Mediaboss Marketing

Social Marketing: Meaning, Applications and Advantages of Social Marketing!

Social marketing is the systematic application of marketing along with other concepts and techniques to achieve specific behavioural goals for a social good. For example, this may include asking people not to smoke in public areas, asking them to use seat belts or prompting to make them follow speed limits.

The primary aim of social marketing is social good, whereas in commercial marketing the aim is primarily financial. This does not mean that commercial marketers cannot contribute to achievement of social good.

1. Health promotion campaigns in India, especially in Kerala and AIDS awareness programmes are largely using social marketing, and social workers are largely working for it. Most of the social workers are professionally trained for this particular task.

2. Anti-tobacco campaigns.

3. Anti-drug campaigns.

4. Anti-pollution campaigns.

5. Road safety campaigns.

6. Anti-dowry campaigns.

7. Protection of girl child campaign.

8. Campaign against the use of plastic bags.

9. Green marketing campaign.

Social marketing applies a customer-oriented approach, and uses the concepts and tools used by commercial marketers in pursuit of social goals such as anti-smoking campaigns or fund raising for NGOs.

Social marketinga new marketing toolcan be a great asset if used properly. The beneficial effects of social marketing for a business can be tremendous, but one must remember that it must be used in the most efficient possible way.

Social marketing allows businesses and web sites to gain popularity over the Internet by using different types of social media available, such as blogs, video and photo sharing sites, social networking sites and social bookmarking web sites.

There are six distinct advantages of social marketing that make it a vital tool to any marketing campaign:

1. Promotes consumption of socially desirable products.

2. Promotes health consciousness in people and helps them adopt a healthier lifestyle.

3. It helps in green marketing initiatives.

4. It helps to eradicate social evils that affect the society and quality of life.

5. Social marketing is one of the cheapest ways of marketing.

6. One of the best advantages of social marketing is that anyone can take advantage of it, even from their own home.

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Social Marketing: Meaning, Applications and Advantages of ...

Click the target in the lower left-hand corner and begin selecting the demographics that you want your intended audience to be filtered by:

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Save your target audience to use on future posts by selecting+Save Current As Preset. Title your target audience sample and click apply:

CoSchedule will take care of the rest.

Hashtags make it easier for your audience to find your content and since Twitter is the birthplace of hashtags, you'll want to use them correctly.

Hashtags fall into three categories:

Our advice? Mix up the types of hashtags you use in your posts and stick to using 12 hashtagsper tweet.

If you're looking to do some hashtag research check out these sources:

Twitter may have just extended the length of a tweet to 280 characters but just because you have that space doesn't mean you should use it.

According to our research, the best length for a tweet is 103 characters. However, this research was conducted before Twitter expanded its character limit. That means that your posts should be:

Here are some other tips to follow when you're crafting your Twitter messages:

My biggest pet peeve is when I follow someone on Twitter, and almost immediately my inbox goes off, and a canned message appears thanking me for following said person.

Automated direct messages come across as impersonal, annoying and lazy. You don't want your organization to be any of those things.

If you want to reach out to a new Twitter follower, be sincere about it. Try using this template to start:

"Hi, [Username]. We noticed that you just started following us on Twitter. We wanted to say thank you. If you need anything, reach out and let us know."

The latest "thing" that companies are creating to get people to interact with them is to write a random relatable quote and slap a GIF on it.

While that may have worked the first five times, now every company out there is trying it and when you're already trying to stand out in a crowded feed, following what everyone else is doing will get you nowhere.

If your team decides that GIFs will be a part of your Twitter strategy do the following:

The lifespan of a tweet is about 18 minutes. That means you have an 18-minute window to gather the most views on your content. How do you do that?

You want to post at the times when your followers are on.

Here is when to tweet in general to increase retweets and click-throughs:

Want to know one of the hacks to keeping up a steady stream of Twitter content? Curate content from your Twitter lists.

A Twitter list is a list of users that a person has added into a specific group that will generate a feed of content from only those selected accounts.

These are great for when you're following a bunch of thought leaders in your industry and need some awesome content to share in a hurry.

If you want to learn how to create a Twitter list check out this video:

Once you've created your lists you can scroll through those select feeds and begin to curate content. However, don't just read a headline and add the article or video to your publishing schedule.

Follow these three steps before you add any content to your publishing schedule:

Adding images and graphics to your tweets will get you 18% more clicks.

When tweeting a link to your latest blog post, use one of the images from the post to help drive more clicks on the shared link. The image should relate directly to the subject of your blog post, which should help incentivize people to click.

