SMM promotion, i.e. promotion in social networks, is a great way to attract new customers and increase brand awareness. With the right approach, SMM pays back the money invested many times over.
Today, we will tell you in the form of the review how to organize the promotion in social networks, what platform to choose for promotion and how to prepare the content.
Is there your target audience in social networks
In social networks there are different people – with average income and good income, in large cities and small towns, young and old. Famous artists, Youtube-bloggers, ordinary citizens and even politicians have their pages in social networks. According to a study by sociologists from the Levada Center, more than a third of Russians – 37 percent of those surveyed – access social networks every day. And more than half of Russians are active users of social networks.
Social networks have any target audience – young mothers who will be interested in children’s things and toys, directors of large firms who are interested in business training, busy people who often use the services of cleaning and home food delivery. The main thing is to know how to find your target audience and work with them.
Materials that will help to better understand the topic:
Choosing channels for SMM-promotion
Around the world, there are more than 100 social networks – as mega-popular, with an audience of over 100 million users, as well as startups. In Russia, 4 social networks have achieved special recognition – we will tell you about them.
The main feature of the social network is the emphasis on the visual component, i.e. on photos. The text in it pays little attention, so without quality pictures 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 data on the age, but most experts believe that young people under 30 are registered on Instagram. Perhaps this explains the effectiveness of promotion – the level of engagement in Instagram is 15 times higher compared to the social network Facebook.
Pros: high coverage, relatively simple advertising setup, easy promotion with mass liking and mass followering.
Cons: The lack of opportunities to publish links in posts and the dependence of post visibility on the level of engagement, which makes it difficult to promote from scratch.
Instagram is suitable for promoting products and services that can be sold “with their 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 promoted worse, but with the right approach, you can sell them too. For example, in Instagram often offer business consultations and other types of advice.
VKontakte
In VKontakte, statistically, more than half of registered users are women. 37% of active contributors are users in the 25-34 age group. And 25.7% of active users are between the ages of 18 and 25. That is, more than half of the audience are solvent users.
Vkontakte also pays special attention to the visual component, as in other social networks. There are no special difficulties in the promotion of publishers, groups and communities – it is enough to publish unique and interesting content and use standard ways to attract subscribers. A good advantage of the social network is multidisciplinary development: depending on the needs of the CA, you can choose an acceptable format of publications. For example, Instagram does not give such flexibility.
Pros: high coverage of the audience, a large number of targeting settings, normal organic coverage, the ability to invite users to the group.
Cons: high competition, banning users from inviting themselves to groups and meetings, very strict moderation.
In terms of promotion, Vkontakte is good for anything that cannot be sold with a few pretty pictures. It actively promotes the services of medical centers, info-businessmen, restaurants and cafes, travel companies, auto-schools, banks, various goods and other products of the average price segment.
Facebook’s core audience is paying people: 37% of active writers are 25-34 years old, 30.6% are 35-44 years old, and 23.5% are over 45. Facebook pays special attention to textual content, but the social network claims to be a platform of general direction. The effectiveness of promotion is usually high – there are a large number of business accounts registered on the social network.
This social network is suitable for most areas of business. It sells B2B products, i.e. business services for business, 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 spheres.
Pros: a huge number of advertising settings, wide functionality for promotion, good coverage of the foreign target audience.
Cons: limited organic coverage and a complicated interface.
Choose a promotion channel – one or more social networks – should be depending on the specifics of your company and the product you are promoting. In most cases, large companies set up accounts in all social networks, and small businesses need only one well-chosen site. For example, home bouquet delivery services are often published in Instagram. And medical clinics find their audience on Facebook, Odnoklassniki and Vkontakte.
Let’s start promoting in social networks.
We will talk about promotion according to a clear structure: first – about design, then – about content, promotion and tracking effectiveness. You could write a book about each of these items: we will try to talk about the most important.
