1. Introduction
About marketing
Marketing is often described as a way of communication between a business and potential customers, in the purpose of presenting and promoting the values of a certain product or service. The main goal of this communication is to sell. It is a complex discipline that involves a lot of tasks which will ensure that the communication leads towards this goal. Some of the tasks include determining target audience, conducting an analysis of the market and consumer behavior, customer relationship, etc. Marketing as a discipline has been evolving and new practices are constantly being implemented to keep up with the changes on the market, changes with the technology, as well as with the changes in the society.
About social media
The appearance of social networking websites has changed the way people interact and communicate, the way they exchange ideas and search for information. In the world where two out of three people use some kind of social networking websites, the importance of these websites in everyday life cannot be neglected.
As a result, the communication, which is an important part of marketing, started to shift from traditional mediums such as television and newspaper ads, to social media. Thus social media has become a new platform for marketers to communicate and get in touch with the customers. Social media is a new mediator between business who want to promote their product and between consumers who use social media to learn more about a particular product.
The overall importance of social media has lead to new discipline within marketing, a discipline called social media marketing. The idea behind this is to take advantage of the benefits the social networks provide in order to realize some of the marketing goals, such as promotion, establishing relationship with the customers, etc.
About this e-book
The goal of this e-book is to explain what social media marketing is and how it can be applied to your business. Since social media marketing can help you improve and promote your business, we will explore different methods, techniques and tools you can use in this purpose. These can be applied to any type of business, as the goal with this e-book is to present a universal guide that can be helpful for both small and large companies.
We will start with some basic concepts of social media marketing and some popular social networks used by companies. Then we will suggest how to take the most out of your social media presence and how to plan a social media marketing strategy that will produce good results. Besides tips on strategy, we will also share tips on content and engagement, as well as tips on how to promote content through social media, since all of these are inseparable elements of social media marketing.
Tools suggested in this e-book should only serve as guidelines, as most of them have both paid and free alternatives. We will not go into details about using a specific tool, as you have the possibility to choose the tool you want and find most beneficial. We will only suggest functions you should use, provided by a certain tool, as these functions can help you with planning and managing your social media presence.