Here are some general guidelines for using images on Twitter:

The more users notice your Google+ posts, the more likely they are to engage.

Not only does adding a headline help your post stand out, but Google uses the first words of your Google + post tohelp it stand out in the Google searches.

Adding the right headline can help your post stand out in search results, and can greatly influence the number of people who both notice and click through to your content. Cyrus Shepard, formerly of Moz

Here is an example of a Google+ headline:

Over at Quicksprout, Neil Patel said this about images:

The bigger, the better! Take advantage of the technology in web design and monitors and use big and bold images.

That's one great thing about Google +. You can take advantage of those big pictures.

Here are a couple of general tips for using images effectively on Google+:

You are completely missing out on traffic to your content if you aren't posting at the best times for click-throughs.

Here is when to post on Google+ for more click-throughs:

Blogger Tips Trickssaid, "Google Plus has highly active, close-knit communities which can give you massive exposure.Some of these groups have more than 100K members and have high chances of getting significant traffic if you post valuable posts."

So, if you aren't on Google+ Communities with a significant amount of members, you're missing out.

This thorough step-by-step video will help when looking for Google+ Communities:

Creating Circles with other people is a super easy way to grow your Google+ following base and bring traffic to your content. You can create circles for your work, groups you are a part of, location, industry, and even for your niche.

Say you want to add someone to a circle. Press follow:

You'll be able to pick which circle you want to add them to:

Having connections in your circles will help you grow trafficby creating relationships.

Having collections makes it easy to organize all your content. You can share your collections publicly, or you can keep them private.

When you create your first few collections, you'll see this:

Click Create a collection. Name your collection here.

After naming your collection,press Create:

Then you will be brought here:

When you click on the pen icon, you willbe able to write up your collection post, add a link, image, and even a video.

Collections give your audience an excellent way to find more content on the topics they love.

If your organization's Instagram profile isn't a business profile yet, you are missing out on potential data.

Instagram business profiles allow your team to optimize your profile, add contact information and your website into the bio section making it much easier for your audience to interact and connect with you.

To switch over to a business profile, click the setting on your Instagram page:

Scroll down toSwitch to Business Profile:

Flip the switch, and you're done.

Keep your Instagram profile uniform by keeping your photos within one color scheme. Not only does keeping them in this palette make it easier for fans to recognize your photos it creates a more cohesive profile.

From my own experiences, I can tell you that your photo IS important but so is the look of your Instagram feed as a whole. Creating a cohesive feed helps bring the tone of your brand across without having to say a word (literally).

How do you know what type of color scheme to use?

Use the color scheme that is consistent with your brand. That means that you can pull colors from your logo or other branding materials.

You may need to pull out your branding book or talk with your designers to find out what those colors are.

If you don't have your branding developed yet think about the tone that you want your brand to convey. If you're a fashion and style brand use bold bright colors like Instagram user @rclayton:

Her fashion-forward feed is full of bright, electric colors that complement bold fashion choices. Together those colors convey a sense of confidence which is on point with her personal brand.

Like we've already mentioned, consistency in your content is key to a successful Instagram feed. Another way to keep your feed consistent is picking one filter and sticking with it.

If you have a design team at your disposal, you may not even need a filter.

If you do decide to choose a filter the first thing that you need to do is determine the aesthetic of your brand.

Do you want your photos to have more of a grunge feel or a light and airy feel?

Using your branding guide, look for the keywords that describe your brand.

Bundle them into a group of three and experiment with different filters to find the one that you and your team believe best convey's the intended aesthetic.

Hashtags are a big part of Instagram's posts because it allows photos and video content to become searchable on the channel.

Unlike Twitter, your Instagram post has a lot more room to breath, but that doesn't mean you should go hashtag happy on every post.

Too much of something is not always a good thing.

Our research found that 11 is the optimum number of hashtags that you should add to a post to help encourage people to interact with it:

If you're struggling to figure out what types of hashtags to add to your post try a different mix of industry, branded and trending (when applicable) hashtags.

Ask anyone about the best times to post on Instagram, and you'll probably get a variety of answers from 2 in the morning to later in the evening around 5 pm.

What if we told you it was all of them? Active hours for your audience will vary so experiment with your posting times to see when you can garner the most reactions.

Our research suggests trying:

As of February 2017, Instagram added: "Instagram Albums" or the ability to upload more than one photo to a post. Why is adding more than one photo such a game changer?

See the article here:
40 Social Media Marketing Tips Every Marketer Should Know

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Did you know how much exactly social media can affect consumers? According to the data provided by PwC, reading or writing social media comments and reviews affects 67% of consumers, greatly influencing their shopping behavior. So it isnt surprising that companies invest so much time and money into marketing specialists and their education.

However, even if you arent an employee working for a company that is willing to invest in your skills, you can still learn. The internet offers plenty of opportunities to do so these days, granting you access to some top social media marketing courses.

Perhaps, theres even too much of them for an inexperienced person to pick easily. So if you did your research and are confused by the number of options available, we are here to help you. Here are top free social media marketing courses that can boost your marketing and social media skills, even if you are a beginner.

This is an impressive online social media marketing course co-offered by Coursera to anyone, who wants a proper introduction to social media. It is suitable for executives, business owners, and marketing professionals as well, and gives clear and actionable advice on how to grow a social media strategy.

If you want, you can continue learning after finishing this course its a part of a six-course specialization called Social Media Marketing: How to Profit in a Digital World. This social media training offers you social media marketing certification on completion.

Another great course for beginners, whore looking for a way to enter the social media world without any troubles or complications getting in the way. It offers you a clear and detailed guide to building a social media presence on the most important social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and so on.

This is a beginner course as well, but a more tailored one its focused on social media analytics only. Even those of us, who arent familiar with marketing much, know how important it is to drive trading and increase revenue with the help of social media and how powerful tool for that the social media could be if used right. However, to achieve impressive results in it, you need to understand how social media analytics works and this course can help you do so. The Free Social Media Analytics Course offers you social media marketing certification on completion.

Daily writing habit is one of the most valuable habits you can have! To help you get started, we have created a 30-day email program that will help build your habit. Every day for the next 30 days we will send you a writing prompt. As this is a social media and content marketing site well send you prompts about these topics. But occasionally we add some free writing and other stuff, too. Sign up for your 30-day writing challenge.

Just as its name says, this course is indeed a quick and straightforward introduction to social media strategy. It lasts only 45 minutes but helps you craft an impressive social media foundation for your business and brand. You should take it if you want to get a grip on the basics quickly and start doing something for your business today.

Find out How to Create Your Perfect Social Media Strategy.

This social media marketing course could be a great guide for those who want to learn how to monitor their audience. Not only it gives you all the guidelines on how to do that but also provides detailed examples of monitoring, allowing you to learn from them. Like many other Udemy courses, the social media monitoring course offers you social media marketing certification on completion. Check out free social media monitoring tools to use.

It doesnt matter if you are a business owner or a marketer either way, you can benefit from this course. It allows you to line up your business goals with your social media strategy, driving real and measurable value from it.

Unlike many social media marketing courses that focus on social media content development and creation, this one focuses on measuring your social media investments and on using them in the most beneficial way for your business. Social media marketing certification means that you can earn official recognition for your skille, and share your success with friends, colleagues, and employers.

And unlike the previous one, this course focuses exactly on content creation. Not only it helps you understand which types of content work the best for social media but also gives you practical tips on how to create content that sells and how to promote that content right. The benefits of content marketing certification by HubSpot Academy: grow your career, business, and join a community.

This social media course is also focused on content creation more specifically, on how to create content that can become viral. While there are no specific characteristics of viral content that you can use in your work, there are some tips that could make your content instantly better. But whats even more important is that this course helps you understand how the content works in the first place and what is required for it to catch the audiences attraction. You can get social media marketing certification from Coursera.

Interested in understanding B2B marketing and learning how to use it right? In this case, try this course. It offers you the B2B basics as well as explains how you can use it to boost your business.

This course offers a unique perspective into the differentiating aspects of the business to business (B2B) marketing that can be contrasted to traditional business to consumer (B2C) marketing that is the subject of most other marketing curricula. Moreover, as one of the courses in the Specialization: International Marketing & Cross-Industry Growth, here too there is an emphasis on how companies can expand by cross-country and cross-industry innovation.

And even if you do have some social media and marketing experience, you can still polish and strengthen your skills for example, with the help of this course. It doesnt include any beginner tactics instead, it gives you more complex tips that could help you pick up the clients with the help of social media more quicker.

Another extremely important and extremely specific course. We dont hear about social media ethics much in our daily lives however, its important to understand it if you do want to use social media not only effectively but ethically too. This course helps you do so, touching various laws and explaining what is legal for social media and what is not. Like many other Udemy courses this course offers you social media marketing certification on completion.

These online social media marketing courses are mostly for beginners as they help to understand the basics of social media and marketing as well as find out more about every aspect of the marketing and learn how to tailor these aspects to your business. However, more experienced marketers can learn something from these social media marketing courses as well.

Of course, to make the most out of learning, youll have to work hard. The tricky thing about online learning is that its much easier to drop or manage than offline one. Picking a couple of social media marketing courses at a time might be tempting but it might as well leave you covered in assignments or lead to you dropping all of them because you cannot find time for them. Thats why choose wisely, start slowly, and remember that taking your time is always better when it comes to learning: the more time you invest, the better your results will be.

The courses above are free. Make sure you select one that will help you in the area where you are not yet most comfortable. More knowledge will translate into better ideas, and faster results and that, in turn, will build your successful career.

BIO: Lori Wade is a content writer for EliteEssayWriters whos interests range from education and online marketing to entrepreneurship. She is also an aspiring tutor striving to bring education to another level as we all do. If you are interested in her writing, you can find her on Twitter or Google+ or find her on other social media. Read and take over Loris useful insights!

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12 Free Social Media Marketing Courses to Boost Your ...

For one to get the most out of using social media in his or her business, it is important to develop a social media marketing plan that enables one to understand the goals and objectives of the business and most importantly to measure his or her success. Social media has been in existence for quite some times now meaning that information can easily be found. Some of these information are complete while the rest require one to do more research and cobble together so as to come up with a complete strategy.

Here are some sample templates to help you.

Objective determination objectives of the social media marketing plan are the goals that inform ones strategy for what platforms to be on, some of the things that he or she should post and the kind of metrics to track and this is a determination of ones investment returns. Some of the main goals include; increasing the awareness of the brand, driving sales, lead generation and creation of a community around the brand.

Making a platform decision there are three considerations that have to be made here. These are; the amount of tie that one can devote to a social network per week, the availability of the resources to come up with a designation capturing the users attention and lastly is the appearance of a target demographic.

Profile optimization some of the things that need to be optimized here include the headers together with the profile images, provision of a complete information about the company, the search engine optimization, inning of the best content among others. It is important to note that the appearance of website is a responsibility of the owner.

Getting the right tone the best way to do this is to keep in mind the target audience. Mid-management professionals for example require a professional tone in the same way, an audience of you people require one to post contents that are behind the scenes and that have a casual voice

Coming up with a calendar a social media content calendar gives a social marketing plan an outline of the kind of content that is being pushed and on which platform. Having this calendar makes social media posting a little bit simple as there is an outline of what to do and when.

The above steps provide a road map to having a successful social media marketing plan. Above all, one ought to remember to be social, to have consistency while posting and to make a great investment in the field of visuals. Above all, one should involve testing and measurements in his or her work so as to have an evaluation of progress.

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Social Media Marketing Plan Template - For (Word, PDF)

Social marketing theory is a collection of theories that focus on how socially valuable information can be promoted. This theory has been used by social and welfare organizations to help promote or discourage various behaviors. The theory is administrative in nature in such that it seeks to outline a framework that can be used to design, implement and evaluate information campaigns. The target audience is identified based on their information need. Once this is done information is packaged and distributed in a manner that will be easily accessible to the intended audience.

cacaroot/dollar photo club

The theory is an attempt to clearly understand how societal and psychological factors work to successfully manipulate them in order to increase how effective mass media information campaigns are. The theory focuses on helping identify the various social and psychological barriers that hinder the flow of information through the mass media and offers ideas and ways to overcome these barriers. These strategies range from being indigenous to the use of saturation advertising.

Features of Social Marketing Theory

1. Creating Audience Awareness

When there is a need to promote any new idea, person or behavior, the first step is to create awareness that such a new concept or individual exists. Awareness is created by using all available channels at ones disposal like news media and even new media like the internet. One of the easiest ways to create awareness is having a saturation television campaign. But the drawback is thats a costly affair. The benefit of using newer media on the other hand is that a wider range of audience can be reached out to. The use of internet helps reach younger audience who may not read newspapers or depend on television for information.

2. Targeting the Right Audience

When disseminating messages, it is important to first identify the audience that requires the message and then finding the most efficient means of reaching them with the message. This helps cut costs and ensures higher levels of audience penetration. For example, if the message is intended for old people, using the internet to spread information would be a waste of time as most elderly people do not use computers. A more effective way would be to use radio and television to get the message across.

3. