to help you better understand the topic:

Selecting channels for SMM promotion

Instagram

The main feature of the social network is the emphasis on the visual component, that is, on photography. Little attention is paid to the text, so without high-quality images or at least bright pictures from the Internet, promotion will be difficult.

The main feature of the audience of the social network Instagram is that more than 79% of it are women. There is no exact age data, but most experts believe that young people under 30 are registered on Instagram. Perhaps this explains the effectiveness of promotion - the level of engagement on Instagram is 15 times higher compared to the social network Facebook.

Pros: high coverage, relatively simple advertising setup, simple promotion using mass liking and mass following.

Minuses: the inability to publish links in posts and the dependence of the visibility of posts on the level of involvement, which makes it difficult to promote from scratch.

Instagram is suitable for promoting goods and services that can be sold “with the eyes”: that is, those that can be beautifully portrayed. Clothing stores, flower and food delivery services, various souvenirs and handmade goods are popular here. Services are getting worse, but with the right approach, you can sell them too. For example, Instagram often offers business and other types of advice.

In contact with

In VKontakte, according to statistics, more than half of the registered users are women. 37% of active authors are users of the 25-34 age group. And 25.7% of active users are people aged 18 to 25. That is, more than half of the audience are solvent users.

In Vkontakte, too, special attention is paid to the visual component, as in other social networks. There are no particular difficulties in promoting publics, groups and communities - it is enough to publish unique interesting content and use standard methods to attract subscribers. A good advantage of the social network is multidisciplinary development: depending on the needs of the target audience, you can choose an acceptable publication format. For example, Instagram doesn't give you that kind of flexibility.

Pros: high audience coverage, a large number of targeting settings, normal organic reach, the ability to invite users in a group.

Minuses: high competition, prohibition by users to invite themselves to groups and meetings, very strict moderation.

In terms of promotion, Vkontakte is good for everything that cannot be sold with a few beautiful photos. It actively promotes the services of medical centers, information businessmen, restaurants and cafes, travel companies, services of driving schools, banks, various goods and other products of the middle price segment.

Classmates

The main feature of the Odnoklassniki audience is that the age of active users often exceeds 30-35 years. At the same time, promotion on social networks is relatively inexpensive, especially when advertising in public.

Pros: coverage among a solvent audience, the virality of content of interesting content - if someone rates your post, all friends and subscribers of the person who put "Class" will see it.

Odnoklassniki often promotes complex products, such as building houses, comprehensive examinations at medical centers, and other expensive goods and services. This social network is suitable for businesses operating in the field of cleaning, construction, legal support and others, but most of all for private services: for example, plumbing companies, car services, craftsmen.

Facebook

The main Facebook audience is solvent people: 37% of active authors are aged 25-34, 30.6% are people from 35 to 44 years old, and 23.5% are people over 45 years old. Facebook pays special attention to text content, but at the same time, the social network claims to be a general purpose platform. The effectiveness of promotion is usually high - a large number of business accounts are registered on the social network.

This social network is suitable for most business areas. It sells B2B products, that is, business-to-business services, and promotes a personal brand. The social network itself gives examples of successful promotion of restaurant and telecommunications brands, gaming, sports, automotive, financial, and educational fields.

Pros: a huge number of advertising settings, wide functionality for promotion, good coverage of foreign target audience.

Minuses: truncated organic reach and complex interface.

Select promotion channels - one or more social networks - depending on the specifics of your company and the product being promoted. In most cases, large companies create accounts in all social networks, and small businesses need only one well-chosen platform. For example, home delivery services often post on Instagram. And medical clinics find their audience on Facebook, Odnoklassniki and Vkontakte.

We launch promotion in social networks

We will talk about promotion in a clear structure: first - about the design, then - about the content, promotion and performance tracking. A book can be written about each of these points: we will try to talk about the most important.

Vkontakte

Post interesting content: product reviews, guides, user reviews. If you don't have any ideas for posts, look through the communities of competitors - you may be able to learn something useful from their content plan. Try to alternate entertaining and selling posts - this tactic on the social network gives good results. A content plan should be drawn up only on the basis of an analysis of the needs of the target audience and the specifics of your business - there can be no universal recommendations here. You can also add products - both to a group and to a personal page.

Even pictures have their audience

You can promote your group, personal account or public in many ways. In the social network itself, they offer to set up targeted advertising and advertising in other publics. Targeted advertising will be shown to users when visiting Vkontakte, in the left column, and on third-party sites. And advertising in public - in the community that you choose.

Efficiency analysis can be carried out directly in VK. Personal pages, groups and publics have a "Statistics" section. It shows the reach of users - the number of people who saw the posts on the wall of the group or in the news feed, as well as the characteristics of the target audience. You can also view statistics for each entry, and in the future do not publish posts that gain few views and likes.

On Instagram

The design of the profile on Instagram also requires attention. Firstly, Instagram is a social network that primarily evaluates the visual effect. Therefore, it is worth taking care of high-quality photos. Secondly, do it - one of the few places where you can leave an active link to a third-party site. Therefore, it makes sense to describe in detail what you do and what you offer to subscribers, right in the profile description. By the way, it is advisable to immediately link your Insta account with in order to easily set up advertising.

