What can you promote on social networks? Promotion through social networks: strategy development and main mistakes

Today, in the form of a review, we will tell you how to organize promotion on social networks, which platform to choose for promotion and how to prepare content.

Is your target audience on social networks?

There are different people on social networks - with average incomes and good incomes, from large cities and small towns, young and old. Famous artists, Youtube bloggers, ordinary residents and even politicians have their own pages on social networks. According to a study by sociologists from the Levada Center, more than a third of Russians - 37% of respondents - access social networks every day. And more than half of Russians are active users of social networks.

There is any target audience on social networks - young mothers who will be interested in children's things and toys, directors of large companies who are interested in business training, busy people who often use cleaning services and home delivery of food. The main thing is to be able to correctly search for your target audience and work with it.

Materials that will help you better understand the topic:

Selecting channels for SMM promotion

Instagram

The main feature of the social network is the emphasis on the visual component, that is, on photography. It pays little attention to the text, so without high-quality photographs 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 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 on Instagram is 15 times higher compared to the social network Facebook.

Pros: high coverage, relatively simple advertising setup, simple promotion using mass liking and mass following.

Minuses: the inability to publish links in posts and the dependence of the visibility of posts on the level of involvement, which makes promotion from scratch difficult.

Instagram is suitable for promoting products and services that can be sold “with the eyes”: that is, those that can be beautifully depicted. Clothing stores, flower and food delivery services, various souvenirs and handmade goods are popular here. Services are promoted less well, but with the right approach you can sell them too. For example, Instagram often offers business and other types of consultations.

In contact with

On VKontakte, according to statistics, more than half of registered users are women. 37% of active authors are users in the 25-34 age group. And 25.7% of active users are people aged 18 to 25 years. That is, more than half of the audience are solvent users.

On VKontakte, special attention is also paid to the visual component, as in other social networks. There are no particular difficulties in promoting public pages, groups and communities - it is enough to publish unique, interesting content and use standard methods of attracting subscribers. A good advantage of a social network is its multidisciplinary development: depending on the needs of the target audience, you can choose an acceptable publication format. For example, Instagram doesn't offer that kind of flexibility.

Pros: high audience coverage, a large number of targeting settings, normal organic reach, the ability to invite users in a group.

Minuses: high competition, prohibition for users to invite themselves to groups and meetings, very strict moderation.

In terms of promotion, VKontakte is good for everything that cannot be sold with a few beautiful photographs. It actively promotes the services of medical centers, information businessmen, restaurants and cafes, travel companies, services of driving schools, banks, various goods and other products of the middle price segment.

Classmates

The main feature of the Odnoklassniki audience is that the age of active users often exceeds 30-35 years. At the same time, promotion on social networks is relatively inexpensive, especially when advertising in public pages.

Pros: coverage among a solvent audience, virality of interesting content - if someone rates your post, all the friends and subscribers of the person who put “Class” will see it.

Odnoklassniki often promotes complex products, for example, the construction of houses, comprehensive examinations in medical centers and other expensive goods and services. This social network is suitable for businesses operating in the field of cleaning, construction, legal support and others, but most of all - private services: for example, plumbing companies, car services, craftsmen.

Facebook

The main Facebook audience is solvent people: 37% of active authors are aged 25-34 years, 30.6% are people from 35 to 44 years old, and 23.5% are people over 45 years old. Facebook pays special attention to text content, but at the same time the social network declares itself as a general platform. The effectiveness of promotion is usually high - a large number of business accounts are registered on the social network.

This social network is suitable for most areas of business. It sells B2B products, that is, business-to-business services, 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 sectors.

Pros: a huge number of advertising settings, wide functionality for promotion, good coverage of foreign target audience.

Minuses: reduced organic reach and complex interface.

You should select promotion channels - one or more social networks - depending on the specifics of your company and the product being promoted. In most cases, large companies create accounts on all social networks, while small businesses only need one well-chosen platform. For example, services for delivering bouquets to your home are often published on Instagram. And medical clinics find their audience on Facebook, Odnoklassniki and Vkontakte.

We launch promotion on social networks

We will talk about promotion according to a clear structure: first - about design, then - about content, promotion and tracking performance. You could write a book about each of these points: we will try to talk about the most important things.

On VKontakte

Publish interesting content: product reviews, guides, user reviews. If you don't have any ideas for posts, look through your competitors' communities - perhaps you can learn something useful from their content plan. Try to alternate entertaining and selling posts - this tactic on social networks gives good results. A content plan should be drawn up only on the basis of an analysis of the needs of the target audience and the specifics of your business - there cannot be universal recommendations here. You can also add products - both to the group and to your personal page.

Even pictures have their own audience

You can promote your group, personal account or public in different ways. The social network itself offers to set up targeted advertising and advertising in other public pages. Targeted advertising will be shown to users when visiting VKontakte, in the left column, and on third-party sites. And public advertising is in the community that you choose.

Performance analysis can be carried out directly in VK. Personal pages, groups and public pages have a “Statistics” section. It shows the user coverage - the number of people who saw posts on the group wall or in the news feed, as well as the characteristics of the target audience. You can also view statistics for each post, and in the future not publish posts that get few views and likes.

On Instagram

Designing an Instagram profile also requires attention. Firstly, Instagram is a social network that primarily evaluates the visual effect. Therefore, it is worth taking care of high-quality photos. Secondly, do - one of the few places where you can leave an active link to a third-party site. Therefore, 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 immediately link your Insta account to so that you can easily set up advertising.

There are built-in statistics on Instagram - look for them in your personal account, in your profile. But it may not be enough for a full analysis - the social network shows the number of subscribers, including growth, and the main characteristics of the target audience. This is less than other social networks. Therefore, advanced SMM managers often use third-party services that collect more complete statistics.

Articles to dive into the topic:

In Odnoklassniki

Afterwards, think about the design of the community. Please note that Odnoklassniki is often populated by older people. Tell us in the description what you offer, put an attractive photo on the main page and choose a suitable cover.

An example of a group header with a cover decorated with cartoon characters

When publishing posts, pay special attention to the text. Sometimes ordinary statuses of people or groups receive thousands of likes and comments. Jokes, anecdotes, and comments on a political topic often become viral posts. But be careful - “hype” does not always help promote a group.

Example of a post in a group offering flower delivery services

Statistics in Odnoklassniki show coverage, activity, what types of content are popular and many other parameters - everything you need for primary analysis. Statistics are in the group, in a separate menu. To properly promote your community, analyze engagement and types of content that subscribers like most.

An example of group statistics in Odnoklassniki

Social media has quickly become humanity's newest hobby. Soon economists will be talking seriously about Gross National Share and counting the number of likes per capita. And, of course, blogs are increasingly used for commercial purposes.

Naturally, e-commerce could not ignore this phenomenon. Actually, this is just a law of nature: where more than a hundred people gather, some kind of retail outlet will definitely appear. What can we say if millions constantly hang out in one place. However, the first excitement about the opportunities that open up for business in blogs has now subsided a little.

