If you are a business that is thriving in the social media sphere, be extremely wary because although social media is quite indispensable, over-reliance on it can cause your business to show unnecessary cracks. On March 13,2019 both Facebook and Instagram went off the grid, and businesses that were relying on these platforms extensively experienced a painful reality check. Sales plummeted, and damage control took more than its fair share. This forced people to think about the areas that they’d ignored.

Social media makes you vulnerable

We’ll tell you a few reasons why over reliance on social media will leave your business vulnerable

  • Its not your platform: Perhaps you’ve been able to amass a few thousand followers for your business, but always remember its not just who is there. The platform does not work for you exclusively, neither do you complete control overt it. At any instance you can lose your privileges for a vague reason, and even with thousands of rupees spent on ads, you might never be able to get good on returns on the investment.
  • Death of organic: Your organic reach dies because you were too focused on going on with the gimmicks that would work on social media. You would have had to spent a tremendous amount of money to get a certain amount of reach leads. And unless you’re a big business who can incur the hefty bills, paying for your social media reach might not be a feasible idea.
  • Immutable: Your reputation on social media is fragile as a think sheet of glass, and this entails that you treat the social media sphere as carefully as possible. But if you were to make one bad move, then that’s it, the word will spread faster than wildfire. Your careful built brand identity will collapse to smithereens and you’ll be left with a task of building the page from scratch.

Content SEO is the solution

Perhaps one of the key areas that should get more traction is in the area of Content SEO. The whole domain of content based branding for online reputation management and for greater SEO is ignored or left to languish. Here, we’ll tell you why Content based SEO is pivotal for your online presence.

  • Backlinks : When you’re taking content seriously, you will run into the option of adding backlinks. This is the process where you can add a hyperlink back to your main website for a guest post or blog that you’d written. There is of course the option to add backlinks within you website itself.
  • Articulate : Believe it or not, people do like to read. Although in this world of instant gratification, it might seem like reading is a thing of the past, but with compelling content things can change. A good blog post in your website can be spread across not just social media but featured in other digital platforms so much so that it becomes the moment where you become successful.
  •  Feasible : More than anything, writing good content will require you to only have someone who is well versed with the subject and good with words. It doesn’t require you to spend thousands of rupees on advertisements nor is it something so fragile it would crumble if someone spots an error. Content SEO is built to last from the very last, and as long as you could produce good content, your reputation will steadily improve.

Doing it together

So, if you’re really looking forward to getting your online reputation performance at its best, it’s not a given that social is the sole way to success. A holistic strategy that includes social media, content seo, and a slew of other inputs will eventually determine how strong your reputation is.

The Importance of Brand Identity

Over the past decades, great importance has been given to the notion of brand identity since it has become a powerful factor in determining whether or not a business will have longevity or not. It is a field laden in expertise and many fledgling companies are rushing to get the best consultations they could find to create the ideal brand identity for them.

Perhaps you might be considering why it is an imperative to spend time furnishing brand identity, when its not really measurable. Why should one waste a enormous piece of the budget to create something that is for the part intangible?

Well, in this article, we’ll try and tell you why exactly you need a cohesive brand identity and how it can shape the success of your business, whether you are a fledgling company or not.

What is brand identity?

Essentially, brand identity is how your business looks and feels to your customers. It’s very similar to a person’s actual identity/personality. The most conspicuous part of a brand identity are the business name, logos, the fonts, the colors, etc. Other markers of brand identity is much more intricate – these are the ways in which the company interacts with the public. Everything form the tone of the voice, the values that are upheld, the humour etc.

Eg: Everyone in the world will be able to recognize Nike because of their symbol yet powerful logo – the tick – and their tagline, ‘Just do it’. These two entities is more than enough to imprint an image of the brand and what it holds into the minds of consumers. Similarly, Coco Cola, Pepsi, Apple, and many more brands have an identity that is instantly recognisable.