There are built-in statistics on Instagram - look for it in your personal account, in your profile. But it may not be enough for a full-fledged analysis - the social network shows the number of subscribers, including growth, and the main characteristics of the target audience. This is less than in other social networks. Therefore, advanced SMM managers often use third-party services that collect more complete statistics.

Articles to dive into the topic:

In Odnoklassniki

After, consider the design of the community. Please note that older people often sit in Odnoklassniki. Tell us what you offer in the description, put an attractive photo on the main page and choose the appropriate cover.

An example of a group header with a cartoon-themed cover

When publishing posts, pay special attention to the text. Sometimes the usual statuses of people or groups get thousands of likes and comments. Viral posts often become jokes, anecdotes, comments on a political topic. But be careful - "hype" does not always help promote the group.

Example post in a group offering flower delivery services

Statistics in Odnoklassniki shows reach, activity, what types of content are popular and many other parameters - everything you need for initial analysis. Statistics is in a group, in a separate menu. To properly promote your community, analyze the engagement and types of content that subscribers like the most.

An example of group statistics in Odnoklassniki Sales Generator

We will send the material to you:

It is difficult to imagine a modern person without social networks. For some, they are a way to connect with other people around the world, while for others they are a working tool. Such a marketing tool helps to significantly expand the target audience. That is why promotion in social networks is becoming so relevant today.

From this article you will learn:

1. For whom promoting a business through social networks will not bring results
2. What are the pros and cons
3. 5 stages of independent promotion of services or goods
4. TOP 6 best social networks for brand promotion
5. Main promotion tools
6. How is website promotion possible?
7. Free product promotion
8. Brand promotion through social networks using special services
9. How a promotion strategy is developed
10. 4 ideas for effective promotion
11. 11 mistakes in which promotion through social networks will not bring results
12. 6 tips on how to choose an SMM agency that you can trust with marketing and promotion

What are the features of promotion through social networks

Despite the relative "youth" of promotion in social networks (), such a tool has shown its tremendous effectiveness and gained admirers among experienced marketers. It helps to expand the audience of potential customers at the expense of those users who cannot be attracted by other marketing methods.

However, despite the high efficiency of SMM promotion in social networks, this tool remains little studied due to the fact that this process of attracting customers is constantly transforming.

Users themselves are responsible for distribution. By voting with the help of "likes" and "reposts", users increase the number of site visitors who become customers of the company.

The popularity of this tool to attract potential customers has several reasons:

For whom promoting a business through social networks will not bring results

Users don't search social media for machine tool manufacturing, drilling services, or plant chemicals. While companies operating in large, medium or small sectors are very successful in using this tool in their marketing campaigns.

In addition, topics of an intimate nature are unacceptable for discussion on social networks. Questions of personal life do not become an object of discussion. Here, a person will not discuss the symptoms of their disease with a doctor or consult a lawyer. Such questions are asked in a personal conversation.

In all other cases related to the discussion of content by a large number of users, SMM promotion in social networks becomes an ideal tool.

However, the possibilities of promotion in social networks should not be reduced only to attracting new customers. PotentialSMM marketing much wider and includes:

• sales growth;
• retargeting;
• expanding the circle of regular customers;
• increasing product awareness;
• neutralization of negative reputation;
• creating a brand and developing its image;
• qualitative and quantitative improvement of traffic.

What are the pros and cons of promoting through social networks

Advantages:

• user confidence in SMM messages is higher than in ordinary advertising information;
• the ability to expand the number of potential customers through social network users who may be immune to other marketing tools;
• higher targeting, which allows you to clearly highlight the target audience of interest;
• the price of promotion in social networks is significantly lower than the cost of an advertising campaign in the press or on television;
• the ability to communicate with clients that does not require the installation of third-party software;
• high speed of content distribution among interested users.

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disadvantages:

• the first results will not appear immediately;
• to maintain the interest of existing users and to attract new content must be constantly updated;
• the inability to calculate the final cost of promotion in social networks due to the constant influence of many factors;
• the end result cannot be predicted;
• people are more likely to use search engines to find a product of interest;
• the price of a mistake is extremely high: low literacy or inaccurate content can lead to the loss of a significant part of subscribers;
• a fairly large number of users try to ignore even such advertising groups;
• inability to promote their products for many specific business segments.

Promotion of services or goods through social networks independently: 5 stages

Stage 1. Planning and strategy development.

To achieve business goals, you need to create an effective advertising campaign strategy. To do this, an analysis of the market and the target audience is carried out, tools for interacting with consumers are selected.

Stage 2. Platform creation.

To promote the brand and the company, a page or a thematic group is used. The platform is also integrated with the site.

Stage 3. Content creation.

To attract the attention of the audience and generate demand for the company's product, it is necessary. These can be articles, advertising texts, videos, photos and other materials that can encourage users to take certain actions.

Stage 4. Attracting an audience.

To search and collect subscribers, interested users and customers, personal invitations, various types of advertising, and viral marketing are used.