Problem of choice

Indeed, neither VKontakte nor Facebook is the most convenient place for direct sales. The only advantage of such a blog is that it will not cost anything, but more or less serious companies prefer to open an online store. There are areas where a social network can be enough. These are, for example, mini-hotels, various wedding services and the like. But they are also trying to create their own website. It has more opportunities, it is more convenient as a trading platform, and its cost, especially if you use templates, is quite affordable. So it turns out that the only thing left for social networks is promotion, the so-called SMM or social media marketing.

Who sits where?

First you need to understand the audience. In Russia, according to Mail.Ru Group, the most popular social network has long been Vkontakte. Odnoklassniki is noticeably inferior to it, followed by My World, Facebook and Twitter. It is obvious that the main attention should be paid to the leaders. Less popular networks will not provide the necessary response. Of course, now networks smoothly flow into each other: people open accounts in several at once, a message can be reposted not only within one social network, but also distributed further. But all the same, the larger the site itself, the greater the chances of finding a potential client, but there are interesting nuances here too.

Despite the fact that a user easily flows from one network to another, the composition of their audience is still slightly different. As can be seen from the same report, VKontakte boasts the youngest audience. Not only is it significantly younger than on other social networks, with the exception of Twitter, but it also has the largest number of students. It should be noted that these are relative data. If we translate them into absolute numbers, it turns out that half of young Russians hang out on VKontakte and Twitter, but older people prefer Odnoklassniki, Moi Mir and Facebook.

Very interesting employment data. Managers and specialists prefer Facebook the most in relative terms; if you multiply them by the total network audience, the figures become equal. We can say that the leadership there is represented in a more concentrated form.

Obviously, it is better to promote a business where there are more wealthy clients. Of course, one cannot say that the youth audience in Russia is completely insolvent, but you must agree that those who are older are more likely to buy trips to Egypt, expensive mobile phones and order flowers. In this regard, it is worth promoting a company using Facebook; other social networks are still slightly inferior in this indicator. On the other hand, the total audience of VKontakte is twice as large. So, when starting an SMM campaign, you will have to really rack your brains about where to direct your main efforts.

There is another factor in favor of Facebook - territorial distribution. Most users of this social network live in the Central Federal District. Thanks to Moscow, this is the most attractive market for the majority of Internet projects.

Whether you like me or not...

It's not limited to the audience. In the end, with a competent approach and some methodicality, you can form a good circle of “followers” ​​everywhere. It is also very important to understand how prepared a social network is for social marketing. Of course, you can overcome all obstacles, moving towards your goal and potential buyer, but is it necessary? Maybe it’s better to immediately choose an easier and more effective path?

It is generally accepted that this social network simply has no drawbacks. In fact, many SMM firms preferred to create profiles rather than pages or groups, this is explained by the fact that it was much easier to attract new “friends” this way. But now the network administration is fighting this practice by simply blocking such pages. As a result, communication options were somewhat limited.

The possibilities of the social network Twitter for promotion are even more limited. The popularity of “tweeting” in Russia has not yet fallen, although many experts insisted on it. But in general, his audience is increasingly merging with the VKontakte audience. But the most important thing is that the range of technical opportunities for promotion here is limited. Often this social network is used as an additional tool for promoting the main blog.

To sum up all this thinking, we can make a small rating of the best social networks for e-commerce. The first place is still occupied by VKontakte, mainly due to its policies and the largest coverage. Facebook came in second place for its unconditional success in targeting. Twitter is in third place due to the fact that it can be used in some way. But the fourth and fifth places were shared between “Odnoklassniki” and “My World”.

Max Usachev registered in all social networks

05.02.2015 12 730 11 Reading time: 14 min.

Today we will talk about business promotion on social networks. In this article, I will talk about why you need to promote a business on social networks, what problems can be solved by this, and will focus on the specific features of promoting a business on each of the most popular social networks. So, first things first.

Why promote your business on social networks?

First of all, you need to understand that social networks are a huge target audience for promoting goods or services. There are hundreds of millions of users registered there who can become your clients, or at least learn about the existence of your company/product.

Promotion of goods on social networks is interesting both for large companies at the global, state, regional level, and for local ones. This method of promoting and advertising a business is also interesting because the costs for it, in comparison with other types of promotion and advertising, are relatively small, in some cases they may be completely absent. At the same time, business promotion on social networks shows quite high returns, especially if done correctly.

Often entrepreneurs who want to integrate their business into social networks do not fully understand or have a clear idea of ​​why they are doing this. For example, they believe that being present on social networks is fashionable, this is the current trend, “everyone is doing it, so that means I need it too.” This approach will not bring good results, since a businessman must first clearly understand what exactly he wants to achieve with his presence on social networks, and build his promotion policy based on this.

There are 3 main goals that business promotion on social networks may involve:

1. Increasing the number of sales of a product or service. This is the main, but not the only goal. In this case, the optimal method of promotion would be advertising companies on social networks promoting certain goods and services. Here you don’t even have to create your own account or community - people who click on the ad can go directly to the company’s website and make purchases there or use contact information.

2. Promoting a brand of a product or service. This is a different task that requires a different approach. For this purpose, it is best to create a thematic page or community and increase the number of its subscribers/participants. For example, by holding competitions that encourage reposting posts, inviting friends to the community, etc.

3. Increasing customer loyalty to the company. This is the most difficult task and requires the most painstaking work. This will require high-quality accounts/communities with constant publication of news, answers to complaints and questions from subscribers, and the ability to resolve conflict situations. That is, such work will require a separate competent employee of the company (for large companies - even several such employees). However, the possibility of direct dialogue between a consumer and a business representative is always an undeniable competitive advantage.

Achieving the second and third goals has an indirect impact on the main goal - increasing sales volume.

Many entrepreneurs who are just learning how to promote their business on social networks think that it is enough to create an account or community on each social network and periodically place advertising ads there. In practice, this approach is unlikely to bring any result at all, it will only take some time.

Business promotion in VKontakte

VKontakte (vk.com) is a social network that is the leader in RuNet in terms of audience size. The number of its users exceeds 270 million, of which more than 60 million access their pages daily. The average age of users is 17-35 years old. The main disadvantage here is that in this social network there is a fairly large percentage of people with a low level of solvency (schoolchildren, students, the unemployed).

The opportunities for promoting business in contact are quite wide:

• Targeted advertising (display of advertisements to a target audience selected according to various criteria) with payment per click or per impression;
• Creation of public pages or communities to promote goods and services;
• Placing advertisements in popular thematic or city communities on a paid or free basis;
• Advertising in themed applications and games.

The ideal material for attracting the attention of VKontakte users would be an interesting thematic picture with a brief overview of the product/service/community.

Business promotion on VKontakte is suitable for a wide range of activities, primarily for inexpensive goods and services aimed at young people, local businesses, online stores, promotion of any nature.