In Vkontakte
Without competent design, the conversion of advertising posts can be low. Therefore, pay special attention to it. Draw a cover for the group or community, think of what area of it you will put as an avatar. You can order the design of the group to a specialist – perhaps he will recommend some effective solutions. The main thing is to make it clear from the cover what you offer to your subscribers and why you should be chosen. And read more in our article “How to design a group in Vkontakte”.
Publish interesting content: product reviews, guides, user reviews. If you don’t have any ideas for posts, check out your competitors’ communities – maybe you can get something useful from their content plan. Try to alternate between entertaining and selling posts – such tactics give good results on the social network. The content plan should be made 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. And you can also add products – both in the group and on your personal page.
You can promote your group, personal account or publique in different ways. The social network itself offers to set up targeted advertising and advertising in other publishers. Targeted advertising will be shown to users when they visit Vkontakte, in the left column and on external platforms. And advertising in the publishers – in the community of your choice.
Analysis of effectiveness can be done directly in Vkontakte. Personal pages, groups and publishers have a “Statistics” section. It shows the coverage of users – the number of people who have seen the entries on the group wall or newsfeed, as well as the characteristics of the target audience. You can also see the statistics for each post, and in the future not to publish posts that get few views and likes.
On Instagram
The design of the profile on Instagram also requires attention. First of all, Instagram is a social network, in which the visual effect is evaluated first and foremost. Therefore, it is worth taking care of high-quality photos. Secondly, make a beautiful profile design – one of the few places where you can leave an active link to a third-party site. So 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 link your Insta account with your Facebook business page right away to make it easy to set up ads.
When creating a content plan for Instagram, pay special attention to photos, pictures, or videos. They determine whether people will pay attention to your post. So try to take clear, vivid and detailed photos or draw pictures that make it immediately clear what you are offering to your subscriber. Don’t forget to fill out the description – it’s convenient to include a call to action, a question for your subscribers, or additional information about the services or products you’re promoting in the text.
You can promote your Instagram account in different ways. Massfollowing and massfollowing are free and quite popular. You can also promote individual posts or run standard targeting ads. And also – to advertise with bloggers with a large number of subscribers. Contests in Instagram also work well. Read more about them in our article “Contests in Instagram: how to hold a contest or a drawing”.
There are built-in statistics in Instagram – look for it in your personal account, in your profile. But it may not be enough for a complete 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.
On Facebook
Here, too, you should pay attention to the visual component – the design of the profile or business page. Put an attractive photo – preferably it should reflect the field of activity, describe the product in detail and add a link to the site.
There are several ways to promote your community on Facebook. For example, you can use the functionality offered by the social network and create targeted advertising. It has a lot of flexible settings – more than other social networks. Therefore, the advertising campaign may be more effective. You can also use the standard way of promotion – advertising in groups and communities. But remember, Facebook pages have a very low organic reach.
Group or account statistics can be found in the group settings or in your personal profile. It shows engagement, reach, number of “Likes” and many other parameters. To improve your group’s performance, measure your reach and try to increase it, as well as work on likes and engagement.
Additional materials for study:
To help the specialist – SMM tools
- Parsers – they are used for different social networks, mainly for Vkontakte and Facebook. They allow you to accurately find the target audience and segment it. Article on the topic: Parsers groups in Facebook.
- Autoposting services – with their help, you can set up delayed publications, as well as publish the same content to different social networks. Helpful to understand the topic: Overview of the best auto-posting services.
- Content analysis services – they help you understand what content users like and which posts will bring the most subscribers.
- Services for collecting statistics – they allow you to get more advanced statistics, analyze competitors and find out in detail how subscribers behave.
- Services for massfollowing and masssliking – they help to promote the group or account for free through the mass likes and subscriptions. Read on topic: Snagging followers in Instagram.
- Services for competitor analysis – allows you to see how competitors work with subscribers, what content plan they use, where they advertise.
- Ad exchangers – you can find groups and accounts that place paid advertising and agree on the publication.
- Picture creation services – with their help, you can quickly prepare attractive posts.
- Free photobanks – it’s easy to find unique images for group or post design.
If you still have questions, read additional materials on our site or ask them in comments. We’ll be happy to answer them.