SMM specialist who is it. Earnings and investments in SMM (social media marketing)

In the first part of our article, we will try to comprehensively analyze the very specifics of social media, meaning by this a description of the most key aspects of the functioning of such Internet platforms, as well as the most important factors that should be taken into account in the development of an SMM project. We will devote the second part to a detailed description of verified ways to monetize such projects.

Types of social media

There are three types of social media:

1. Massive- open to any user. They imply a platform for posting almost any content, a wide audience coverage. Mass media can include a huge number of both broadly focused and highly specialized thematic blocks and functions. Examples of such media include sites for blogs, as well as social networks like VKontakte or Facebook.

2. Thematic- due to the narrowly focused specifics of the posted information and functions. Such sites can unite, say, IT-schnicks (Habrahabr.ru), music lovers (last.fm), writers (proza.ru), artists (deviantart.com) and so on.

2. Photo and video hosting- intended for posting videos (YouTube) or photos (Instagram), or live broadcasts (Twitch), with the ability to subscribe and comment.

Social media market size in Russia

Before you start investing in social media projects and, accordingly, receive from them, it is reasonable to begin with assessing the volume of the largest sites that open up such prospects. Below we present the actual volumes of potential consumers for 2015, which you can focus on in promoting your goods, services or projects. Also, we will try to reflect some important specific factors, such as the ratio of sexes, age, regions, and so on.

To begin with, it should be said that at the moment the Internet in Russia is used by approximately 44% of the population (64 million people). Of these, 75% use social networks on a daily basis.

The most popular social network in Russia is VKontakte (vk.com). Apart from all kinds of “bots”, in 2015 about 35 million people use the network's services, leaving about 600 million messages a month. Active users who generate social content allow us to consider a social network as a unique indicator of public taste, moods, problems, and so on. A competent analysis of these sentiments accompanies SM-marketers in the creation of content, or the implementation of projects, as well as forecasting the demand for such.

According to current data from TNS, the Russian-speaking audience of VKontakte is 52.4 million people a month. The audience of Odnoklassniki is 32.8 million people. Facebook - 22.7 million. My World - 22.3 million. Instagram had 10.4 million in April. Twitter shows 7.4 million.

The most common age of VKontakte visitors is 18-24 years old. In second place is the age group of 25-34 years old. On the third - adolescents under 18 years old.

Development of an SMM strategy

Your social media work should be meaningful and planned. The time has already passed when the community of “Lovers of Laughter at a Responsible Event” was gaining tens of thousands of subscribers per day. Today, the promotion of a brand, goods or services on social platforms is inextricably linked with competent investments, which means budget planning, as well as monitoring the dynamics of social activity, popular trends, and is skillful in all this. It is necessary to remember once and for all that SMM is as responsible and complex as the management of any physical enterprise. It is necessary to fight competition, monopolize as much as possible, take care of the quality and relevance of the “product”, the responsibility of employees and business partners, and so on. Next, we will try to lay the necessary foundation for meaningful work and earnings.

First of all, answer four questions for yourself:

• Why do I need it? In other words, why did I go this way in business? Why Social Media Marketing? Do I have the ability to do this? Maybe talent or insatiable interest? I have tons of ideas? It seems to me that you can earn a lot here? Here are just a few of the children clarifying the main question “Why?”. The rest you can create yourself.

Seriously, grab a notebook and responsibly write down for yourself the answer to this and all the following questions that you can best come up with on your own, guided by these four leading points. And you will see how much more meaningful your approach to this business has become.

The target audience

After you have decided what kind of project you are going to implement, you need to draw up as detailed a portrait of the target audience as possible. You must understand the interests, needs and psychology of a potential consumer in order to profitably sell your content to him. Your task is to attract as many and more subscribers as possible, because your earnings depend on their number and activity.

Again, answer the following questions for yourself:

• What is the socio-demographic component of my consumers? The ratio of sexes, ages, social status, income level. The more factors you can take into account, the better you will be able to select content.
• What are your interests and hobbies? What does the user want to see on your social platform? What are his additional interests? What annoys him? Think about the interests of the average consumer as if you are trying to understand the interests of your own child and then you are doomed to success.
• Geographical position. Where is my consumer from? Domestic or from abroad? Time zones should be taken into account when publishing. Each of your key posts should hit the peak of consumer activity.