Business promotion on Facebook

Facebook (facebook.com) is the world's largest social network among the most popular in RuNet. In total, almost 1.5 billion users are registered here, about half of them are active daily, the number of the Russian-speaking segment is about 10 million. Facebook, in contrast to VKontakte, is visited mainly by people of average and high social status and income aged from 25 to 45 years, the percentage of insolvent audience is minimal here. Famous businessmen and politicians have their own Facebook accounts. If VKontakte is more of an entertainment social network, then Facebook is a business and information network: people come here to get information.

The main directions for promoting goods and services on Facebook:

• Targeted advertising;
• Creation and promotion of your own from public pages;
• Advertising on popular thematic pages.

An important difference between Facebook and VKontakte is that likes here are displayed in the news feed of all the user’s friends, thus the advertising post is more easily distributed to a wider audience.

Promoting a business on Facebook is suitable for goods and services aimed at business-literate people, promotion of all kinds of conferences, seminars, business trainings, and informational websites.

Business promotion in Odnoklassniki

Odnoklassniki (ok.ru) is the first social network to become popular in RuNet. Today, its popularity has fallen somewhat, however, there are more than 200 million registered users, and about 45 million use the service daily. The main feature here is that among the users there are a lot of elderly people of retirement age; the average age here is maximum in comparison with other social networks: 25-50 years. In addition, many Russian-speaking network users are emigrants living abroad.

Opportunities for business promotion in Odnoklassniki:

• Targeted advertising;
• Advertising in applications and games;
• Creation of thematic groups;
• Advertising in other people's popular thematic or regional groups.

The ideal content for promoting a product or service on Odnoklassniki will be an eye-catching picture/status/video of a cool or socially significant nature that unobtrusively advertises your brand. Here, as on Facebook, each like (class) is displayed in your friends’ news feed, so by posting bright, funny, meaningful statuses, pictures or videos that will make you want to click “class,” you can promote your brand well.

Business promotion in Odnoklassniki is designed for the simplest, ordinary people, mainly the older generation, and is also suitable for goods and services intended for the widest audience, media sites.

Promoting your business on Twitter

There are significantly fewer opportunities for business promotion here. However, here you can create a hashtag for your own brand (for example, #fingeny) and promote it by purchasing advertising in well-promoted accounts with a large number of subscribers.

To promote on Twitter, you need to use a short message, preferably with hashtags (your own or popular), containing a link to your website.

This method of business promotion is best suited for any kind of Internet projects.

Promoting your business on Instagram

Instagram can be used to promote your brand by posting thematic photos and videos on your own account and purchasing such placements in the most visited thematic accounts. It is worth noting that this is the most expensive network for business promotion, but in certain cases it is also the most effective.

To promote on Instagram, you need high-quality, bright, funny, attention-grabbing unique photo and video materials. When posting, it is advisable to use hashtags (both your own and popular ones).

Promoting a business on Instagram is ideal for promoting youth product brands and products for women of any category.

You have gained some idea of ​​what business promotion on social networks includes, what directions and options you can use for this. Of course, this is just general information; in future posts I will explore some important aspects in more detail over time.

Only the lazy have not heard that SMM is a super popular and mega-effective trend. There are many reasons for this:

• quick access to any audience;
• easy interaction with clients;
• relative cheapness compared to other channels;
• a more personal, intimate level of communication with the client;
• a good way to increase profits;
• word of mouth;
• a convenient opportunity to work on your reputation.

Everyone wants to be on social networks and everyone goes there. But ultimately, we see a ton of corpses of communities and accounts that failed to bring benefit to their owners. And why all? Because there is no main idea, no consistency in work and, most importantly, no specific goals. But without them there is no point in counting on a good final result. Therefore, today we’ll talk about how to correctly formulate these goals so that SMM can be of real use. We’ll also find out whether it’s true that there are those who shouldn’t be on social networks.

Let's look at the example of VKontakte. But remember that this is not the only social network for promotion; there are many more platforms, each of which has its own characteristics. Don't know where to go? Contact us for a free consultation, and we will tell you which social network is best for promoting your business.

Do we talk about ourselves openly or hide: what kind of community should we create?

Let's start with the theory. Dmitry Rumyantsev, author of the book “Promoting VKontakte Business,” suggests distinguishing three types of positioning of the VK community:

1. Brand positioning

In this case, a community is created on a social network, openly named after the company, for example, “Online shoe store “Bashmak” or “Real estate agency “Cozy House”. The design contains corporate colors and a logo, and information about products and services is posted on the wall. One glance is enough to understand: this is a commercial community.

What are the disadvantages of this type? This method of positioning is good for large companies that everyone has known about for a long time: Sberbank, MTS, M.Video... But if your brand has not yet been promoted and its name is not widely known, then people will be reluctant to join the community. The whole point is that advertising is expected from such a community. And if advertising from a famous company is taken for granted, then many will not want to put up with advertising from a lesser-known business. In addition, on social networks we are accustomed to having fun and relaxing first, and only then making purchases.

2. Positioning by interests

The point here is not to openly declare your mercantile goals anywhere. Let's imagine this situation. We have a website selling women's cosmetics. We choose positioning based on interests and create a VK community called “All about beauty” or “Beauty Club”. We publish articles there about personal care, rules for applying makeup, hairstyles, post video tutorials, photos and other similar content. The audience is expanding, activity in the community is growing. Then we begin to weave into the content, for example, photos of girls with makeup done by our cosmetics. Participants will be interested in where this magical mascara, lipstick, eye shadow, etc. comes from. And here, with a magician’s gesture, we provide links to our website, where all this stuff can be bought, but not in the form of advertising, but in the form of unobtrusive advice. People won't even suspect that this is how you sell yourself. Very convenient, right?

There is a minus, of course, where without it. When positioning by interests, you can only work on sales, but not on reputation and brand awareness, because you cannot openly advertise your site, this is contrary to the strategy. In addition, even sales work must be very subtle and skillful. No links under each post, otherwise the audience will understand everything. There is a very high risk of revealing yourself.

Alas, not every business can promote itself based on interests. How to apply this type of positioning when you are selling, for example, expensive medical equipment? That's right, no way. But it’s very possible to sell this equipment on social networks. Read on to learn how exactly.

3. Mixed positioning

Realizing the shortcomings of these two types, SMMers thought: “Why not combine them together?” This is how mixed positioning appeared. By choosing this option, you can place advertisements with the company name in the open, increasing brand awareness, and place informational (useful!) content, increasing audience loyalty. That is, we combine positioning by brand and interests.

This is now the most popular way for communities to work. This is what we recommend using to get maximum benefits. Yes, we ourselves work on it. If you don't believe me, go to our VK group and see what mixed positioning looks like in practice. =)

Everyone can, but I can’t

Now everything is clear with the types of positioning. But what good are they if, according to experts, your business is barred from social networks? If you are the same site selling medical equipment? Let's figure out if you really are hopeless for SMM.