Getting an Upper Hand over your Competitor

Brand identity is important because it makes you stand out from your competitors, especially if the both of you have almost the same USPs. There will be a almost nothing to separate the two of your except how your brand is perceived. The perfect example of this dichotomy is between Apple and Microsoft.

Although they both have almost the same amount of specs, the brand identity of Microsoft pales in comparison to Apple. The latter has poured in millions of dollars to create an image that is the epitome of ‘cool’, ‘hip’, ‘trendy’. The end result of this successful brand identity is that they can demand higher prices for their products than their competitors. In a competitive marketplace if you can shape a better brand identity that your competitors, then you are sure to succeed.

Building Permanent Loyalty

With a good brand identity, you’ll be abel to rope in a legion of followers who will read your every word as gospel. Exhaustive research has shown that companies with a strong brand identity will mostly retain their customers for the long run.

Instead of investing on one term sales, companies with great foresight will be able to mould their brand identities in such a way that their customers will keep coming back to them. Research has shown that 90% of consumers stay loyal to one particular brand.

With a brand identity that one can remember as well is able to have a strong sense of values, customers will keep coming back to even if the prices were to increase. It doesn’t matter whether you exist in a niche market or a general one, as long as you have an easy to recall identity the customers stick with you.

The dichotomy with Apple and Microsoft is yet another classic example. So is Pepsi and Coca Cola.

Roping in the Talent

A strong brand identity will also mean you’ll be able to corner the talent pool in a market. This is yet another important reason for you to have a strong brand identity. Individuals would want to work with a brand that will help them with their careers or share the same values as they do.

Of course you can choose your brand values, but it has to be more or less be in tandem with the trending values at the time. Also with a brand identity that is more popular than your competitors, the talent pool will choose to work with your for lower wages compared to others. They would just want to be associated with your brand for that itself will be an accomplishment to them.

In Summary

If you still think that trying to get a good brand identity is a huge waste of time then you will be supposed by your competitors. The aforementioned points make it amply clear why brand identities can be the way towards for your business. Choose to have your brand identity done with a professional now and rise above your competitors.

Evolution of Marketing

Social Media Marketing is the way through which brands can use social media platforms to connect with their target audience so as to achieve greater sales, brand value, and build permanent relationships with them. It is a modern form of marketing, the next evolution of marketing as everything around us has become digital.

If there is the presence of good content in your social media marketing campaigns, willingness to listen in on people’s moods on different platforms, scrupulous analysis of your performance, and creative advertisements, it will all coalesce into a base for your business to rise meteorically.

An imperative for the modern era of business

Although it had started out as just a way to drive up website traffic, it has morphed into something far bigger. Now there are various ways one can utilise social media. No more is it just an option for businesses, it is imperative for those who want to grow their business multifold. From social media tools to social media advertising, the world of social media marketing is brimming with ways for you to get the best out of a rising medium.

Utilising Social Media Marketing

Let us delve a bit deeper into how one can utilise the world of social media marketing

Using the right tactics: One shouldn’t just jump right into posting content on social media; before that happens there should be an objective in mind.

 1. What is the purpose of your marketing – to drive sales, to increase brand reputations, creating a customer base.

2. What are the platforms that you’re going to use – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn.

3. What is the type of content you’re going to share – videos, links, original posts, advertisements.

Get it published at the right moment: This aspect is perhaps the least considered as often to publish something on social media, you would just need to click a button after you have done the hard work of creating the content. However what people don’t consider a lot about when to do it. Timing is essential to publishing as there are times when people are most active on social media which brands can utilise. So planning is the key here.

Hear what they are talking about: Engagement on social media is quite a tricky thing as it is dictated by the mood of the general audience at a given moment. Therefore, there should be constant monitoring of these said moods and actions of users who are likely to interact with your brand. Some of them could mention your brand in a positive light, which is good for you, and if it’s quite the opposite, you can promptly react with a corrective message.