Stage 5. Organization of interaction.

Successful promotion in social networks is based on building effective communications in a group. Participants should be motivated to communicate, comment on posts, like, repost, etc. It is extremely important to ensure active interaction between users.

Brand promotion through social networks: TOP-6 best

Advantages: the largest audience in Russia, the ability to publish diverse content.

Flaw: high competition (it is necessary to constantly fight for the attention and favor of users, updating the content and often supplementing it with interesting messages).

Advantages: the number of audience is almost the same as the users of VKontakte, "like" from the user automatically distributes your content to his subscribers.

Flaw: a significant part of the audience is older people, although this social network is gradually filled with young people.

1. Facebook

Advantages: an adult and fairly wealthy audience, there is access to an international audience, cheap targeted advertising.

Flaw: a significant part of the Russian youth audience belongs to VKontakte.

1. Instagram

Advantages: ideal for the visual presentation of your product, constantly growing in the number of users, a significant part of the audience is represented by young people, well suited for brand promotion.

Flaw: visual presentation does not always make it possible to make a complete description of the product.

1. Twitter

Advantages: prompt notification of events, the ability to redirect users to other social networks, the audience is about two times ahead of the audience of other media.

Flaw: Programmatically limited message size.

1. YouTube

Advantages: a huge audience, a great option for promoting a brand (sometimes personal), goods or services, a great option for B2B.

Flaw: Many users use third-party resources to view and publish videos.

For the most successful promotion, it is best to use several social networks at once, focusing on their merits.

The main tools of promotion in social networks

The most advanced technologies for storing and transmitting information are being successfully mastered by social networks almost immediately. Complementing this parameter with the widest coverage of the most diverse audience, you will get an excellent tool that will help you not only in promoting your own brand or web resource, but also in influencing users.

1. Video. Used for education, entertainment, attraction.

For example, You Gif Ted specializes in recruiting participants for private workouts. On his YouTube channel, he regularly posts instructions for homework.

1. Audio. It can be music, a podcast, an audiobook, and other audio files that are of interest to your target audience.
2. Images. They are used to illustrate their products, services and other things.

For example, the Kazan company "Chocolate Paradise" regularly posts photos of its products on Instagram:

1. With its help, users get acquainted with the company and its activities.

For example, magazine "General Director" in his group on VKontakte, he regularly posts excerpts from his articles to go to the main site:

How is it possible to promote the site through social networks

White Methods

Targeted advertising has some of the best performance metrics. The success of this method depends on the right setup, which helps to attract users only from the target audience you need and turn them into customers.

1. Advertising in communities or accounts

This method is quite effective if at the same time you put the necessary effort into compiling an attractive advertising message. At the same time, you need to remember that the success of your campaign also depends on the choice of site, since each of these resources can have its own specific audience.

Often, pages of famous people whose accounts have many subscribers are used to post messages. This method is actively used in Instagram.

This method is effective only when you need to increase the number of subscribers or the number of “likes” of one advertisement in the shortest possible time. Even inexpensive prizes attract a lot of people.

However, for the most part, this audience is represented by the so-called freebie lovers, who will not show high performance. Therefore, to promote an online store in social networks using contests, it is better to offer discounts that will interest regular and new subscribers.

SEO queries can also be used for social media promotion. By using keywords in the description of communities or pages, you will be able to attract users and those who make a request using search engines. However, as the main way to promote SEO will not be effective.

Gray methods

1. Cheat by bots or offers

The cost of attracting bots to the community you are interested in will be significantly lower than the price of promotion in social networks using offers (users who are invited for payment to get likes and reposts). However, you will not be able to get targeted subscribers with these methods.

The undoubted advantage of such cheats is the ability to bring your community to the first places in the ranking. Those groups that have the most subscribers go to the TOP.

1. Spam in comments or private messages

Despite the fact that spam is prohibited in any social network, by placing a link to your resource in such messages, you will be able to attract interested users who will click the mouse and go to your site.

And although spammers' accounts are quickly blocked, in the short life of such a page it will be possible to achieve a small increase in the number of subscribers.

Spam in private messages is not very effective, and there are two reasons for this:

• many users' accounts are closed for messages from guests;
• after receiving spam in private messages, users promptly complain to the support service, which leads to a quick blocking of the spammer's account.

1. Mass following

Mass following is a subscription to those users who, in response, subscribe to your page. This method shows the most efficiency on Instagram.

Figuratively, it looks like in our illustration - shooting at sparrows.

Free promotion of goods through social networks

• Create a community or group. Promotion of groups in social networks does not require financial investments either at the stage of creation or at the stage of attracting subscribers and posting messages. When attracting interested users to your community, make sure that they visit your resource and become regular customers.
• Public or fan pages created to attract the target audience interested in your products.
• Promotion of media content. Media content is favorably received by all users, even if it is purely promotional. Most often used to promote media content

Brand promotion through social networks using special services

To promote your trademark on social networks, there are services that will help you achieve maximum efficiency. Each of them has its own advantages and disadvantages.

forumok

This service is great for promotion in social networks. Forumok offers a wide range of settings and an interesting design. Thanks to this service, your resource will have real users, and not rating numbers, which are mostly fake.