Search for the required site

Next, you should find a suitable site with a high density of your target audience. Do video reviews - use YouTube, latplays and broadcasts are best done on Twitch, post photos on Instagram, discussion platforms, informative communities and publish funny pictures on VKontakte or Facebook.

Several key approaches will help you with this:

Resource base

Ten first steps in creating an SMM company

• Make a list of tasks that will be implemented on social platforms.
• Determine the target audience and sites of the highest concentration of target audience.
• Create social profiles and communities in the places where your target audience is concentrated. Find similar communities and monitor them.
• Decide on the specifics of content presentation (pictures, informative messages, videos), as well as style (professional, informal, business.)
• Determination of key topics that attract your target audience. We recommend that you make a list of ten to fifteen such topics.
• Now make a list of the key tags for your company.
• Develop a list of the first thirty headlines for your posts.
• Decide on your accomplices, or maybe you decided to lead the project on your own?
• Decide on markers for your company's progress.
• Calculate an indicative budget.

Promotion and monetization

Unfortunately, the strategy of our article does not imply a description of how to promote a project in each of the largest social networks, due to the enormous amount of information that should be presented, taking into account the individual specifics of each of the sites. However, in order to demonstrate the general logic of community promotion, we will analyze how this happens in one of the largest social networks covering the Russian-speaking sector. We mean the social network VKontakte (Vk.com). Perhaps later we will write how to promote projects on Facebook, Twitter or Youtube, or you can now navigate on your own in the search for the necessary materials, since you already have a basic understanding of the work of SMM technologies. Then we will try to comprehensively explain the principles of capitalizing your projects, again, using the example of the VKontakte site.

Promotion of the VK community

Community promotion on the VKontakte social network is the most frequently encountered tool on the SMM technology market. This social platform has a wide reach of users who unite in a variety of types of target consumers. Also, the network has the broadest functionality: support for video and audio content, public pages and groups, individual pages, applications, and so on.

Before creating a community, there are, again, a number of necessary steps to take:

• Choose community format
• Decide on community positioning
• Determine the motives of the target audience, which will orient it towards becoming familiar with your project. Implement these motives.
• Community branding
• Attract target audience
• Keep the project active

Let's take a look at each of the above points individually.

1. Community format

VKontakte provides two possible community formats: public pages and groups. In many ways they are similar, but there are also significant differences.

a) Branding

While groups, having a wide and flexible functionality, are something like classic forums or microsites, the list of which is not most often displayed on user pages, public pages (public pages) are more like a business card, information browsers.

b) Availability of checkpoints (Checkpoints).

Groups can be closed, partially closed or open, while communities are always open to new users.

c) Widgets

The advantage of public pages is the ability to integrate applications that display statistics, visitors and other summaries.

2. Motives of the target audience to join

b) Communication. Quite often, the consumer is guided by communication, acquaintances, flirting or attracting supporters to their own projects. Perhaps your group or page should perform just such a function?

With the development of the commercialization of the Internet, a large number of new specialties have emerged. What is SMM - many have already figured it out. Well, for those who first encountered this abbreviation, let's tell you more.

Marketing

Online marketing has evolved so quickly that all aspects that companies previously used in the real world have gone virtual. But the main goal remains the same: the sale of goods and services, as well as their management.

What is SMM - it will be explained to you in Internet marketing courses. It now takes up a significant portion of all e-commerce. It is sometimes referred to as online marketing, but the essence remains the same.

This segment is growing every year in the consumer sector. On this account can tell the numbers indicating the number of open online stores. It is also becoming popular in the B2B segment. The main advantage of this specialty is its interactivity. In addition, there is an opportunity to select the target audience of the product as successfully as possible, target it, get post-feedback and increase conversions.

It was Internet marketing that influenced the development of a huge number of new specialties, which are closely related:

• Display and contextual advertising.
• Search engine marketing, which includes SEO.
• Promotion in social networks (SMM and CMO).
• Direct marketing.
• Viral.
• Guerrilla.
• Email marketing.
• Content Marketing.

Social networks

This is a kind of tool that draws attention to the product through social platforms. Of course, there are no regulated rules. It all depends on the topic, goals, audience, etc. Nevertheless, the main points have already been formed, according to which this industry of Internet marketing can be distinguished.

