this video is a part of the google digital marketing and e-commerce certificate providing you with job-ready skills to start or advance your career in digital marketing and e-commerce get access to hands-on activities quizzes discussion forums job search help and more on coursera and you can earn your official certificate visit grow.google digital marketing to enroll in the full learning experience today [Music] social media is any digital tool that enables users to create and share content publicly with billions of people on social media throughout the world your current and potential customer will likely be some of them people use social media platforms like facebook twitter youtube and instagram to stay in touch with friends and family share photos and videos research products to buy stay up to date on current events find entertaining content to read and more social media gives you the opportunity to reach the maximum number of these people in a variety of different ways coming up we'll discuss what social media marketing is and how it benefits your marketing campaigns you'll learn about five key pillars of social media marketing strategy planning and publishing listening and engagement analytics and reporting and paid social media we'll discuss how the different types of digital media fit into your social media campaign and you'll learn how to use social media to guide customers through the marketing funnel the path a potential customer takes from awareness of your brand to purchasing a product and beyond ready to get started let's go [Music] in this video i'll explain what social media marketing is and why it's important for the success of your marketing campaigns social media marketing is a process of creating content for different social media platforms in order to drive engagement and promote a business or product social media marketing enables you to connect with your customers and help them better understand your brand why is social media such an effective marketing tool there are so many reasons first of all social media is an excellent way to increase brand awareness brand awareness refers to how familiar people are with a particular business or product think about a time you saw a social media post that caught your attention from a brand you didn't know if you can remember that brand now that's brand awareness social media platforms engage with over half of the world's population and according to a pew research study over 70 percent of social media users check their accounts at least once a day people use these platforms to interact with their friends and family as well as companies so you can connect with users whenever they log in this makes social media a natural place to target new customers social media also helps you build stronger relationships with your existing customers it gives you the opportunity to build their trust help them solve problems and show them that you care about their needs and opinions additionally marketing on social media can help you grow your business by driving more traffic to your website by sharing your website content on your social media platforms you can direct users to your site every time you publish a new post you can also increase website traffic by including your website address in all of your social media profiles so that people who want to learn more about you can easily do so social media is also one of the most powerful marketing channels for generating leads as you learned previously a lead is a potential customer on social media a lead is someone who took a specific action that made them a potential customer such as filling out a form subscribing to a free trial or clicking on a link to a discount code many social platforms provide advertising formats specifically designed to collect leads social media allows you to gain valuable insights that can help you inform your marketing strategy learning about your target audience's likes dislikes and interests through social media can help you tailor your marketing strategy to that audience analytics tools offered on many social media platforms enable you to gather a large amount of data about your target audience as well additionally social media provides an opportunity for you to learn about your competitors researching what your competitors are doing can help you emulate what is working for them and improve on what isn't another great benefit of social media marketing is that it is cost effective most social networking platforms allow you to sign up and create a profile for free also you can reach users based not only on their interests and hobbies but on the personal and demographic information they choose to share with the social media platforms this narrows down your audience to precisely the customer you want to target so you can avoid spending your budget on a wider audience social media marketing has been greatly beneficial to my campaigns at google for example i recently launched a new product feature in the market and it was important for me to connect with users that would find this product helpful social media helped me share digestible information that increased the awareness of the product among users and guided them to a destination in my case google ads help center for further reading businesses of all sizes can benefit from a social media presence those strategies can differ depending on the company at a big company you might work with a team of designers copywriters or even an agency to create content while at a small company you might be doing more of the work yourself or with a small in-house team the benefits i've described here are just a few of the many reasons why this marketing channel is so useful because of this social media marketing has become a crucial element of many companies business development strategies next we'll discuss the basic principles of social media marketing [Music] previously we discussed why social media is such an important piece of your company's marketing puzzle now let's talk about five core pillars of social media marketing strategy planning and publishing listening and engagement analytics and reporting and paid social media these pillars can help you guide an effective social media marketing campaign the first core pillar of social media marketing is strategy to build a successful social media marketing campaign you need to develop an effective strategy your strategy will define the primary goals of your campaign you may want to use your marketing efforts to boost brand awareness drive more website traffic and sales provide customer support build a community and beyond the purpose of your social media campaign will also depend on your broader marketing goals and the goals of your business your strategy will also include which social media platforms you'll use in order to decide which platforms are best for your brand you will need to research the platforms most visited by your target audience and your strategy will