Pros. This service works with most social networks (Twitter, VKontakte, Facebook, My World, Odnoklassniki, Google+, Youtube). Most of the performers are real users.

Minuses. The service does not work with Instagram, which owns a significant number of users interested in such promotion.

There is no automatic tracking of completed tasks, so the check has to be done manually by clicking on each link. This is extremely inconvenient in the case of a large number of control groups. Prices do not differ from offers of similar exchanges.

Vprka

When you first visit this service, it causes mixed impressions, since the design of the pages is extremely unprofessional. However, Vprka works with most resources (VKontakte, Facebook, twitter, Google+, Youtube, Odnoklassniki) and allows you to carry out effective promotion in these social networks on your own.

Users acquired using this resource can be retained by various lotteries, auctions and exchanges.

Pros. Compared to other similar services, the cost of promotion is very low. All necessary checks are carried out independently without the participation of the customer. The resulting users are real and have valid accounts.

Minuses. Before you start, you need to synchronize your social media accounts with each service. Because of this, the authorization process is very delayed.

This service is distinguished by a good set of functions, thanks to which it has gained great popularity. Works with VKontakte, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. There is a search for sites for advertising in groups and communities.

Pros. The cost is quite low (from 13 kopecks per action). Prices are fixed, which eliminates the possibility of dumping by competitors. The service has a large number of participants (about one million people), so any task immediately goes to work.

There is a free technical support service that promptly helps in case of questions.

Minuses. There are many small flaws that can reduce quality. For example, on Facebook it is impossible to “like” a particular post, there is no way to increase the rating of “reposts”.

The cost of "likes" and following for Instagram is very high, with many users being idle. Real promotion in social networks using this resource is unlikely, since it is more suitable for cheating counters.

How is a social media strategy developed?

A social media promotion plan must necessarily begin with the development of a strategy for the entire campaign and its main parameters. There is nothing unusual in such planning, since all these stages are necessarily present when creating any advertising project as part of a marketing policy.

Any SMM manager for business promotion in social networks must first answer a number of clarifying questions:

Stages of the strategy:

Definition of SMM campaign objectives

• Sales

The most commonly used method is when the created community generates direct communication with potential customers, answering questions and providing detailed information about the product of interest.

As a rule, in such groups, the main task of such communication is to encourage the user to go to the company's website and place an order.

Often these communities are similar to online stores where you can make a purchase without leaving the social network. The functionality allows you to make payments via electronic transfers.

It is necessary to maintain the interest of subscribers of this community by offering various promotions and discounts. In this case, consultants communicating with users will be able to encourage them to make a repeat purchase and maintain loyalty to your brand.

• Traffic

If you have made the right settings, this approach will allow you to get a large number of real users - leads (leads). By establishing communication with them, you can turn them into your customers or subscribers.

• Branding

• Reputation management and negative neutralization

Target audience and its habitats

Any promotion in social networks is based on the characteristics of the target audience it is aimed at. If you have a portrait of a potential user who is sure to be interested in your offer, and information about the sites on which he "lives", you will be able to target your advertising campaign.

To highlight the main characteristics of the target audience, it is necessary to identify several points:

• Geography, or geotargeting

The geography of residence of your potential users must be specified. To specify, it is necessary to identify not only the country of residence, but also the region (up to microdistricts).

• Socio-demographic criteria

These characteristics include gender, age, marital status, education, place of work, position, income level. Knowing about these criteria will allow you to fine-tune the promotion of advertising on social networks and increase the effectiveness of the entire advertising campaign.

• Hobbies, interests, hobbies

This criterion cannot be ignored when setting up an advertising campaign. Hobbies that users enjoy in their free time can take up a significant portion of their Internet traffic and determine the choice of communities.

With the help of such channels, you can reach your potential client by offering him a product that really interests him. Such communication will be the key to ongoing cooperation.

After highlighting the main characteristics of your target user, you need to select the sites that are best suited for search according to these criteria.

Promotion in a social network (VKontakte or Facebook, for example) allows you to use the functionality of these sites, which helps to determine the number of registered network members that meet the entered criteria.

What behavioral characteristics are typical for your audience? The behavior patterns of your target audience are able to determine the interests and selected topics of the communities. This aspect must be taken into account in order to build the most effective communication with users through the selection of appropriate content.

There are several types of users:

• Content Generators independently set the topic and format of communication. Most often they can be found in communities dedicated to IT.
• Participants of the discussions prefer to communicate in already formed discussions, asking questions and participating in discussions. This format of communications is typical for financial and medical topics.
• Passive Users prefer to observe the course and nature of the discussions. Most often they can be found in the retail segment. Despite their passivity, these users can actively purchase a product that is discussed in the communities by other members.

By identifying the category of people most of whom are the target audience of your community, you can decide on the content that can interest them. Be prepared for the fact that in the case of passive users, you will have to constantly generate content, despite the lack of activity. Otherwise, even these subscribers will leave you.