The main goal is to develop high-quality content that users will want to share, and, accordingly, distribute it on their own. Research has shown that social media posts have a high level of trust. This is most likely caused by a popular recommendation.

SMM promotion helps to influence users in a targeted manner, to find platforms where representatives of the target audience "live". Thanks to social networks, professionals have good ways to communicate.

In addition to everything else, information companies also participate in promotions. So, you can sell not just a product or service, but also news. By posting part of the article on the social network, you can increase traffic on the site itself.

Specialist

The main actor in this process is the CMM manager. It is not difficult to guess that he must understand about everything connected with this topic. He uses a set of measures to promote sites, products or services, referring to social channels. The latter include social networks, as well as blogs and thematic resources (forums).

This specialty is not narrowly focused. The fact is that an SMM manager needs to understand both marketing and IT. Accordingly, sometimes you have to work with a number of other, indirect tasks:

• Publishing content on the site.
• Cases and strategies.
• Programming languages.
• Graphic editor.
• Online applications.

The process of SMM promotion itself is very creative and active. To be successful, it is important to search, study and analyze something all the time.

Features of the specialty

Like any profession, this one has its own characteristics. For an SMM manager, both complex tasks and functional responsibilities are available. In the first case, he can help the entire department or supplement the existing data, in the second, he follows the job description.

Immediately it is necessary to warn that depending on the company in which the manager works, his tasks can vary significantly. But in general, he is obliged to:

• Form and promote the product using presentations, specific formats and pricing.
• Prepare and launch advertising campaigns in social networks and blogs. It is desirable to use the maximum number of channels.
• Maintain communication with potential buyers and customers.
• Analyze competitors and their advertising campaigns, use their most effective promotion methods in your project.
• Form a positive image of the company by writing comments on the forums.

Be able to do everything

Of course, these are not all tasks. SMM training will definitely open up even more of your responsibilities to you. Something you will use in one company, something in another.

For example, strategizing can be useful to you. In this case, you will be taught to define your target audience, to draw up a detailed portrait. After that, you need to analyze and look for places with the highest concentration of CA.

The courses teach how to manage advertising. In this case, you need to come up with interesting contests and flash mobs in order to constantly maintain interest in the product. We'll have to learn how to write flattering posts about yourself. This support of the company's image is very important, because it is in the reviews and on the forums that people’s opinion about new products is formed.

During the SMM training, you will get to know the community manager. Sometimes this is a separate position, sometimes an SMM manager is engaged in this. The main task in this case is to maintain the conversation under the posts and direct it in the right direction.

Naturally, you need to learn how to work with all social media accounts, as well as manage freelancers. Often you have to adapt content to the brand and specific sites. You need to be able to create sponsored posts that are not intrusive. This includes

Dignity

Understanding what SMM is, over time you will be able to determine for yourself the advantages and disadvantages of such work. Among the pluses, one can definitely single out the demand. Since the profession is just developing, the demand for specialists in this industry is growing.

Potential customers perceive this kind of product advertisement much better, because it is "calmer". Social media is a cool tool for accurately targeting your target audience. There are many options for customizing marketing by location, gender, age, and query.

The very cost of promotions is small. Although everything will depend on the promotion channels. If you write your own posts, it won't cost you anything. If you want to use (the blogger), you have to pay him an impressive fee.

Thanks to the word of mouth effect, the news of a new high-quality product will quickly spread across the network.

Flaws

It is important to understand that due to insufficient knowledge and lack of regulated rules, SMM marketing has its drawbacks. Chief among them is the incompetence of specialists.

Not all business leaders clearly understand the goals and objectives of social promotion. This leads to the hiring of less qualified professionals who likewise do not understand their responsibilities. Therefore, the effectiveness of SMM is extremely low and not advisable.

Tools

Most of the "smmschiks" have already acquired some programs that help them in their work. For example, one of them was the SMM glider. This service will help you keep in touch all the time and use deferred posting.

This feature works great if you have a content plan. You will be able to make a schedule and publish posts on time.

This service works with most popular social networks. It uses pictures, links, videos, and even emoticons. There is a built-in graphics editor. You can set a time frame for when the post will automatically disappear. This is necessary if you are using advertising content that is paid for a certain period.

Despite the fact that the SMM glider is almost always a paid tool, it gives the user a lot of bonuses. Thanks to him, you can get 100 free posts for VKontakte subscriptions and Facebook likes. As a result, a simple young project can be promoted for free.