There are a lot of business areas that, according to the generally accepted opinion, are given the green light on social networks. We suggest dividing this list into 3 large industries:

1. Service market:
   • beauty salons and gyms;
   • cafes and restaurants;
   • bars and clubs;
   • various schools;
   • tourism (including hotel business);
   • studio;
   • rent anything;
   • car services.
2. Product market:
   • cloth;
   • decorations;
   • shoes;
   • childen's goods;
   • household products;
   • cosmetics and perfumes;
   • hand made.
3. Market of specialists
   • stylists;
   • hairdressers;
   • photographers;
   • presenters;
   • trainers;
   • doctors;
   • tutors;
   • repairman.

1. Highly specialized B2B (business to business).
   Reason: It’s very difficult to find interesting content to post regularly.
2. Offline business (for example, grocery stores).
   Reason: such companies are focused on natural traffic; there is no point in the audience joining their communities on social networks.
3. Business of instant solutions (taxi, tow trucks).
   The reason is the same as in the second case: natural cross-country ability. In addition, the decision to use the services of such companies comes instantly. We will immediately look for a phone number in 2gis, and not a public or VK group.

This is the theory, and we generally agree with it. But in practice, everything changes when a great desire to work appears. It is this desire that allows us to promote even the most seemingly unusual line of business on social networks. The main thing is to formulate your goals correctly. That is what we talked about at the very beginning of the article. Unclear? Then let's look at specific examples.

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In essence, any B2B company, any offline business and any instant solutions business can do the same thing on social networks as any ordinary beauty salon or restaurant. This:

• work on reputation;
• personnel search;
• providing information that is relevant and useful to the audience.

And sometimes even sell. You just need to approach things wisely and creatively. Let's look at each of the 3 points in detail using examples.

1. Work on reputation

Meet, it's official VKontakte group of the Angarsk Petrochemical Company.

Of course, we won’t be able to sell a batch of goods from the factory on social networks, but we don’t need that in this case. But it won’t hurt to work on the company’s reputation, because people very often accuse such enterprises of polluting the city, write complaints, file lawsuits, and organize rallies. If the townspeople don’t love you, they simply won’t let you work in peace. So a good reputation becomes of utmost importance.

How can you improve your good name? Organize charity events (helping orphans, veterans, disabled people), hold city holidays, organize sweepstakes, talk about your wonderful employees, educate young people. And social networks are becoming the ideal platform to tell the townspeople about your exploits.

The Angarsk Petrochemical Company approaches the matter very thoroughly. The group has a section “Company in Persons”, so the company immediately takes on a human appearance:

Charitable activities are developing very actively, which is constantly written about in the community:

And they don’t forget about training young people:

And competitions and drawings on site:

The group is quite active: there are likes, reposts and comments, there are more than 4000 participants. In short, the indicators are good, and if you take into account the specifics of the enterprise, they are absolutely excellent. Not every commercial platform can boast of such results.

Expert advice: If you want to work on your company’s reputation, social networks are ideal for this. Organize cleanup days, planting trees, collecting waste paper and batteries. Don’t forget to write about it and collect the delicious fruits of your efforts in the form of love and respect from your audience.

And by the way, if you have any similar enterprise and you care about environmental protection with the help of special technologies, also report this from time to time. And then there will be no complaints against you at all.

2. Search for frames

When a company is large, it often needs staff additions. To search for employees, you can either use the VKontakte innovation and connect a special “Vacancies” application in the community for free, or create a separate community to replenish the staff. This is exactly what the Irkutsk company Slata did, which has about 100 supermarkets in the region. If you want, join it

Sales Generator

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It is difficult to imagine a modern person without social networks. For some, they are a way to connect with other people around the world, and for others, they are a work tool. This marketing tool helps to significantly expand the target audience. This is why promotion on social networks is becoming so relevant today.

From this article you will learn:

1. For whom business promotion through social networks will not bring results?
2. What are the pros and cons?
3. 5 stages of independent promotion of services or goods
4. TOP 6 best social networks for brand promotion
5. Basic promotion tools
6. How is it possible to promote a website?
7. Free product promotion
8. Brand promotion through social networks using special services
9. How a promotion strategy is developed
10. 4 ideas for effective promotion
11. 11 mistakes in which promotion through social networks will not bring results
12. 6 tips on how to choose an SMM agency that you can trust with marketing and promotion

What are the features of promotion through social networks?

Despite the relative “youth” of promotion on social networks (), such a tool has shown its enormous effectiveness and has gained admirers among experienced marketers. It helps to expand the audience of potential clients by including those users who cannot be attracted by other marketing methods.

However, despite the high efficiency of SMM promotion on social networks, this tool remains poorly studied due to the fact that this process of attracting customers is constantly being transformed.

Direct distribution is carried out by the users themselves. By voting using “likes” and “reposts”, users increase the number of site visitors who become clients of the company.

The popularity of this tool for attracting potential customers has several reasons:

For whom business promotion through social networks will not bring results?

Users do not search social media for information about the production of machine tools, drilling services, or plant chemicals. While companies operating in large, medium or small sectors are very successful in using this tool in their marketing campaigns.

In addition, topics of an intimate nature are not acceptable for discussion on social networks. Issues of personal life do not become the subject of discussion. Here, a person will not discuss the symptoms of his disease with a doctor or consult a lawyer. Such questions are asked in a personal conversation.

In all other cases concerning the discussion of content by a large number of users, SMM promotion on social networks becomes an ideal tool.

However, the possibilities of promotion on social networks cannot be reduced only to attracting new customers. PotentialSMM marketing significantly wider and includes:

• sales growth;
• retargeting;
• expanding the circle of regular customers;
• increasing product awareness;
• neutralization of negative reputation;
• creating a brand and developing its image;
• qualitative and quantitative improvement of traffic.

What are the pros and cons of promoting through social networks?

Advantages:

• User trust in SMM messages is higher than in regular advertising information;
• the ability to expand the number of potential customers through social network users who may not be receptive to other marketing tools;
• higher targeting, allowing you to clearly identify the target audience of interest;
• the cost of promotion on social networks is significantly lower than the cost of an advertising campaign in the press or on television;
• the ability to communicate with clients without requiring the installation of third-party software;
• high speed of content distribution among interested users.

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Flaws:

• the first results will not appear immediately;
• to maintain the interest of existing users and to attract new ones, content must be constantly updated;
• inability to calculate the final cost of promotion on social networks due to the constant influence of many factors;
• the final result cannot be predicted;
• to find a product of interest, people more often use search engines;
• the cost of a mistake is extremely high: low literacy or unreliable content can lead to the loss of a significant part of subscribers;
• A fairly large number of users try to ignore even such advertising groups;
• lack of opportunity to promote your products to many specific business segments.

Promoting services or goods through social networks yourself: 5 stages

Stage 1. Planning and strategy development.

To achieve your business goals, you need to create an effective advertising campaign strategy. To do this, an analysis of the market and target audience is carried out, and tools for interaction with consumers are selected.

Stage 2. Creation of the platform.