Content creation and management strategy

The content strategy for promotion in social networks is necessarily based on topics that can interest your potential user. It is necessary to carefully plan and predict the format of communication in order to maintain and increase the target audience of your community or group.

When creating a content strategy, you can rely on the socio-demographic characteristics of the target audience, its interests, as well as the data of the sites where your communities are located. Be sure to consider the following:

• communication style(depending on the data of the audience and the selected content, the format of communication can be formal, informal, professional, etc.);
• topics of interest;
• post format(it is necessary to maintain a ratio of 25% of promo posts and 75% of neutral posts, otherwise the community will be overloaded with advertising information that can scare away a significant part of the audience);
• forecast for future publications.

If you exclusively repost the same material on thematic communities of different social networks, this can also scare off the audience. The content should take into account the format of each platform and be interesting for those users who are registered in several social media and are your subscribers.

Campaign Resources

• human;
• temporary;
• financial.

The allocation of resources and the determination of their percentage should be carried out at the planning stage of an SMM campaign. Budgeting can be done on the basis of total advertising costs.

Development of a system of metrics

Analysis of the performance indicators of a promotion campaign in social networks depends on the goals and objectives set. There are several criteria that will help evaluate the success of the SMM strategy, for example, the overall reach of the audience, its activity, traffic quality, traffic attracted to the site, sales and registration in the community.

Efficiency evaluation is carried out using:

• web analytics systems (Google Analytics, Yandex Metrika);
• analysis of user actions;
• internal statistics of social network communities;
• statistical indicators on third-party sites;
• sociological surveys in the social network, focus groups;
• special events using dedicated phone numbers, coupons and promo codes.

An analysis of these criteria will show the social media promotion specialist how successful the SMM campaign was, whether it was able to solve all the tasks assigned to it and how its results will affect the business. These indicators will also help to evaluate the effectiveness of investing funds in order to determine the degree of return on investment.

Drawing up a calendar plan

Each marketing strategy is based on a calendar plan for carrying out certain promotional activities. It should clearly define the deadlines for the start and end dates, the schedule of publications for promotion in social networks, as well as the analysis of the results and the evaluation of the effectiveness.

Such a plan will help in creating a marketing campaign scheme. At the same time, he should be able to make comments and adjustments in the course of implementation. Do not forget about the need for external administrative control.

Effective promotion through social networks: 4 ideas

If you think that you need to use SMM methods to increase sales, then you should pay attention to the experience of those brands that have been successfully using these technologies for a long time. For example, the company KLM (“Royal Aviation Company”, the Netherlands), whose income is replenished by 25 million euros annually from SMM.

Carline Vogel-Meier worked for KLM for many years before joining the social media department. She spoke about the company's social media strategy, which draws on previous customer experience to help guide the right marketing steps.

According to Carline, the following parameters are the priorities for successful brand promotion in the network:

Publish quality content that users will like

A company that is engaged in air transportation around the world simply cannot ignore the socio-cultural characteristics of the regions whose residents often become its passengers. Despite the 95-year history and the seemingly archaic "ossification" in connection with this, she was able to adapt to the realities of global communication and new marketing strategies.

When creating an SMM concept, company managers focus on the consumer, since the success of promotion in social networks depends on it. You need to respect those people who are in your communities and “like” messages that are interesting to them.

Therefore, all posted content must be relevant, high-quality and unbiased, otherwise you risk losing users loyal to your brand.

The airline's managers came to this conclusion on the basis of their own negative experience. After the World Cup (World Cup 2014), their message "Farewell friends" (Adios, Amigos) appeared in social media communities, written after the victory of Holland over Mexico. In response to the tweet, 90 thousand entries followed, 70% of which were negative.

Prompt communication with customers through social networks

Other channels of operational transmission of information were overloaded. Therefore, the company had to involve this alternative source in order to answer customer questions.

The appearance of the Icelandic ash cloud was a fatal disruption to the marketing activities of KLM, which previously used social media only to publish standard advertising messages.

Faced with the dilemma of whether to respond to requests or ignore them, the company chose the former. Managers began to respond to their clients as the situation unfolded. This was the beginning of a social strategy that remains the basis of their success to this day.

Accurate response time to a social media query

Using the last click model (the click that led to the targeted action i.e. the purchase), an airline can raise €25m annually through social media sales. This became possible due to the shift of attention to the customer experience, which became the basis of the company's SMM strategy.

The marketing policy of the company, or rather, the segment that is responsible for promotion in social networks, is based on the following principles:

• services;
• brand and reputation;
• commerce.

The quality of the services provided is determined not only by the sphere of air travel, but also by communication with users in social networks. Therefore, it is so important to answer all the questions of your community subscribers, even if they carry a pronounced negative attitude.

Statistical analysis showed that the weekly number of reviews sent to the airline is about 45,000. And only 5,000 are real requests that require detailed study and resolution.

However, the company's average time spent processing one request is approximately 23 minutes, despite the fact that communication is conducted in 14 languages.

Although this processing speed requires significant human resources, there can always be a passenger who finds this period too long, especially when rushing to a connecting flight. As a result, Twitter has set a timer in the title of the page to inform users of the amount of time it takes to answer a question.