Go deeper into the inner workings: Merely publishing content on social media without inferring anything from them is a waste of time and resources. You will need to know how well your posts are performing, and analyse them on a comparative basis, and then you can make the changes for them according to the results. Analytics is how one can change tactics and therefore is an indispensable part of social media marketing.

The perfect medium for putting for ads: The era of ads where you weren’t sure you are actually reaching the people who want your ads to be over. There exists a structure now where you can target your ads to exactly the people who are interested in your products. Also, social media has given leeway for the making of stunning ads that are extremely creative. Each platform demands its own unique takes in ads, and this enhances brand value as well as sales.

Advantages of Social Media Marketing

Cost-Effective – It is by far the most cost-effective way for you to get results on the money spend on marketing and advertisement.

Brand Awareness – With almost 3 billion users of social media platforms across the world, having a solid foundation in the social media sphere will enhance your brand awareness.

Search Engine Improvement – Once you are nicely poised on a social media platform, you’ll be showing far more frequently in the search engine and also at higher rankings.

Conversions – When a brand does advertisement and marketing online, their conversion ratio is far more than that of other mediums, and it will extend into greater amount of sales.

Gain over Competitors – When you utilise social media marketing, you are most definitely going to surpass your competitors who have not utilised it, giving you a great share of the market.

Insights – When you have a fair amount of social media marketing, you will start receiving insights on the trajectory of the consumers and marketing trends in real-time, thus positioning you better.

Transforming the world

Social media marketing is the modern way of utilising the common space where most of the online users converge to engage with the rest of the world to your brands’ advantage. That’s the gist of it, and although it started as just a tame concept, it has now transformed commercial industries across the world for the better.

The importance of Social Media

The importance of social media is flourishing around us and if you don’t take advantage of it then you’ll be left behind to eat the dust of everyone else’s success. A staggering amount of people use social media and being able to effectively use social media is critical for all businesses to reach a wider consumer base.

You can check out our article on what social media is to understand the effectiveness of social media in general. In this article, we will delve deeper into why social media marketing is especially good for business.

Chat to know more about Digital Marketing…

The Making of a Brand

Like we had said in this article, the truth is that social media is an opportunity for brand building. This application of social media will help to drive demand and expand the scope of what you can sell to whom.

You can engage with your followers to build trust and get them to commit to your brand as loyal followers. This loyalty can take the form of brand news updates, info and videos. Social media is compatible with various others channels, giving you a unique opportunity to boost campaigns.

Another way that social media helps in branding is the way in which you can control the narrative of a situation. When you are able to promptly respond during a crisis, you can take control before things fall apart. All of this will arouse the curiosity of the general public leading to traffic that in turn will convert into leads.

Organic and Paid

When you use the organic mode of social media marketing, you are utilising the free aspects of social media such as posting and conversations. It is ideal for start-up and independent companies looking to stretch their dollars.

When you use paid promotions, you’re getting better access to the platforms inherent capabilities and now you can do targeted ads and get analytics. You don’t have to be exceptionally rich, just have a reasonable budget allocation.

Types of Campaigns

The Outreach Campaign

These types of campaigns are directed at those who have not yet interacted with your brand or heard about what you have to offer. Compelling content driven at the right moments can help lure them to your lap. In this stage, it is good enough for them to develop feelings for your brand.

The Retargeting Campaign

With a good retargeting campaign you are able to persuade those who had perused through your brand but decided not to interact. The best way to do this is to pursue them again tenderly and on a deeper level not aggressively which might backfire.

The Conversion Campaign

The purpose of this campaign is to get them to convert into purchasing customers or at the least get them to do a certain set of actions that gives the business a better idea about an ideal customer persona. The information they provide can be used again and again.

Choosing a strategy for social media

Jumping right into a campaign without a proper strategy is foolish and should be avoided. Our article here dictates the kind of things you need to consider in general before you go about a campaign. For a business venturing into social media marketing, these are things you should consider before coming up with a strategy.