A page or thematic group is used to promote a brand and company. The platform is also integrated with the website.

Stage 3. Content creation.

To attract the attention of the audience and create demand for the company’s product, it is necessary. This can be articles, advertising texts, videos, photographs and other materials that can encourage users to take certain actions.

Stage 4. Attracting the audience.

Personal invitations, various types of advertising, and viral marketing are used to search and collect subscribers, interested users and clients.

Stage 5. Organization of interaction.

Successful promotion on social networks is based on building effective communications in a group. Participants need to be motivated to communicate, comment on posts, like, repost, etc. It is extremely important to ensure active interaction between users.

Brand promotion through social networks: TOP 6 best

Advantages: the largest audience in Russia, the ability to publish diverse content.

Flaw: high competition (you must constantly fight for the attention and favor of users by updating content and often supplementing it with interesting messages).

Advantages: the number of audience practically coincides with VKontakte users, a “like” from a user automatically distributes your content to his subscribers.

Flaw: a significant part of the audience is made up of older people, although this social network is gradually filled with representatives of young people.

1. Facebook

Advantages: an adult and fairly wealthy audience, there is access to an international audience, cheap targeted advertising.

Flaw: A significant part of the Russian youth audience belongs to VKontakte.

1. Instagram

Advantages: ideal for visual presentation of your product, constant growth in the number of users, a significant part of the audience is young, well suited for brand promotion.

Flaw: Visual representation does not always provide a complete description of the product.

1. Twitter

Advantages: prompt notification of events, the ability to redirect users to other social networks, the audience is approximately twice as large as the audience of other media.

Flaw: software limited message size.

1. YouTube

Advantages: a huge audience, an excellent option for promoting a brand (sometimes personal), goods or services, an excellent option for B2B.

Flaw: Many users use third-party resources to watch and publish videos.

For the most successful promotion, it is best to use several social networks at once, focusing on their advantages.

Basic tools for promotion on social networks

The most advanced technologies for storing and transmitting information are almost immediately successfully mastered by social networks. By supplementing this parameter with the widest coverage of a wide variety of audiences, you will receive an excellent tool that will help you not only in promoting your own brand or web resource, but also in influencing users.

1. Video. Used for education, entertainment, attraction.

For example, the company You Gif Ted specializes in recruiting participants for private training. On his YouTube channel he regularly posts instructions for homework.

1. Audio. This could be music, a podcast, an audiobook, or other audio files that are of interest to your target audience.
2. Images. Used to illustrate your products, services, etc.

For example, the Kazan company “Chocolate Paradise” regularly posts photos of its products on Instagram:

1. With its help, users are introduced to the company and its activities.

For example, magazine "General Director" In his group on VKontakte, he regularly posts excerpts of his articles for transition to the main site:

How is it possible to promote a website through social networks?

White methods

Targeted advertising has some of the best performance indicators. The success of this method is determined by the correct setting, which helps to attract users only from the target audience you need and turn them into customers.

1. Advertising in communities or accounts

This method is quite effective if you put the necessary effort into creating an attractive advertising message. At the same time, you need to remember that the success of your campaign also depends on the choice of site, since each of these resources may have its own specific audience.

Often, the pages of famous people whose accounts have many subscribers are used to post messages. This method is actively used on Instagram.

This method is effective only when you need to quickly increase the number of subscribers or the number of “likes” of one advertising message. Even inexpensive prizes attract a lot of people.

However, for the most part, this audience is represented by so-called freebie lovers who will not show high performance. Therefore, to promote an online store on social networks using competitions, it is better to offer discounts that will interest regular and new subscribers.

SEO queries can also be used for promotion on social networks. By using keywords in the description of communities or pages, you can attract users and those who make queries using search engines. However, SEO will not be effective as the main method of promotion.

Gray methods

1. Cheating by bots or offers

The cost of attracting bots to the community you are interested in will be significantly lower than the cost of promotion on social networks using offers (users who are invited for a fee to get likes and shares). However, you will not be able to get targeted subscribers using these methods.

The undoubted advantage of such promotions is the ability to bring your community to the top of the rankings. Those groups that have the most subscribers reach the TOP.

1. Spam in comments or private messages

Despite the fact that spam is prohibited on any social network, by placing a link to your resource in such messages, you can attract interested users who will click and go to your site.

And although spammers’ accounts are quickly blocked, in the short life of such a page it will be possible to achieve a small increase in the number of subscribers.

Spam in private messages is not very effective, and there are two reasons for this:

• many user accounts are closed to messages from guests;
• After receiving spam in personal messages, users promptly complain to the support service, which leads to a quick blocking of the spammer's account.

1. Massfollowing

Mass following is a subscription to those users who will subscribe to your page in return. This method shows the greatest effectiveness on Instagram.

Figuratively, it looks like in our illustration - shooting at sparrows.

Free product promotion through social networks

• Creating a community or group. Promoting groups on social networks does not require financial investments either at the creation stage or at the stage of attracting subscribers and posting messages. When attracting interested users to your community, make sure that they visit your resource and become regular customers.
• Publics or fan pages are created to attract a target audience interested in your products.
• Promotion of media content. Media content is favorably received by all users, even if it is purely advertising in nature. Most often used to promote media content

Brand promotion through social networks using special services

To promote your brand on social networks, there are services that will help you achieve maximum efficiency. Each of them has its own advantages and disadvantages.

Forumok

This service is perfect for promotion on social networks. Forumok offers a wide range of settings and interesting design. Thanks to this service, your resource will have real users, and not rating numbers, which are mostly fake.

Pros. This service works with most social networks (Twitter, VKontakte, Facebook, My World, Odnoklassniki, Google+, Youtube). Most of the performers are real users.

Minuses. The service does not work with Instagram, which has a significant number of users interested in such promotion.

There is no automatic tracking of completed tasks, so the check must be done manually by clicking on each link. This is extremely inconvenient in the case of a large number of control groups. Prices do not differ from offers from similar exchanges.

Vprka

When you first visit this service, it gives you mixed impressions, since the design of the pages is extremely unprofessional. However, Vprka works with most resources (VKontakte, Facebook, twitter, Google+, Youtube, Odnoklassniki) and allows you to carry out effective promotion on these social networks yourself.

Users acquired through this resource can be retained by various lotteries, auctions and exchanges.

Pros. Compared to other similar services, the cost of promotion is very low. All necessary checks are carried out independently without the participation of the customer. The resulting users are real and have valid accounts.

Minuses. Before you get started, you need to synchronize your social media accounts with each service. Because of this, the authorization process is very delayed.

This service has a good set of functions, thanks to which it has gained great popularity. Works with VKontakte, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. There is a search for platforms for advertising in groups and communities.

Pros. The cost is quite low (from 13 kopecks per action). Prices are fixed, which eliminates the possibility of dumping by competitors. The service has a large number of participants (about one million people), so any task immediately goes to work.

There is a free technical support service that promptly helps if questions arise.