Pay directly on social networks

Maintaining prompt communication with customers and responding to their requests, airline managers know what may be of interest to passengers in order to implement projects to improve service. For example, after supporting the offer of community subscribers, a new payment tool was introduced directly through social networks.

This service is available to Facebook and Twitter users. For payment, the passenger receives a link in a personal message, and then independently selects the preferred payment method and completes the transaction. The social agent of the company receives a message that the payment has been received, and the passenger receives a confirmation of payment.

The implementation of the project cost 3,500 euros, and now brings 80 thousand euros from sales weekly.

However, not all of these projects can be implemented by everyone who sees their effectiveness and wants to implement them in their business. To develop such a strategy and tools, the airline had to go through its own negative experience.

However, the competence of the staff and significant financial support helped to get out of unpleasant situations with dignity, drawing certain conclusions.

11 mistakes when promoting through social networks will not bring results

Mistake #1. Demanding instant results

If anyone tells you that some customers have received immediate returns, don't immediately call your marketer and demand that the process be expedited. Such cases are extremely rare exceptions to the rule.

The duration of the wait is determined by the specifics of your brand. Sometimes it takes three weeks and sometimes three months. However, you should always be prepared for the fact that the SMM strategy will not bring results at all. The thing is that promotion in social networks does not directly affect sales, like contextual or banner advertising.

When you should not expect quick sales from social networks:

• When your product or service is complex and costs over $1,000. However, do not give up, disappointed in SMM. In social networks, you can set up your company's customer service, devoting it to communicating with users and publishing interesting content.

Of course, using social media, you are unlikely to be able to get a user to purchase agricultural equipment manufactured under your brand. However, on the page of your company, a person will find detailed information about the product he is interested in, as well as answers to all questions that are important to him.

• When your company has accumulated a lot of questions and claims. The loss of image is always accompanied by a negative attitude from customers. Therefore, all your efforts aimed at SMM promotion of business in social networks will be in vain until the reputation of your company is restored.

First you need to find the source of the problem and make every effort to eliminate it. Be sure to inform users that all difficulties have been overcome, and in the future such situations will not arise again.

Demonstrate how you got the problem fixed and what steps you are taking to prevent it from happening in the future. Only after restoring the "good name" of your company, you can start promoting in social networks.

Mistake #2. Believing that promotion in social networks is easier than a steamed turnip

If you think that the task of SMM promotion can be entrusted to a non-specialist, citing the fact that everyone is oriented in social networks, then the result of such inept actions will surely disappoint you.

This mistake is most often encountered by small companies that do not have their own marketing department. In this case, the task of promotion in social networks is entrusted to the employee who can allocate some time for these actions during the working day.

As a result, there are accounts of companies whose representative is a real person. This violates the rules of social networks, which leads to the blocking of such pages.

Another mistake of this approach is that when dismissed, the person to whom such accounts are registered can “take away” all your communities. The risk of such a loss increases if your company did not part well with this employee.

Even an experienced marketer who first encountered promotion in social networks will not be able to build a high-quality strategy using standard methods. Many large companies that decide to go into SMM hire specialists to train their staff.

Mistake #3. Pick up and drop social media promotion midway

If your SMM promotion strategy has not been successful, then this does not mean at all that social networks cannot be an effective tool for your business. Firstly, in no case should you abandon those users who have already become subscribers to your communities. They can be converted into customers using other marketing tools.

Second, these users expect to consistently receive quality content from your communities. By leaving groups, you will leave subscribers without attention. And this can negatively affect the image of your company, since users will not be able to get advice on issues of interest to them.

Lack of feedback indirectly tells subscribers that not everything is in order in your company.

Mistake #4. Believing that there are magic promotion tools

An ad that promises to bring your brand to the top of the rankings clearly cannot be true. It is impossible to quickly and completely turn all ordinary users into an audience devoted to your company. If the number of subscribers is a criterion of effectiveness for you, then this is a deep delusion.

The entire social media promotion process (from start to finish) is devoted to daily work on quality content that will not only be interesting to users, but will also be able to stimulate them to invite other people to your community.

In order to always keep the audience interested, you need to be one step ahead and not be afraid to exceed their expectations. If subscribers want to see useful information in your community, offer them worthy news, as well as a prize for everyone who shares it on their social network feed.

If users expect gifts from you for some actions, give gifts just like that. Surprise them, and then you will see an amazing increase in your members, subscribers, followers and whoever.

Mistake #5. Just broadcast content without paying attention to users

Maintaining a community in social networks requires a different approach than working on a corporate website. SMM communications must necessarily be two-way, since only a small number of users are content with viewing content and passively observing discussions on the forum.

Social networks are created for communication and interaction. Therefore, you must always be ready to enter into a dialogue with users, answering questions or giving recommendations. Such communication should be prompt: a subscriber who is forced to wait for a response to his request for several days is likely to look for another community.