outline which types of content you'll post you'll need to find out what types of content your audiences value some people might be interested in educational or inspiring content while others might prefer to be entertained you'll also need to decide on the formats for the content you'll post such as images videos or articles you should be prepared to do some research and a lot of trial and error to see what resonates with your target audience and yields results after you have developed your social media strategy you can move on to the next core pillar of social media marketing planning and publishing it's important to have a consistent present on social media this allows your brand to be seen and discovered by potential customers scheduling your posts in advance helps ensure you have a consistent presence and that you are publishing the content most likely to attract potential customers when planning your post you'll also need to consider their timing and frequency when is your audience most likely to engage with your content how often should you post in order to be in their minds but not overwhelm their feeds social media scheduling tools can help you publish your content automatically at your preferred times in a later course we'll discuss how to create a social media calendar to help you plan and publish your content once you've published content on some social media platforms it's time to explore the next social media marketing pillar listening and engagement as you publish more on social media and your following grows mention of your brand will increase potential and existing customers will comment on your posts tag you in their own posts or message you directly you can learn a lot about how people feel about your brand through social listening social listening refers to tracking and analyzing conversations and trends related to your brand social listening can help you understand what people think about your brand which can inform your marketing and product development decisions it can also help you determine your approach to audience engagement engagement refers to how your audience interacts with your brand on social media it's when people respond to your social media posts by taking actions such as liking or sharing them study engagement helps you learn what content resonates best with your audience engagement also includes how you interact with your audience on social media for example if a customer comments that they love your product you can respond with your appreciation if a customer needs help with an issue you can tell them how you'll take action to address it interacting with people in this way increases their positive experience with your brand after you've had a consistent social media present for a while you can move forward with the next core pillar analytics and reporting social media analytics is a process of collecting data from your social media platforms and analyzing that data to make business decisions social media analytics tells you how your campaign is performing they can help you find out things like how many positive mentions you got in a particular month or how many people you're reaching on different platforms from one month to the next your analysis of the data you collect can help drive your social media marketing strategy moving forward after you've collected and analyzed the data you can share social media reports with stakeholders to inform them about the results of your campaign a social media report is a document that presents relevant data and analysis about your social media activities you can set up different reports to help you monitor different metrics such as followers comments or clicks this can help you improve the performance of your campaigns over time many social media platforms provide their own analytics and reporting tools we'll explore analytics tools in a later course that brings us to the last core pillar of social media marketing paid social media previously you learned about the differences between organic and paid media while many of your marketing activities on social media will involve organic content you may need to develop a paid social media strategy as well you'll be able to better control and target your marketing with paid social media than with organic approaches and social media ads generally allow you to reach a wider audience than organic posts paid social media can also help you grow your brand and broaden your presence on social media the data you gather about the success of your organic approaches on social media will help you inform your paid social strategy now you've learned a bit about five pillars of social media marketing strategy planning and publishing listening and engagement analytics and reporting and paid social media in the coming lesson we'll discuss each of these pillars more thoroughly and how you can bring them all together to create a successful social media campaign [Music] now that you've been introduced to the five pillars of social media marketing will review the different types of digital media and how each of these can fit into your social media campaigns previously you learned about the three types of digital media earned owned and paid implementing all three of these media types into your social media campaign can help build brand awareness vary the way your audience engages with your brand and increase sales let's review what you've learned so far about each of these types of media and explore how to incorporate earned owned and paid media into your social media strategies let's start with earned media earned media is the personal or public promotion of a brand or product earned media is marketing generated by your customers whenever a customer tells a friend posts on a social media platform or blog or writes a review about your product they are producing earned media for your brand social media is one of the most powerful marketing channels for generating earned media sources of earned social media include customer reviews and testimonials mentions and comments on social media platforms shares retreats and likes of your posts content about your business on third party sites blog posts about your businesses and user generated content related to your business user generated content or ugc is any content created by people rather than brands user-generated content can include text videos images reviews and so on for example imagine you are running a social media campaign for a company that sells socks if customers post pictures of themselves wearing your company's socks on social media this is usually generated content and an example of earned media one of the many advantages of earned media is that it's organic organic social media isn't any social media activity that does not require a paid promotion organic social media will form the foundation of your social media strategy let's move on to owned media owned media is all the digital content a brand fully controls websites