Through such a program, you can distribute the frequency of posts and originality. Automation of work in this area is very important, especially if you work with several projects at once.

conclusions

What is SMM is not immediately clear. This is due to the fact that, despite the clear distinction from other specialties of Internet marketing, this profession often has to deal with even traditional marketing.

The main task of a specialist in this area is considered to be interaction with the audience. He needs to become a part of the community and a best friend. It's important to be open, honest, and funny. Then potential customers will trust and buy.

The development of social networks has spawned a huge new business industry - SMM marketing. This is when we come with our product to some social network, find our target audience there, and offer them our product in different ways.

Sounds easy. But there are a number of pitfalls in SMM (Social Media Marketing). It is they who often prevent the gurus of "traditional" sales from taking advantage of new opportunities.

And let's first take a look at how this “new marketing” differs from the old ways of promoting.

3 differences between SMM and other types of marketing

# 1 - socializing and having fun

SMM primarily means social. That is, all marketing through SMM is built on communication. Social networks are generally a very interesting medium. People come to social media for two purposes only:

• Communicate
• Have fun

If you give them any content that is not aimed at communication or entertainment, you will be "scrolled" and not noticed. That is, all your actions related to attracting the target audience should somehow involve in communication or entertain.

I can give you a simple example. Vkontakte on the left shows you various ads. This is called targeted advertising. Know what works best for targeted ads? The one where there is some funny or curious image in the picture. 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 of your "ins and outs" are exposed for everyone to see. 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 the target audience likes. Then a special image was created for these people, and they were made “puppets” at the head of the company. And the true owners and leaders have never shone anywhere.

But only social networks have made it possible to develop a personal brand so quickly and so. Again, we'll talk about this a little later, but one of the main goals of promotion through SMM is to make sure that you start to be recognized "by sight." This is trust. And where there is trust, there are sales.

And if you are promoting your face, then make it so that it is at least visible. And even better - so that it can be seen that you are a real person, and not a dummy. Which of the two personal brand ads inspires you more credibility?

# 3 - Virus is such a form of life

The main engine of SMM is a virus. New people come to your groups, and then not selling pages after they see a repost of your record on their friend's wall. They come and also do some kind of repost or leave a comment.

And already his friends see this in their news feed, and they also come to you. On conventional sites, free traffic was (and is) supplied through search engines. This is the so-called SEO promotion. And here is a virus.

However, SEO works "always" and the virus needs to be constantly launched with a new one. That is, if you wrote one good article, and it entered 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 in social networks, everything is more complicated. 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 do not like doing SMM. I love it when the result "accumulates". But, of course, I have my own group in contact. Join us.

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 shouldn't everyone be on the same network. And the thing is that they are different. And the people who are there are also different.

For example, it is believed that facebook audience- more intellectually developed and serious than VKontakte (on Russian-speaking Facebook, of course). And so it really is. People there prefer to discuss complex issues of world politics and economics and all that jazz. These people, by the way, are more likely to 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 connotations. This does not mean that "there are only schoolchildren on 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 citizen of Russia" - with an average salary, pension and life expectancy.

For some reason, residents of urban-type settlements and industrial outskirts of large cities prefer to communicate there. And from all this network, very simple folk humor in the spirit of Petrosyan emanates. I would come there with "novelties" (which have long been known on the Internet to everyone, except for the inhabitants of classmates).

All other social networks are not very common in our country, so they can be omitted in this review. Your task is to choose the social network where your target audience lives. Even if you yourself prefer to communicate with other people - nothing can be done. Magomed must come to the mountain.

And after choosing a network, we need to make a “collection point” for our audience.

# 2 - creating a platform for communication

For example, Vkontakte is prohibited from conducting any commercial activity through your personal page. But I know people who are not at all embarrassed by this prohibition. They post content to their account and make sales there.

Another important point is not to be sprayed between several social networks. You only need to choose one site, and pay all your attention to it. This way you will have a better chance of success.

# 3 - creating viral content

In the first step, you need to make a lot of interesting posts for people to share and attract a new audience. I single out 4 types of viral content that people share the most:

• Content - provocation
• Content - instruction
• Content - medal
• Content - rzhaka

You can read more about all these types of content and how they work in the article.