Content: What is the type of content you want? Should it be in the form of graphics, images or text ones

Tone and Style: This is synonymous with your brand identity and therefore should be uniform throughout.

Topics: Another important facet. What exactly gets them to stay glued to the screen so that they consume it

You will definitely need to ask yourselves what it is that you want exactly for your customers. This is related to the types of campaigns mentioned earlier.

Picking a Social Media Platform

This is perhaps the most important step, in fact, it could change the whole concept and strategy of the campaign. Each platform has its own unique set of facilities that will help you. Depending upon the type of product/service you are selling; the brand identity that you want to create; and the type of audience you want to engage with; there are a lot of options.

When making your social media profile, choose the business profile and this option will give you the option to monitor all your data using analytics which is integrated into most of the major social media platforms. With it you can learn a lot of things:

You can understand buyer behaviour as well as the demographics of those who engage with you

Understanding that you can use it to make the perfect content for the ideal audience

You can also get a thorough report of everything that you have done so far

An Indispensable Medium

Social media is an indispensable medium for any business, and social media marketing is the key to understanding how to use it keenly so that your business can get ahead of the rest.         

Digital Marketing vs Social Media Marketing–Top Digital Agency

It’s not the same!

Nowadays, people tend to use the terms digital marketing and social media marketing as being the one and same thing, however, that’s not entirely true. Digital marketing has a wider scope than social media marketing, and the latter is a part of the formers range.

Digital Marketing in Brief

Digital marketing is a term that encompasses a myriad range of marketing techniques, predominantly taking place in the digital world, though sometimes it does also occur in the physical world. Brands use digital marketing to promote their products and services.

Social Media Marketing in Brief

Social media marketing is a branch of digital marketing, although one of its most important ones, that utilizes the social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram as a medium to reach out engage with the customers while also selling products and services.

Channels of Digital Marketing

There are various ways one utilizes digital marketing through the many technologies that makes up the internet. From emails, mobile technology, PPC to display ads and social media, there is plenty of ways for one to get their digital marketing strategy to take off.

Display ads, websites, banner ads, email ads

blogs, social media marketing, forums

text messages, mobile applications, ads

However, it is important to realize that using all the channels available in digital marketing is not a good idea. It’s much better for one to customize a digital marketing strategy that is perfect for your business type, the niche market, your audience and your budget range.

Often it is the case that changes to the digital marketing strategy takes places even after the launching of the campaign. You can analyse the effect of the campaign, and only utilize those strategies which gave you a good return on investment. 

Tools of Digital Marketing

In order to facilitate an effective digital marketing campaign, businesses nowadays would need to utilize the plethora of digital marketing tools available in the market. Depending upon your unique set of requirements you can choose to incorporate any of these digital marketing tools into your strategy.

Video hosting tools

SEO tools

Affiliate Marketing

Content creation tools

Analytics Tools

Email marketing tools

Social Media Marketing

Apart from what was mentioned in the brief paragraph, social media marketing is perhaps the most important channel of digital marketing. The majority of the world’s population engages in the social media sphere every day and it presents a vast opportunity for businesses. It is primarily communicative in nature with engagement and building of reputation being the primary function of the medium. Social media marketing is especially important for digital marketing when it comes to the art of building a brand.

Social Media Marketing vs Digital Marketing

1. Digital marketing utilizes all the available technology online as well as offline to market products and services.

Social media is limited to the online sphere and not anywhere else

2. Digital marketing campaigns can utilize different channels to perform its task of marketing such as mobile ads, online ads, SMS, television.

Social Media Marketing utilize the social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram for the same.

3. Digital marketing strategies can incorporate the same content on different platforms across different formats.

Social media marketing strategies requires the posting of new content every single time.

To surmise

It’s clear to most after reading this that social media marketing is a part of a successful digital marketing strategy but not the entire thing. To facilitate a successful digital marketing strategy, one has to incorporate an array of other technologies and mediums into it.

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