What Is The Difference Between Social Media Marketing And Traditional Marketing?

Traditional and social media marketing have two goals in common. One, to draw in customers, and two, to increase brand awareness in the market. Traditional marketing usually involves advertising through radio, TV, newspaper as well as magazines. Conversely, social media marketing is an online marketing method which focuses on gaining traffic through social media channels.

In terms of social media vs traditional marketing, traditional marketing is one way, in other words brand to customer, that is not engaging. However social media marketing is multi way in nature:  brand to customer, customer to brand and customer to customer. This type of marketing is very engaging and promotes word of mouth. On social media, you get immediate feedback.

Social media networks are the only marketing platform which allows you to engage and work together with your consumers. This often takes place through comments, conversations on threads, shares and promotions! You are able to build a powerful community online, something which is not possible in traditional marketing.

Why Social Media Marketing Is Important

By far social media networks have become the most influential and critical virtual space where the networks are not only utilised for social networking but are also a phenomenal way of digitally advertising your brand in addition to your products.

The power of social media vs traditional media is commendable as you are able to reach a significant number of individuals within mere seconds of posting an ad, so assisting you to reduce your costs, and allowing your ads reach out to your likely audience through these social media advertisements.

With the immense number of online users, which is nearly 59% of the world’s population, marketers must not miss out on their opportunity of marketing on these digital forums where they are able to reach all the maximum number of potential buyers as compared with print or television media marketing.

How Does Social Media Marketing Work?

Social media marketing is a strategy of making use of free posts – as well as paid ads – on social media sites in order to connect with your target market as well as build your brand. This may sound like an excuse to play Candy Crush however, in reality, it’s one of the fastest-growing forms of marketing today in addition to the fastest-growing trend in the history of the world.

Contrasted with other forms of marketing, social media marketing connects you with your target market straight away, providing feedback as well as insight into the individuals who you want to market to. In addition, it’s a great way to raise brand awareness with fairly little effort.

Social Media Marketing Do’s And Don’ts

When you are building a brand, it’s really helpful to keep your personal and professional pages separate on social media. By being consistent with the kinds of content you share via your business profile, your clients know which account to follow. Also, you avoid spamming friends and family who follow you for personal updates.

What you post on social media becomes a representation of you as well as your business. Thus, you need to be proud of who you are as well as what you represent as a business while – at the same time – remaining aware of the image you’re crafting as a result of the content that you share.

Adding appropriate hashtags connects your post with all other posts on that topic and with that specific hashtag. It’s a convenient way to categorise and search for content on social media networks. That said, don’t turn every single word in a post (or a full sentence!) into a hashtag, or stuff irrelevant hashtags into your post. When used correctly, hashtags will boost your online visibility and followers. When utilised in excess, it looks spammy and becomes ineffectual.

Place yourself in the place of your followers. Would you want to be reading the same message from people or pages that you follow every day? It’s lazy and is also in poor taste to take the same social post and share it over and over again on exactly the same networks. If you would like to revisit previous content, get creative with your delivery. Try rewording it or using a new image as opposed to reposting the same exact thing.

Social Media Marketing Duties And Responsibilities

The social media marketing department has a number of duties and responsibilities. Here are some of them:

• Creating marketing as well as social media campaigns and strategies, including budget planning, content ideation, and implementation schedules
• Ensuring brand stability in marketing and social media messages through working with various company department members, including advertising, product development in addition to brand management
• Offering training and guidance to social media and marketing team members regarding social media implementation best practices as well as strategies
• Collecting customer data and analysing interactions as well as visits, plus using this information to put together comprehensive reports and improve future marketing strategies and campaigns
• Reporting progress to senior marketing management
• Growing and expanding company social media presence into new social media platforms, plus increasing presence on existing platforms including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter as well as Instagram
• Researching and monitoring activity of company competitors
• Putting together and distributing engaging written or graphic content in the form of e-newsletters, web page and blog content, or social media messages

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

Keen on studying social media marketing? If so then you need to do our Social Media Marketing Course. Follow this link to find out more.