Goals of Social Media Marketing

We don’t want to beat a dead horse; we’re sure you’ve heard it over and over again- marketing through social media is big. With this new type of marketing comes a whole new set of rules, techniques and goals. Social media marketing is meant to complement, not take the place of, traditional forms of marketing, so its goals are unique to its practice. Here are some of the main goals that you will want to keep in mind when marketing on social media.

Drive Traffic to your Website

One of the more obvious goals of social media is to drive traffic directly to your website. Because social media provides a simple way to link those who are engaging back to your site, it has proven to be one of the most successful ways to drive new traffic to your website. What does driving traffic to your website do? Aside from potential purchases, the increased traffic to your website increases your overall brand or company visibility, and in turn allows consumers to become more familiar with you and keeps your name fresh on their minds. It also provides the opportunity for increased activity within the site, such as interaction with the blog, a look into pricing and services and the potential to like and share the page. While traffic to your website shouldn’t be the end-all be-all to your social media marketing goals, it definitely is a very important one that shouldn’t be ignored.

Develop Relationships

Even more so than with traditional forms of marketing, a huge goal of social media marketing is to foster and maintain relationships with important people, such as key influencers as well as target audiences. By keeping up to date with people through social media, one can gage what another’s interests are, where they could use help and what their own brand or company can do to provide assistance to them. When developing relationships with key influencers, be sure to pay attention to their interests and talents, and create a relationship that each party can benefit from. When creating and maintaining relationships with your target audiences, make sure that your communication is two-way, so that not only are you getting the information out that you need to, but that you you are also learning from their wants and needs, so they feel that you care and that their voice is being heard.

Flourish Your Brand

An extremely important opportunity that social media provides for a company is to really let the public see their brand’s personality and what they stand for. Social media is a great place to let your public get to know you a little bit better by sharing things that you wouldn’t otherwise get the opportunity to share. These will let the crowd get a better idea of who the company is, what they’re all about and what’s important to them. The best way to develop your brand, and to maintain a consistent brand image, is to make sure that everything that you put out there for the public to see remains consistent and true to your brand’s beliefs and values. Don’t post anything that would confuse consumers about who your brand is. For more information on developing your brand, you can refer back to our blog “Social Media Brand Building.”

Inspire Interest

Another huge goal of social media marketing is to develop interest among your audience. Always keep in mind what will keep your target interested when creating content for your social networks (while remaining true to your brand, as discussed earlier). People generally tend to gravitate towards posts or pieces that they identify with, so knowing your target audience well will help. In addition, intriguing graphics and design are another way to really draw the crowd in. Back that up with killer content, and you’ll have consumers sold. Also, just by developing a brand “personality” as we have discussed, more people will be able to relate to, and in turn will be more interested in your brand.

These are just some of a few of the important goals involved with social media marketing. Know of some other important goals? Feel free to leave them in the comments!