If the response to the question arrives within an hour, then this is considered the norm. That is why promotion in social networks requires significant human, time and financial costs, since communication must be carried out 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Mistake #6. Rely on your own strength

Delegation of authority is a great tool for optimizing promotion in social networks. Any head of the marketing department who first encountered such a tool to increase sales should know about it.

Yes, at the initial stage - determining the target audience, its interests, socio-demographic indicators, etc., it is impossible to do without the participation of the leader, but this is a maximum of 1-2 weeks.

Further steps should be carried out by social media promotion specialists. The head of the marketing department should not "flirt" with reposts and "likes". It is much more important to devote your time to the necessary management, as well as monitoring the implementation of tasks.

Mistake #7. No social media promotion goal (started because it's trendy)

You can’t promote on social networks just because it’s fashionable among large companies. The groups created in this case in most cases quickly become "dead", because they lack effective two-way communication with users.

If there is no activity in the corporate community, subscribers may have a negative impression of the company as a whole, which will further lead to speculation and loss of a positive image of your brand.

Having decided to start promoting a product on social networks, you must clearly understand what exactly you want to get as a result. Setting goals will help you estimate the amount of budget needed to achieve them. To make things easier, you can answer the following questions to help clarify, why do you need an SMM strategy:

• Create and contribute to the preservation of communication with the user?
• Organize an additional sales channel?
• Create a 24/7 call center?
• To test a novelty before offering it to the market?
• Organize an additional sales channel for regular customers?
• Contribute to the growth of the average check?
• Eliminate negative reviews about your brand or product?
• To prevent the possible appearance of negative information that could damage your image (provided that you expect negative information to appear due to certain reasons)?
• Increase customer loyalty to encourage them to buy from you?
• Increase brand or product awareness?

Mistake #8. Spending too much money on social media promotion

Without preliminary testing, which will show exactly which communication channels and which social media are suitable for your goals, not all investments will be able to bring a positive result.

In this case, a thoughtful and painstaking mathematical analysis will prompt the right choice. Do not be afraid to spend time on useless (at first glance) testing if you are sure in advance about the chosen communication channel.

Mistake #9. Copying someone else's content

Copying content taken from competitors will not bring your company to the top of the rankings. Promotion in social networks is especially successful when the author offers his own unique developments that are interesting and useful to users.

Don't be afraid to experiment. And even more so, do not be modest, believing that your idea will not be interesting to anyone. Engage in promoting a blog on social networks that will tell you in detail about your product, the stages of its creation and who it will be useful to. Develop the status of an expert whose advice really helps and improves the work.

Mistake #10. Lack of competitor analysis

However, do not completely ignore the experience of competitors. After all, a positive result can suggest a couple of ideas for testing on your project, and a negative one will help prevent such mistakes.

To begin with, it is enough to highlight the strongest players in your market. Carefully study their marketing technologies and promotion tools. Try to implement these ideas in the realities of the Russian segment of these social networks. If the project is successful, you can gradually enter other sites.

Mistake #11. Ignoring negative reviews

Negative information that harms reputation is the reality of any business. You will never be able to avoid speculation from competitors or negative feedback from dissatisfied customers.

If you work with the negative, quickly responding and eliminating the source, this will increase the loyalty of users who will see your attitude towards their own work and attentiveness to reviews.

Never remove negative reviews from your corporate social media pages, and even more so, do not block the user who made the comment. Even if you do it as quickly as possible and unnoticed by other subscribers, negative information will still break into your blog.

A user whose feedback you ignored in this way can log in from another account and attract the attention of others. Such hype will definitely not benefit your brand image. It is better to take the time to study the negative feedback and solve the problem. And your subscribers will see with what attention you treat working with clients.

6 tips on how to choose an SMM agency you can trust with marketing and social media promotion

Tip 1. Choose those who are exclusively engaged in promotion on social networks.

It is impossible to do several things at once equally effectively. Even if you have a huge staff. Therefore, it is best to entrust promotion in social networks to the agency that specializes only in it, without “spraying” on other marketing channels to attract customers and capital.

Such companies study SMM tools much more closely, following the latest trends, novelties and trends. Therefore, they will always be aware of how to set up a marketing campaign in the most effective way.

Tip 2: Ask to review your portfolio.

Each experienced and self-respecting agency has a portfolio of completed works, which can always be presented to future customers. Typically, the company's website has a section that details the success of previous projects and links to online performance metrics.

Tip 3: Ask what indicators of achievement the agency uses.

When contacting an agency, you need to have a clear strategy that will help you see what goals and objectives you set for promotion on social networks. This information will help determine the criteria by which the effectiveness of the activities carried out will be evaluated.

If agency employees operate with the names of various indicators (for example, KPI), without explaining exactly how they will manifest themselves when analyzing your brand strategy, you should not contact this company. Most likely, the agency just wants to choose easier criteria for itself, not paying attention to the needs of the client.

Tip 4. Pay attention to the experience of specialists.

By looking at an agency's portfolio, you can get an idea of ​​its experience. Do not be too lazy to clarify the same information from those employees who will directly work on your project.

The team that will be engaged in SMM promotion of your business on social networks should be aware of which marketing tools will be most effective for your company.

Tip 5. Read company reviews.

For the most objective picture, it is best to study both positive recommendations and negative reviews. The reliability of the information can be easily verified if the reviews are accompanied by information about the people with whom the agency contacted in the course of work, and their contacts (telephones, e-mail addresses, etc.).

Tip 6. Don't choose an agency because of the low price.

When concluding an agreement with the agency for promotion in social networks, do not be guided by a low price. A high-quality SMM strategy cannot be cheap.

What is the cost of promotion in social networks

Offering an SMM strategy to your company, the agency's specialists announce the price, the amount of which depends on the tools that will be involved:

After studying these criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of promotion in social networks, you can understand what the price of such services is made up of. The implementation of each of these items requires a certain amount of time, which must also be monetized.

However, this information is not unique, so such a message should be supplemented with the author's text. Preparation of a quality article that meets the requirements takes about two hours.

The text must be supplemented with a suitable picture, the search for which also takes time (about 10 minutes). If your community is represented in only one social network, you must publish at least three posts per day. In a month, their number grows to 90.

At least 10 of them must be 100% unique. It turns out the following calculation formula: 25*80+10*120+90*10=13,700 minutes or 228.3 hours, that is, about 228 hours per month are spent only on content selection.

The next step is advertising. Setting up an advertising campaign can take up to 20 hours, but on average it takes about 10 hours. Tracking and analyzing running promotions also takes time (about 30 hours per month). Total: about 40 hours per month is spent on advertising.

Time is also spent on preparing and holding various incentive competitions. After the end, it is necessary to analyze the effectiveness, summarize and communicate with users. The whole process takes about five hours.

You also need to spend time communicating with users. To be constantly in touch and quickly respond to user requests, you need to view the community feed once an hour. This means that it takes about 30 minutes a day, and 15 hours a month.

The total amount of time spent on these manipulations is 288 hours.

Many companies believe that social media promotion is a simple process that cannot cost more than 5,000 rubles. If this amount is divided by 288 hours, it turns out that in this case the cost of one hour of work of an SMM specialist will be 17 rubles. For such money, you will not be able to get a quality result.

Yes, the price is one of the main arguments in choosing an agency whose specialists offer promotion in social networks.

But before you start promoting goods and services on social networks, you should check the quality of the site, to which the flow of your potential customers will be sent from social networks. And the easiest way to do this is with the help of a professional site audit.

Social Media Marketing (SMM) is a set of works to promote a business by attracting additional traffic or attention from potential buyers to a brand, company, its products and services using social networks on the Internet.

In connection with the implementation of the new policy by search engines, their trust is much higher in those sites that have groups in social networks. Accordingly, this brings them to the best positions in the search.

How it works?

What will promotion in social networks give

Increase brand awareness, increase the number of sales of services and goods.
It will help the company to analyze the opinions of consumers about the proposed products (works), as well as find the target audience according to the necessary criteria.
Ability to maintain active feedback with customers.
Timely provision of information about promotions, possible changes, discounts and more.
Increasing the reputation of the site. Due to SMM promotion, its positions in search engines are significantly improved.

VKontakte is one of the most popular Russian social media with about 30 million active users. Initially, it was created to communicate with friends and acquaintances.

Today, almost everyone has their own profile on this social network, so it is a potentially profitable and popular trading platform with a high probability of finding the target audience. In the VKontakte group, it is convenient to post posts and conduct various polls. Its main task is not just to attract new visitors, but to turn them into regular users of their resource. Such a promotion strategy allows you to choose a contingent according to your topic, which further contributes to increasing the popularity of your brand.

Instagram

Why you should get promoted on Instagram:

• People use this network literally on the go with the help of modern mobile gadgets.
• The core of the audience is young people aged 18 to 29.
• In terms of gender, women dominate.
• 57% of owners check their account at least once a day, and 35% of users do it several times a day.
• Visual content is perceived by people many times faster than text content.

It is worth remembering that effective promotion of an Instagram account is a daily and constant work with photos and their descriptions, thematic hashtags, increasing the audience and likes. And thanks to the reviews left in the comments to the post, potential customers will trust the brand more, which can attract additional traffic to your site and positively affect the purchase of a product or service. It also actively practices various contests and lotteries, which increases the number of people interested in purchasing products. Therefore, advertising on Instagram is a great promotion tool.

As you know, Facebook is one of the five most visited websites in the world. Promotion of an organization in this network will not only be an effective way to attract potential customers to your own website, but also a good opportunity to find new business partners. Most of the users here are adults with higher education and a stable level of earnings, in contrast to the young audience of VKontakte. Therefore, by choosing Facebook, you are creating an ideal environment for yourself to develop and promote your business. Promotion of groups (pages) will help to significantly increase the number of visitors to your site and expand the geography of consumer coverage.

Social media promotion prices

The cost of website promotion in social networks will depend on the type and volume of work performed, as well as the competitiveness of the topic. Significant discounts on prices for work on the second and subsequent groups are provided when signing an agreement for the creation and promotion of a group on VKontakte or Odnoklassniki.

More detailed information can always be obtained from our qualified managers.