SMM promotion on social networks - what it is and how it works. Who is an SMM specialist? SMM promotion training on your own

1. Understanding the company's objectives. First of all, it is necessary to understand whatresults are expected from you, over what period of time and by what criteria success will be assessed.Read more about the goals and evaluation criteria . When goals and objectives are formed, start looking for working promotion strategies and tools.

2. Knowing the target audience. It is important to clearly describe the target audience. A detailed portrait of the client, understanding his motives and desires are the basis of SMM. You can determine the portrait of the target buyer using Yandex Metrics, Google Analytics and community statistics in social media. networks. The first two tools provide a comprehensive description, but the use of Yandex Metrics and Google Analytics is only possible if you have a website. The last method is suitable for those who have a group “not created yesterday” and have already accumulated relevant statistics.

3. Choice of social networks. The basics of SMM include a competent determination of the platform for promotion. How to choose a social network? A way for the lazy: compare the portrait of the target client with the characteristics of the audience of each social network and choose the most suitable one. There are published studies on the Internet that will help with this.Hardcoreway: launch communities and advertising in key social networks. networks and gradually select the most effective sites.

4. Competitor analysis. The basics of SMM also include competitor analysis. Find popular communities on your chosen topic. Analyze the design and content of the group, the frequency of posts, highlight popular types of content, and see how the administration works with comments. Competitor analysis is a chance to borrow successful experiences and create an improved promotion strategy.

5. Understanding the promotion strategy. You already know four important ones SMM basics, but the fifth one will be the key one on today's list. Promoting a community on social networks always pursues some kind of business goal. Clear understanding goals, knowledge of your target audience, vision of the content plan, clear communication model, as well as a comprehensive understanding of the implementation of the assigned tasks that's the point SMM strategies.

6. Understanding content marketing. I advise you to carefully review the previous basics of SMM in order to master this point. Understanding how content marketing works requires a clear knowledge of the target audience. Competitor analysis will help determine the type of popular content, optimal publication time, topic and format of posts. When forming a Social Media Marketing content plan, the strategy acts as a kind of filter. Publish only what is consistent with the company’s goals and is interesting to the target audience. will help you with this. Discard the rest. These are the simple basics of SMM, there is nothing complicated here.

7. Constant correction and improvement. Over time, you come to understand what gives the desired result and what does not. At this stage, adjustments to the strategy and refinement of the content plan are needed. Use effective tools, techniques and techniques for promotion in social media. networks and discard those that do not work.

These are the basics of SMM. I hope the article turned out to be useful and interesting. Ask questions, leave comments and subscribe to my blog.

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The development of social networks has given rise to a new huge business industry - SMM marketing. This is when we come with our product to some social network, find our target audience there, and offer our product to them in different ways.

Sounds easy. But SMM (Social Media Marketing) has a number of pitfalls. They are the ones that often prevent “traditional” sales gurus from seizing new opportunities.

And let's first look at how this “new marketing” differs from the old methods of promotion.

3 differences between SMM and other types of marketing

#1 - Communication and fun

SMM primarily means “social”. That is, all marketing through SMM is built on communication. Social networks are generally a very interesting environment. People come to social networks for only two purposes:

Communicate
Have fun

If you give them some content that is not aimed at communication or entertainment, they will “scroll through” you and not notice you. That is, all your actions related to attracting the target audience should somehow involve in communication or entertain.

I can give you a simple example. VKontakte shows you various advertisements on the left. It's called "targeted advertising." Do you know which targeted advertising works best? The one where the picture contains some funny or interesting image. Which ad would you most like to click on?

#2 - The role of personality in SMM marketing

Another feature of social networks is that all of your “ins and outs” are exposed for everyone to see. Previously, of course, they also tried to create a business “with a human face,” realizing that people prefer to buy from people rather than from faceless companies.

For these purposes, special people were hired who best suited what the target audience liked. Then a special image was created for these people, and they were placed as “puppets” at the head of the company. But the true owners and leaders have never appeared anywhere.

But only social networks made it possible to develop a personal brand so quickly and in this way. Again, we’ll talk about this a little later, but one of the main goals of promotion through SMM is to get people to recognize you by sight. This is trust. And where there is trust, there are sales.

And if you are promoting your face, make sure it is at least visible. And even better - to make it clear that you are a real person, and not a mannequin. Which of the two ads based on the idea of a personal brand inspires more confidence in you?

#3 — A virus is a form of life

The main engine of SMM is a virus. New people come to your groups, and then even non-selling pages, after they see a repost of your post on their friend’s wall. They come and also make some kind of repost or leave a comment.

And his friends already see this in their news feed, and they also come to you. On regular websites, free traffic was (and is) supplied through search engines. This is the so-called SEO promotion. And here is the virus.

However, SEO “always works”, and a new virus must be constantly launched. That is, if you wrote one good article, and it reached the TOP of search engines, then most likely it will remain there for a very long time, and will bring you traffic every day.

But on social networks everything is more complicated. If you made a great viral post once, it will work for you for 2-3 days maximum, and then everyone will forget about it. Because during this time another hundred thousand cool new posts will appear. By the way, this is one of the main reasons why I don’t like doing SMM. I love it when the results “accumulate.” But, of course, I have my own VKontakte group. Join us.

In the meantime, let's look at the stages of promotion through social networks and SMM.

4 stages of promotion through SMM

#1 - Choosing a social network

It would seem - why do people need so many different social networks? This includes VKontakte, Facebook, Instagram, Odnoklassniki, Twitter, and much more. Why shouldn't everyone be on the same network? And the whole point is that they are different. And the people who are there are also different.

For example, it is believed that Facebook audience- more intellectually developed and serious than VKontakte (Russian-language Facebook, of course). And this is how it really is. People there prefer to discuss complex issues of world politics and economics and all that jazz. It is these people, by the way, who often use Google as a search engine rather than Yandex.

VKontakte audience- lighter and more fun. She prefers to like cats and funny pictures, without deep social connotations. This does not mean that “there are only schoolchildren on VKontakte.” You just need to approach them the same way - easily and cheerfully.

Instagram audience- these are mostly girls who post their photos and discuss the photos of other girls. And if your product is for a female audience, you will find it in abundance on Instagram. Sellers of courses and trainings on women's topics feel especially at ease there.

Audience of classmates- this is what is usually called the “average resident of Russia” - with an average salary, pension and life expectancy.

For some reason, residents of urban settlements and factory outskirts of large cities prefer to communicate there. And this entire network emanates a very simple folk humor in the spirit of Petrosyan. I would come there with “new products” (which have long been known on the Internet to everyone except the inhabitants of my classmates).

All other social networks are not very widespread in our country, so they can be omitted from this review. Your task is to choose the social network where your target audience lives. Even if you yourself prefer to communicate with other people, nothing can be done. Magomed must come to the mountain.

And after choosing a network, we need to create a “gathering point” for our audience.

#2 — Creating a platform for communication

On VKontakte, for example, it is prohibited to conduct any commercial activities through your personal page. But I know people who are not at all embarrassed by this ban. They post content on their account and make sales there.

Another important point - do not spread yourself between several social networks. You need to choose only one site and pay all your attention to it. This way you will have more chances of success.

#3 - Creating Viral Content

At the first stage, you need to make a lot of interesting posts so that people share them and attract new audiences. I identify 4 types of viral content that people share most willingly:

Content is a provocation
Content - instructions
Content - medal
Content - laugh

You can read more about all these types of content and how they work in the article.

You will also most likely have to invest money if you want your community to develop faster. Almost all social networks have built-in advertising mechanisms. If you prefer “slowly but surely,” then you don’t have to pay. The main thing is that the content is truly viral.

#4 - Monetization

Here it is immediately very important to understand that attracting an audience and making money from this audience are completely different things that are in no way related to each other. You can have a group of 100 thousand people, and you will earn pennies.

And vice versa, a group of 2 - 3 thousand active participants will give you huge profits. It all depends on what monetization methods you use. There are only three main options for making money on the Internet on your content platforms:

Advertising (the most common and least profitable activity)
Affiliate programs (depending on your luck)
Selling your goods and services (a bonanza, but you have to work hard).

Figure out in advance how you are going to make money on your site, and based on this, prescribe a strategy. Free content plan templates for social networks will greatly help you with this.

Summary

SMM marketing is the promotion of goods and services through social networks.
SMM differs from other types of marketing in three ways: the emphasis in content is on entertainment and communication, the personal brand plays a huge role, and promotion is based on the virality of the content.
All social networks are different, and you need to find the one where your target audience lives.
In your chosen social network, you need to create a platform where your audience will come for new content every day. This could be a group, community or your personal page.
To promote, try to make each of your posts as viral as possible. You can read more about this in the book “Contactless Selling”.
If funds allow, pay for advertising on social media to promote faster.
Think in advance about how you are going to make money from your audience. Otherwise, you risk sharing the fate of those who spent two years collecting a huge group, and then were unable to earn anything from it.

Hope. the article was useful to you. Don't forget to download my book. There I show you the fastest way from zero to the first million on the Internet (a summary from personal experience over 10 years =)

See you later!

Yours Dmitry Novoselov

Daria Golovanova

Reading time: 14 min.

Perhaps the fastest growing profession on the Internet in recent years is SMM manager. It has already accumulated various stories, misunderstandings and myths, such as that this is a job for schoolchildren, etc. It seems to us that it is time to start debunking them. Let's figure out what is meant in job descriptions, why an SMM specialist is actually needed, and how he should work.

What might be the responsibilities of an ideal SMM manager?

The main responsibilities of the person responsible for SMM in the company may include:

building a general strategy for the brand’s presence on social networks;
turning this strategy into reality;
the ability to feel and understand the brand, focus all actions on its target audience and communicate in its language
reasonable budget management, maintenance and analysis of advertising campaigns;
the ability to take beautiful photographs. Even on the phone. A small business can no longer be imagined without a beautiful Instagram profile, and ordering a lot of filming is not always the most budget-friendly option. That’s why photo content often has to be implemented by the SMM manager;
have a sense of beauty and be able to catch trends.
competent written language, ability to write and correct text content;
Knowledge of at least the basics of layout and understanding of usability to optimize a site for social networks is highly recommended;
and, of course, the ability to work with people and the skills of a psychologist are very important;
and etc.

Ksenia Prokina, Editorial Group Head Sociorama by iConGroup:

“Today, different employers often define in their own way who an SMM specialist is in his company, and what exactly he should do. In interviews, the conversation often begins like this: “Let’s define what we mean by this word.” So, one employer sees in this position an employee who, having decided on a goal, breaks it down into tasks, selects tools, briefs, controls, and reports to the SMM director or head of the marketing department. And the other will indicate such tasks as: writing content, moderating communities, working in tandem with a designer, reporting. But he will not, for example, control the budget, select promotion tools, etc.

The fact is that it is unrealistic to cover the entire pool of tasks and do it manually. We are now talking, of course, about real professionals, and not about schoolchildren or mothers on maternity leave, who were inspired by the opportunity to make money on the Internet. Therefore, ideally, tasks are divided into several employees by specialization, for example, I am responsible for content, moderation and design.”

As you can see, the hands of a good CMM specialist should grow bushily: he should be versatile and ready to perform a wide range of work.

Now let’s start debunking the myths that have taken root in our heads.

Myth 1. Working on social networks is for interns and students

Social media marketing is one of the necessary tasks for developing a business of any size. If you think that this is some kind of childish task that any schoolchild can do, then you can put an end to your reputation. Incorrect positioning, low-quality content, lack of understanding of strategy and goals - all this will, at best, lead to a decrease in the number of subscribers, and at worst, will negatively affect the attitude towards the brand and sales.

Myth 2. Social networks are the same job for 8 hours 5 days a week

Here's another common stereotype. Social media marketing is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, every day. For SMM marketing to have significant authority on social networks, you need to always be online. This means that you must be able to use various planning tools, ideally be able to answer questions from potential buyers at any time of the day or night (after all, the Internet never sleeps).

Myth 3. You won’t achieve effective and measurable results from an SMM marketer

Measuring the results and effectiveness of work in SMM today also does not seem impossible. There are several options to track the results of an SMM manager’s work:

Pay attention to reach, user engagement, conversion of paid traffic into social traffic. And don’t forget to track ROI - an indicator of return on investment on SMM.
Track growth rates of ER - engagement index.
Analyze the place of SMM in associated conversions. This way you can evaluate the employee's return on investment.

Myth 4. All the work is just asking friends and acquaintances to like posts to increase the level of social presence.

Experienced SMM specialists will not constantly ask friends and relatives to like their posts. They know very well that they will not be able to deceive the program that calculates the activity coefficient. It is a little more complicated than users are used to thinking. This is why it is so important to work on the creativity of posts and interact with a large number of audiences.

Myth 5: We don’t need it at all

Social media is not suitable for our industry.” A lot of people think this way. In our courses, one of the most common questions is what should we write about, we are from B2B. Especially B2B manufacturing companies, such as construction, industry, etc.

However, while they and their B2B partners do not understand how to implement social media, their employees are still socially active people, and they also like to network, watch news on interesting topics, including their professional direction. Look around you: from children to grandparents, everyone is on social media these days.

A common mistake B2B companies make is to view their customers as just other companies, rather than the people who work for them, who are just as socially accessible as everyone else.

In principle, this is possible. But only if you have a unique product and initially ideally designed marketing.

Myth 6. The demand for SMM specialists has already been formed

As we can see in the graph, the demand for SMM specialists began to increase significantly since January 2016, and the number of vacancies has almost doubled, as a result of which competition is intensifying.

Myth 7. An SMM manager should be cheap

Today there is a generally accepted opinion that it is quite possible to get by with small budgets at the initial stage of SMM promotion. Of course, SMM services today do not have any fixed cost, and each company can set its own “price tag”.

But when starting to work with SMM, it is extremely important to understand that a one-time promotion will give absolutely nothing to the business. SMM must be integrated into the marketing communications system for any type of business, and it is advisable to expect results only with regular work.

Of course, you can pay a specialist less, but in this case, you should not expect the predicted result; it may turn out to be zero. Many employers continue to turn to freelancers who are ready to “do SMM for $200,” but after 1-2 months of wasted time, money and nerves, they turn to professionals for help.

Therefore, if you are really ready to spend some money one-time, it’s better to go through a good SMM intensive to understand the big picture and what your SMM manager should do directly. Such a course will give you a clear understanding of where, on what and with what efficiency your budgets and paid “man-hours” will be spent.

Myth 8. It is not necessary for an SMM manager to have many subscribers himself?

Maybe yes. But not “bots”. Agree, it’s very undignified when a person has 4,000 friends, and on his wall there are cats liked by his mother.

If you decide to communicate through the manager’s personal page, then it can become another channel of communication with clients. In addition to posting, he can ideally become an opinion leader, able to tell your customers everything about the company, products, and in a friendly manner. After all, if you love your project, you won’t be ashamed to tell your friends about it, otherwise, you shouldn’t take on it.

However, there are many professional SMM specialists who, on the contrary, appear minimally on social networks. Perhaps it's a matter of satiety with social networks.

The most correct way to communicate with the client in this case is to create a separate work page. After all, many people want to tell everything honestly on their page, for example, about a brand. But in this case, the manager has no right to represent his company with such messages on the wall.

Myth 9. SMM specialist can do everything

Very often, the SMM manager can be required to do anything - calculate budgets, do promotion, draw, dance, etc. But as a rule, people who claim that they can do all this are definitely lacking in something.

It is important to decide what work can be done inhouse, and what can be entrusted simply to the control of an SMM manager. For example, write content within the brand and promote it with the help of a contractor. Or vice versa.

Of course, SMM is a complex topic. There are really big budgets here, every day something changes and something new is invented.

SMM managers, and not only - write your comments and additions in the comments, what stereotypes do you encounter in your work?

In my opinion, it is necessary to distinguish between two types of “SMMers”: those who use social networks simply as a tool and 80lvl SMMers.

In the first case, practice is most important. You need a thorough knowledge of the interfaces and rules of all major platforms, competent speech and, in principle, everything else that previous authors listed.

The second option is more interesting. You must absolutely hate the word “esemem”; for me it is perceived as a curse word. I position myself as a specialist in Social and Community (sorry, the bane of employees of international companies is to insert English words into Russian speech in an untranslated form). First of all, you need to look at social beyond the scope of your own channels in it; a VKontakte group, and even a VKontakte group + FB page + Insta account is a very narrow vision of the situation. For me, social has long been intertwined with classic PR, working with partners, and simply communicating with people. The second follows smoothly from this: people are the most important resource in the modern world. It turns out that you never know when and how a particular person may be useful to you and where he will come from (maybe a malicious troll from your VK group in the future will suddenly become your good business partner or introduce you to the right person, or turn into a brand ambassador after a pleasant experience interacting with you). You'll never know.

No matter how trite it may sound, a good SMM manager (as in principle a good marketer and generally a good professional in any field) is a one-man orchestra. In my work, I apply knowledge from the field of Internet marketing in general, psychology (and my favorite - the basics of working with difficult teenagers), journalism, mathematics, classical PR, e-commerce, all this is just a small part.

And lastly, the last but not the least, you need to be in touch 24/7 (life hack: “working” does not equal “being in touch”). If you are a real texter, at some point you yourself will begin to feel uncomfortable during any flights, traveling on the subway in a car without wi-fi, in the bathroom and any other places where the phone and any communication will be absent.

Nothing is needed at all.

1. Be literate and express your thoughts well in writing. Moreover, be able to put a lot of meaning into a small number of words.

4. Be creative. In life, very often you need to make candy from scratch, but in the life of a smm-maker you have to do this several times a day.

5. Be a bit of a psychologist and predict the behavior of social network users several steps ahead.

6. You can show yourself as a specialist by building a so-called self-brand - convincing everyone around you that you are a real expert in the field of SMM. By the way, this should also be done on social networks.

Complementing OLI ZITCH’s answer, I want to say that a good SMM specialist should also have:

1) A broad outlook, so that he can adjust the content to any topic.

2) The ability to abstract from one’s social role and be able to put on a “mask” of the target audience

3) Always practice - theory is 10 percent of your skills.

In general, if you want to gain practical experience, I highly recommend going for an internship at an agency from the Tagline () rating or launching your own project (preferably investing a good budget into it) so that you understand how the process works from the inside.

I worked as a content manager in an SMM agency, I will tell you about my experience.

Firstly, there must be a predisposition to this. Not every person can navigate large amounts of information and be able to analyze it competently. The lion's share of success in SMM is competent text content. Both the content of materials and selling texts and headlines (offers). Knowing how to attract attention to your service or product is a real art. To learn how to write catchily, correctly and concisely, I can recommend GlavRed’s free newsletter. It really helps.

As you know, all work in Social Media Marketing is based on the proposal and generation of valuable content for the user, which can be text, photos or videos. Different social networks favor different types of content. And if we certainly associate YouTube with videos, Twitter with text messages, and Pinterest and Instagram with photos, then Facebook and VKontakte, for example, give everything away at once.

Choosing a venue SMM-campaign, of course, depends on your goals and the audience you need to work with. However, in most cases, it is advisable to use not one, but several tools at once to attract the target’s attention. In other words, it is recommended to establish a system of complementary actions in different social networks, which will ultimately form into an effective SMM strategy.

Rules and tips for SMM marketing for dummies

So, here are 30 tips and rules for working with social media (SMM marketing), which are designed to help attract audience attention to your brand. Some of them may seem obvious to some, but this is a kind of list of necessary actions that can strengthen your online presence in a leading position.

Twitter
1. Try to increase the number of subscribers. The more there are, the better for you.
2. Attract bloggers from your niche using servicesTweepi.com or Twellow.com . This will help you find the most influential microblog authors.
3. Regularly and systematically post links to posts by bloggers who are considered experts in your field.
4. If you share a link to interesting information, be sure to give it a short description.
5. Share the content of influential Twitter users and notify them about it, including their nickname (Oleg Ivanov) in the message.
6. Automate some processes on Twitter using the service

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