You will also most likely have to invest money if you want your community to grow faster. Almost all social media platforms have ad mechanisms built in. If you prefer “slowly but surely,” then you don't have to pay. The main thing is that the content is really viral.

# 4 - Monetization

It is very important to understand right away that attracting an audience and making money from this audience are completely different, in no way related things. You can have a group of 100 thousand people, and you will earn a penny.

Conversely, a group of 2-3 thousand active members will give you huge profits. It all depends on what methods of monetization you use. There are only three main options for making money on the Internet on your content sites:

• Advertising (the most common and low-profit activity)
• Affiliate programs (with luck)
• Selling your goods and services (bonanza, 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 content plan templates for social media 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 things: the emphasis in content is on entertainment and communication, a personal brand plays a huge role, and promotion is based on the virality of the 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. This can be a group, community or your personal page.
• To promote, try to make every post of yours as viral as possible. You can read more about this in the book Contactless Sales.
• If funds allow, pay for ads in social media to promote faster.
• Think in advance how you are going to make money from your audience. Otherwise, you run the risk of sharing the fate of those who spent two years collecting a huge group, and then could not earn anything from it.

Hope. the article was useful to you. Don't forget to download my book. There I show you the fastest way from zero to the first million on the Internet (extract from personal experience for 10 years =)

See you later!

Your Dmitry Novosyolov

SMM (Social Media Marketing) - social media marketing is the promotion of goods and services on social networks, which are perceived by marketing as social media.

Social media marketing is an effective tool with which visitors are attracted to the site from social networks, communities, blogs, diaries and forums. Consumer attention can be obtained, bought through advertising. You cannot buy the trust of the target audience, you can only earn it. Social media platforms are a modern tool for interacting with the target audience. Today the audience of social networks is comparable to the audience of television channels, only it is more attentive and active. SMM has more to do with network PR than advertising. SMM is direct work in communities that cover a target group of users. These are tools for direct and covert interaction with the target audience.

Tasks that can be solved using SMM:

Branding, brand promotion;

Increased loyalty and fame;

Increase in traffic to the company's website.

SMM still belongs to the tools of non-standard promotion, but today it is the most promising. Social media marketing is in demand both by large companies, market leaders, and by small and medium-sized businesses that use SMM for their own promotion and establish contact with their consumers.

Traditional social honey marketing tools:

Creation, design, filling with materials (maintaining) a blog on various platforms;

Blog promotion;

Information messages in thematic communities, support for discussions, replies to comments;

Working with popular thematic forums: launching and supporting discussions, hidden marketing (influencers),

Conducting discussions on behalf of the company (direct marketing);

Viral marketing;

Monitoring of positive and negative information. Creation of a positive information background;

Optimization of the company's Internet resources for social media (SMO).

SMM does not have an instant effect, but gives a long-term result if it is used correctly and targeted. Its main advantage is the low investment cost in comparison with the possible effect of the measures taken.

Social media marketing implies the mandatory optimization of the site and bringing it in line with the main criteria SMO -Social Media Optimization.

As you know, all work in Social Media Marketing is based on the proposal and generation of valuable content for the user, which can be either text or a photo or video. Different types of content are preferred on different social networks. And if we certainly associate YouTube with videos, Twitter with text messages, and Pinterest and Instagram with photos, then Facebook and VKontakte, for example, give everything right away.

Selecting a venue for SMM- The campaign, of course, depends on your goals and the audience you need to work with. Nevertheless, in most cases it is advisable to use not one, but several tools at once to attract the target's attention. In other words, it is recommended to establish a system of complementary actions in different social networks, which will ultimately develop into an effective SMM strategy.

SMM Marketing Rules and Tips for Dummies

So, here are 30 social media marketing (SMM) tips and tricks to help you attract audience attention to your brand. Some of them may seem obvious to someone, but this is a kind of list of necessary actions that can strengthen your online presence in the leading positions.

Twitter
1. Try to increase the number of subscribers. The more, the better for you.
2. Attract bloggers from your niche using servicesTweepi.com or Twellow.com ... This will help you find the most influential microblogging authors.
3. Regularly and systematically post links to posts from bloggers who are considered experts in your field.
4. If you share a link to interesting information, be sure to give it a short description.
5. Share and notify influential Twitter content by including their nickname (Oleg Ivanov) in the message.
6. Automate some of the processes on Twitter using the service