Minuses. There are many small flaws that can reduce the quality. For example, on Facebook it is impossible to “like” a specific post, and there is no way to increase the “repost” rating.

The cost of likes and follows for Instagram is very high, and many users are disabled. Real promotion on social networks using this resource is unlikely, since it is more suitable for boosting counters.

How to develop a promotion strategy on social networks

A social media promotion plan must begin with developing a strategy for the entire campaign and its main parameters. There is nothing unusual in such planning, since all these stages are necessarily present when creating any advertising project as part of a marketing policy.

Any SMM manager for business promotion on social networks must first answer a number of clarifying questions:

Strategy stages:

Defining SMM campaign objectives

• Sales

The most commonly used method is in which the created community generates direct communication with potential customers, answering questions and providing detailed information about the product of interest.

As a rule, in such groups the main task of such communication is to encourage the user to go to the company’s website and place an order.

Often these communities are similar to online stores where you can make a purchase without leaving the social network. The functionality allows you to make payments via electronic transfers.

It is necessary to maintain the interest of subscribers of this community by offering various promotions and discounts. In this case, consultants communicating with users can encourage them to make repeat purchases and remain loyal to your brand.

• Traffic

If you have done the right setup, this approach will allow you to get a large number of real users - leads. By establishing communication with them, you can turn them into your customers or subscribers.

• Branding

• Reputation management and neutralization of negativity

Target audience and its habitats

Any promotion on social networks is based on the characteristics of the target audience it is aimed at. If you have a portrait of a potential user who will definitely be interested in your offer, and information about which sites he “lives” on, you will be able to target your advertising campaign.

To highlight the main characteristics of the target audience, it is necessary to identify several points:

• Geography, or geotargeting

The geography of residence of your potential users must be clarified. To be more specific, it is necessary to identify not only the country of residence, but also the region (down to microdistricts).

• Socio-demographic criteria

These characteristics include gender, age, marital status, education, place of work, position, and income level. Knowledge of these criteria will allow you to more accurately customize advertising promotion on social networks and increase the effectiveness of the entire advertising campaign.

• Hobbies, interests, interests

This criterion cannot be ignored when setting up an advertising campaign. Hobbies that users enjoy in their free time can take up a significant portion of their Internet traffic and determine the choice of communities.

With the help of such channels, you can reach your potential client by offering him a product that really interests him. Such communication will be the key to ongoing cooperation.

Having identified the main characteristics of your target user, you need to select the sites that are best suited for searching according to these criteria.

Promotion on a social network (VKontakte or Facebook, for example) allows you to use the functionality of these platforms, which helps determine the number of registered network members who meet the entered criteria.

What behavioral characteristics are typical for your audience? The behavior patterns of your target audience can determine the interests and chosen topics of communities. It is necessary to take this aspect into account in order to build the most effective communication with users through the selection of suitable content.

There are several types of users:

• Content generators independently set the topic and format of communication. Most often they can be found in communities dedicated to IT.
• Discussion participants prefer to communicate in already formed discussions, asking questions and participating in discussions. This communication format is typical for financial and medical topics.
• Passive users prefer to observe the progress and nature of discussions. Most often they can be found in the retail segment. Despite their passivity, these users can actively purchase a product that is discussed in communities by other participants.

By identifying the category of people most of whom are the target audience of your community, you can decide on content that can interest them. Be prepared for the fact that in the case of passive users, you will have to constantly generate content despite the lack of activity. Otherwise, even these subscribers will leave you.

Content creation and management strategy

The content strategy for promotion on social networks is necessarily based on topics that can interest your potential user. It is necessary to carefully plan and predict the format of communication in order to maintain and increase the target audience of your community or group.

When creating a content strategy, you can rely on the socio-demographic characteristics of the target audience, their interests, as well as data from the sites where your communities are located. Be sure to consider the following indicators:

• style of communication(depending on the audience data and the selected content, the communication format can be formal, informal, professional, etc.);
• topic of interest;
• post format(it is necessary to maintain a ratio of 25% promotional posts and 75% neutral posts, otherwise the community will be overloaded with advertising information, which can scare off a significant part of the audience);
• forecast for next publications.

If you exclusively repost the same material on thematic communities of different social networks, this can also scare away your audience. The content should take into account the format of each site and be interesting for those users who are registered in several social media and are your subscribers.

Campaign Resources

• human;
• temporary;
• financial.

The allocation of resources and determination of their percentage should be carried out at the planning stage of the SMM campaign. Budgeting can be done based on total advertising costs.

Development of a metrics system

Analysis of the performance indicators of a social media promotion campaign depends on the goals and objectives set. There are several criteria that will help evaluate the success of the SMM strategy, for example, the overall reach of the audience, its activity, the quality of traffic, traffic attracted to the site, sales and registration in the community.

Efficiency assessment is carried out using:

• web analytics systems (Google Analytics, Yandex Metrica);
• analysis of user actions;
• internal statistics of social network communities;
• statistical indicators on third-party sites;
• sociological surveys on a social network, focus groups;
• special events using dedicated phone numbers, coupons and promotional codes.

An analysis of these criteria will show a social media promotion specialist how successful the SMM campaign was, whether it was able to solve all the tasks assigned to it and how its results will affect the business. These indicators will also help evaluate the effectiveness of financial investments to determine the degree of return on investment.

Drawing up a calendar plan

Each marketing strategy is based on a calendar plan for carrying out certain promotional events. It needs to clearly outline deadlines for start and end dates, a publication schedule for promotion on social networks, as well as analysis of results and evaluation of effectiveness.

Such a plan will help in creating a marketing campaign outline. At the same time, he should be able to make comments and adjustments during execution. Do not forget about the need for external administrative control.

Effective promotion through social networks: 4 ideas

If you think that to increase sales you need to use SMM methods, then you should pay attention to the experience of those brands that have been successfully using these technologies for a long time. For example, the KLM company (Royal Aviation Company, the Netherlands), whose income is replenished by 25 million euros annually through SMM.

Carline Vogel-Mayer worked for many years at KLM before joining the social media team. She spoke about the company's social media promotion strategy, which relies on previous customer experience to help develop the right marketing steps.

According to Carline, the following parameters are the priorities for successful brand promotion online:

Publish quality content that users will like

A company that operates air transportation all over the world simply cannot ignore the socio-cultural characteristics of the regions whose residents often become its passengers. Despite its 95-year history and the seemingly archaic “ossification” in this regard, it was able to adapt to the realities of global communication and new marketing strategies.

When creating an SMM concept, company managers focus on the consumer, since the success of promotion on social networks depends on him. You must respect those people who are in your communities and “like” messages that are interesting to them.

Therefore, all content posted must be relevant, high-quality and impartial, otherwise you risk losing users loyal to your brand.

The airline's managers came to this conclusion based on their own negative experience. After the World Cup 2014, their message “Farewell, friends” (Adios, Amigos), written after the victory of Holland over Mexico, appeared in social networking communities. There were 90 thousand posts in response to the tweet, 70% of which were negative.

Prompt communication with clients through social networks

Other channels for the operational transmission of information were overloaded. Therefore, the company had to bring in this alternative source to answer customer questions.

The appearance of the Icelandic ash cloud fatally interfered with KLM's marketing efforts, which previously used social media only to publish standard advertising messages.

Faced with the dilemma of whether to respond to the requests or ignore them, the company chose the former. Managers began responding to their clients as the situation unfolded. This was the beginning of a social strategy that remains the basis of their success today.

Exact response time to a request on social networks

Using a last-click model (a click that led to a targeted action, i.e. a purchase), the airline can raise €25 million annually through social media sales. This became possible thanks to a shift in attention to the client’s experience, which became the basis of the company’s SMM strategy.

The company’s marketing policy, or more precisely, the segment that is responsible for promotion on social networks, is based on the following principles:

• services;
• brand and reputation;
• commerce.

The quality of services provided is determined not only by air travel, but also by communication with users on social networks. Therefore, it is so important to answer all questions from your community subscribers, even if they have a pronounced negative attitude.

Statistical analysis showed that the weekly number of reviews sent to the airline is about 45 thousand. And only 5000 are real requests that require detailed study and solutions.

However, the company's average time spent processing one request is approximately 23 minutes, despite the fact that communication is conducted in 14 languages.

Although this processing speed requires significant human resources, there may always be a passenger who finds this period too long, especially when rushing to catch a connecting flight. In this regard, Twitter installed a timer in the header of the page, informing users of the amount of time required to answer the question.

Payment directly on social networks

By maintaining prompt communication with customers and responding to their requests, airline managers know what might be of interest to passengers in order to implement projects to improve service. For example, after supporting the proposal of community subscribers, a new payment tool was introduced directly through social networks.

This service is available to Facebook and Twitter users. To pay, the passenger receives a link in a personal message, and then independently selects his preferred payment method and completes the transaction. The company's social agent receives a message that the payment has been received, and the passenger receives confirmation of payment.

The project cost 3,500 euros to implement, and now brings in 80 thousand euros in sales weekly.

However, not all of these projects can be implemented by everyone who sees their effectiveness and wants to implement them in their business. To develop such a strategy and tools, the airline had to go through its own negative experience.

However, the competence of the staff and significant financial support helped to get out of unpleasant situations with dignity, drawing certain conclusions.

11 mistakes when promotion through social networks will not bring results

Mistake #1. Demand for instant results

If someone tells you that some customers got instant returns, don't immediately call your marketer and demand that they speed up the process. Such cases represent an extremely rare exception to the rule.

The duration of the wait is determined by the specifics of your brand's activities. Sometimes it takes three weeks, and sometimes three months. However, you should always be prepared for the fact that the SMM strategy will not bring results at all. The thing is that promotion on social networks does not directly affect sales, like contextual or banner advertising.

When you shouldn’t expect quick sales from social networks:

• When your product or service is complex and costs over $1,000. However, you shouldn’t give up, being disappointed in SMM. On social networks, you can customize your company’s customer service by devoting it to communicating with users and publishing interesting content.

Of course, with the help of social media you are unlikely to be able to get users to purchase agricultural equipment produced under your brand. However, on your company’s page a person will find detailed information about the product he is interested in, as well as answers to all the questions that are important to him.

• When your company has accumulated a lot of questions and complaints. Loss of image is always accompanied by a negative attitude from clients. Therefore, all your efforts aimed at SMM business promotion on social networks will be in vain until your company’s reputation is restored.

First you need to find the source of the problem and make every effort to eliminate it. Be sure to inform users that all difficulties have been overcome and similar situations will not arise in the future.

Demonstrate how you corrected the problem and what measures you are taking to prevent it from occurring in the future. Only after restoring the “good name” of your company can you start promoting on social networks.

Mistake #2. Believing that promotion on social networks is a piece of cake

If you think that the task of SMM promotion can be entrusted to a non-specialist, citing the fact that everyone is familiar with social networks, then the result of such inept actions will certainly disappoint you.

This mistake is most often encountered by small companies that do not have their own marketing department. In this case, the task of promotion on social networks is entrusted to the employee who can allocate some time during the working day for these actions.

As a result, accounts appear for companies whose representative is a real person. This violates the rules of social networks, which leads to blocking of such pages.

Another mistake of this approach is that when fired, the person to whom such accounts are registered can “lead” all your communities. The risk of such a loss increases if your company parted with this employee on bad terms.

Even an experienced marketer who is encountering promotion on social networks for the first time will not be able to build a high-quality strategy using standard methods. Many large companies that decide to engage in SMM hire specialists to train their staff.

Mistake #3. Stop promoting on social networks halfway

If your SMM promotion strategy has not brought success, this does not mean that social networks cannot be an effective tool for your business. Firstly, under no circumstances should you abandon those users who have already become subscribers of your communities. They can be converted into customers using other marketing tools.

Secondly, these users expect to constantly receive quality content in your communities. By abandoning groups, you will leave subscribers without attention. And this can negatively affect the image of your company, since users will not be able to get advice on issues that interest them.

The lack of feedback indirectly tells subscribers that not everything is in order in your company.

Mistake #4. Believing that there are magical promotion tools

An advertisement that promises to bring your brand to the TOP of the rankings clearly cannot be truthful. It is impossible to quickly and completely turn all ordinary users into an audience devoted to your company. If the number of subscribers is a criterion for efficiency for you, then this is a deep misconception.

The entire process of promotion on social networks (from start to finish) is dedicated to daily work on quality content that will not only be interesting to users, but will also encourage them to invite other people to your community.

In order to always maintain the interest of your audience, you need to be one step ahead and not be afraid to exceed their expectations. If followers want to see useful information in your community, offer them newsworthy news, as well as a prize for everyone who shares it on their social network feed.

If users expect gifts from you for some actions, give gifts just like that. Surprise them and you will see amazing growth in your members, subscribers, followers and whatever.

Mistake #5. Just broadcast content without paying attention to users

Maintaining a community on social networks requires a different approach than working on a corporate website. SMM communications must be two-way, since only a small number of users are content with viewing content and passively observing discussions taking place on the forum.

Social networks are designed for communication and interaction. Therefore, you must always be ready to engage in dialogue with users, answering questions or making recommendations. Such communication should be prompt: a subscriber who is forced to wait for a response to his request for several days will most likely look for another community.

If a response to a question is received within an hour, then this is considered normal. That is why promotion on social networks requires significant human, time and financial costs, since communication must be carried out 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Mistake #6. Rely only on your own strengths

Delegation of authority is an excellent tool for optimizing promotion on social networks. Any head of a marketing department who first encountered such a tool for increasing sales should know about it.

Yes, at the initial stage - determining the target audience, its interests, socio-demographic indicators, etc., it is impossible to do without the participation of the manager, but this is a maximum of 1-2 weeks.

Further steps should be carried out by social media promotion specialists. The head of the marketing department should not flirt with reposts and likes. It is much more important to devote your time to the necessary management, as well as monitoring the implementation of assigned tasks.

Mistake #7. Lack of goal of promotion on social networks (started because it was fashionable)

You cannot promote on social networks just because it is fashionable among large companies. Groups created in this case in most cases quickly become “dead”, since they lack effective two-way communication with users.

If there is no activity in the corporate community, followers may have a negative impression of the company as a whole, which will further lead to speculation and the loss of a positive image of your brand.

When you decide to promote a product on social networks, you must clearly understand what exactly you want to get as a result. Setting goals will help you estimate the budget needed to achieve them. To make things easier, you can answer the following questions to help clarify why do you need an SMM strategy:

• Create and maintain communication with the user?
• Organize an additional sales channel?
• Create a 24/7 call center?
• Should you test a new product before offering it to the market?
• Organize an additional sales channel for regular customers?
• Contribute to the growth of the average check?
• Eliminate negative reviews about your brand or product?
• Prevent the possible appearance of negative information that could damage your image (provided that you expect the occurrence of negativity due to certain reasons)?
• Increase consumer loyalty to encourage them to make a purchase from you?
• Increase brand or product awareness?

Mistake #8. Spending too much money on social media promotion

Without preliminary testing, which will show which communication channels and which social media are suitable for your goals, not all investments will be able to bring positive results.

In this case, thoughtful and painstaking mathematical analysis will suggest the right choice. Don’t be afraid to waste time on (at first glance) useless testing if you are confident in advance about the chosen communication channel.

Mistake #9. Copying someone else's content

Copying content taken from competitors will not bring your company to the top of the rankings. Promotion on social networks is especially successful in cases where the author offers his own unique developments that are interesting and useful to users.

Don't be afraid to experiment. And even more so, do not be modest, believing that your idea will not be interesting to anyone. Promote a blog on social networks that will tell you in detail about your product, the stages of its creation and who will benefit from it. Develop the status of an expert whose advice really helps and improves your work.

Mistake #10. Lack of competitor analysis

However, you should not completely ignore the experience of competitors. After all, a positive result can suggest a couple of ideas for testing on your project, and a negative result can help prevent such mistakes.

To begin with, it is enough to identify the strongest players in your market. Carefully study their marketing technologies and promotion tools. Try to implement these ideas into the realities of the Russian segment of these social networks. If the project is successful, we can gradually expand to other sites.

Mistake #11. Ignoring negative reviews

Negative information that harms reputation is the reality of any business. You will never be able to avoid speculation from competitors or negative feedback from dissatisfied customers.

If you work with negativity, reacting quickly and eliminating the source, this will increase the loyalty of users who will see your attitude towards your own work and attentiveness to feedback.

Never delete negative reviews from the pages of your corporate account on social networks, and certainly do not block the user who made the remark. Even if you do this as quickly as possible and unnoticed by other subscribers, negative information will still break through to your blog.

A user whose review you ignored in this way may log in from another account and attract the attention of others. Such hype will definitely not benefit your brand image. It is better to spend time studying the negative review and solving the problem. And your subscribers will see how much attention you pay to working with clients.

6 tips on how to choose an SMM agency that you can trust with marketing and promotion on social networks

Tip 1. Choose those who are exclusively engaged in promotion on social networks.

It is impossible to do several things at once equally effectively. Even if you have a huge staff. Therefore, promotion on social networks is best entrusted to the agency that specializes only in it, without being “sprayed” into other marketing channels for attracting clients and capital.

Such companies study SMM tools much more carefully, following the latest trends, innovations and trends. Therefore, they will always be aware of how to set up a marketing campaign in the most effective way.

Tip 2: Ask to review the portfolio.

Every experienced and self-respecting agency has a portfolio of completed works, which can always be presented to future customers. As a rule, the company's website contains a section that details the successes of previous projects and links to performance indicators posted on the Internet.

Tip 3: Ask what performance metrics the agency uses.

When contacting an agency, you need to have a clear strategy that will help you see what goals and objectives you set for promotion on social networks. This information will help determine the criteria by which the effectiveness of the activities carried out will be assessed.

If agency employees use the names of various indicators (for example, KPIs) without explaining exactly how they will manifest themselves when analyzing your brand strategy, you should not contact this company. Most likely, the agency simply wants to choose easier criteria for itself, without paying attention to the client’s needs.

Tip 4. Pay attention to the experience of specialists.

By examining the agency's portfolio, you can get an idea of ​​its experience. Take the time to check this information with those employees who will directly work on your project.

The team that will be involved in SMM promotion of your business on social networks should be aware of which marketing tools will be most effective for your company.

Tip 5. Read reviews about the company.

For the most objective picture, it is best to study both positive recommendations and negative reviews. The reliability of the information can be easily verified if the reviews are accompanied by information about the people with whom the agency came into contact in the process of work and their contacts (phone numbers, email addresses, etc.).

Tip 6. Don't choose an agency because of the low price.

When concluding an agreement with an agency for promotion on social networks, do not focus on a low price. A high-quality SMM strategy cannot be cheap.

What is the cost of promotion on social networks

When offering your company an SMM strategy, agency specialists announce a price, the size of which depends on the tools that will be used:

By studying these criteria for assessing the effectiveness of promotion on social networks, you will be able to understand what the price for such services consists of. Completing each of these points requires a certain amount of time, which must also be monetized.

However, this information is not unique, so such a message must be supplemented with the author's text. Preparing a high-quality article that meets the requirements takes about two hours.

The text must be supplemented with a suitable picture, the search for which also takes time (about 10 minutes). If your community is represented on only one social network, you must publish at least three posts per day. Within a month their number grows to 90.

At least 10 of them must be 100% unique. The following calculation formula is obtained: 25*80+10*120+90*10=13,700 minutes or 228.3 hours, that is, about 228 hours per month are spent just on content selection.

The next stage is advertising. Setting up an advertising campaign can take up to 20 hours, but on average it takes about 10 hours. Tracking and analyzing running promotions also takes time (about 30 hours per month). Total: about 40 hours a month are spent on advertising.

Time is also spent on preparing and conducting various incentive competitions. After finishing, you need to analyze the effectiveness, sum up the results and communicate with users. This whole process takes about five hours.

You also need to spend time communicating with users. To be constantly in touch and quickly respond to user requests, you need to view the community feed once an hour. This means that it takes about 30 minutes a day, and 15 hours a month.

The total amount of time spent on performing these manipulations is 288 hours.

Many companies believe that promotion on social networks is a simple process that cannot cost more than 5,000 rubles. If this amount is divided by 288 hours, it turns out that in this case the cost of one hour of work by an SMM specialist will be 17 rubles. You won't be able to get quality results for that kind of money.

Yes, price is one of the main arguments in choosing an agency whose specialists offer promotion on social networks.

But before you start promoting goods and services on social networks, you should check the quality of the site to which the flow of your potential customers will be directed from social networks. And the easiest way to do this is with the help of a professional site audit.

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