are one of the most common forms of owned media sources of the own social media include blog sites social media profiles like your brand's facebook or instagram profile and community forums one of the greatest benefits of own media is that it allows your company to control the conversation surrounding your brand on social media when your brand owns immediate property it decides what type of content to publish how often to publish it and how users can interact with it own media also allows you to market specific products or services on social media consistently publishing compelling own media can also generate more earned media and finally there's paid media paid media is any form of digital promotion a brand pays to put online remember that the fifth pillar of social media marketing is the paid social media examples of paid social media include image ads video ads story ads and influencer marketing paid social media allows your brand to reach customers who are not actively searching for it it can be used to target specific groups of people who might be interested in your product and services paid social media can also help promote your content in order to drive more earned media and direct traffic to your own media properties earned owned and paid social media will all be important components of your social media marketing campaigns when strategically implemented together they can improve brand awareness generate leads and increase sales you'll learn more about how to incorporate these media types into your social media campaigns throughout this course [Music] in previous courses you learned about how to guide potential customers through the marketing funnel now we'll discuss how to apply these strategies to your social media marketing campaigns let's start by reviewing what you've learned so far about the marketing funnel the marketing funnel is a graphic representation of the process through which people go from learning about a brand to becoming a loyal customer you have learned that the stages of the marketing funnel are awareness when a potential customer encounters a brand for the first time consideration when the person starts to think about doing business with the brand and actively searches for more information about it conversions when the person decides to make a purchase and loyalty when the customer decides to purchase from the brand again how you approach the marketing funnel depends on the marketing channel you will use different tactics for print seo and email marketing for example though these strategies will support one another now let's discuss how the marketing funnel can help guide your interactions with your customers and optimize your marketing efforts through social media the social media marketing funnel begins in the awareness stage with potential customers learning about your brand at this stage in the funnel your goal is to capture your audience's attention you want to get people to remember your brand and try to learn more about you by targeting key phrases you can pinpoint the topic your target audience is searching for then you can create social media content such as guides videos and blogs around those topics for example maybe your company offers career guidance services and you notice that people are searching for things like interview tips and how to interview you could create a guide with interview advice or a brief video tutorial highlighting key interview tips at this stage you should keep things brief and simple just to gain your audience's interest you can also use paid ads to improve your target customers awareness of your brand by targeting a specific audience or interest group you can better reach specific people and nudge them towards the next stage of the funnel during the consideration stage your potential customers are searching for more information to help them decide whether or not to make a purchase at this point they may be looking for reviews or comparing your offerings to your competitors this is your opportunity to provide them with more detailed information about your brand to set you apart from the competition posting content like case studies customer testimonials product reviews and in-depth product tutorials can help build potential customers trust and confidence in your brand in marketing the rule of seven says that a potential customer must see a message at least seven times before they're ready to take action social media makes it easier to implement this messaging each time you appear in someone's feed you are making them more familiar with your brand after you have nurtured your potential customers through the previous two phases and they have taken actions such as signing up for your email list or clicking on an ad you know that they're interested in what you have to offer during the conversion stage you capitalize on the interest people have already shown during the stage you can use paid remarketing campaigns to reach people who have already showed interest in your brand remarketing also known as retargeting is a strategy in which you use paid ads to target customers who have visited your website app or social media profile you can also gently encourage people to make a purchase by offering incentives like discounts or free shipping after you've acquired a new customer you can move on to the loyalty stage did you know that it costs five times as much to attract a new customer than it does to retain the ones you already have that is why the loyalty stage is so crucial you need to continue to nurture relationships with your customers at this stage so you can remain in their minds remarketing ads to existing customers on social media is a great way to encourage them to make a repeat purchase you can also stay connected with your customers by making them feel like they are part of your brand community one way to do this is by developing social media content that relates to the purchase that they have made for example if a customer purchased career guidance services from your company you could prompt them to share on your community forum once they land a job great let's review what you've learned about guiding your prospective customers through the social media marketing funnel the awareness stage is your time to capture your audience's attention the consideration stage is your opportunity to provide your potential customer with more detailed information to set you apart from the competition and help build their trust and confidence in your brand the conversion stage is when you capitalize on the interest people have already shown in your brand by remarketing and offering incentives and the loyalty stage is a time to continue to nurture relationships with your customers so you can remain in their minds congratulations on finishing this video from the google digital marketing and e-commerce certificate access the full experience on coursera including job 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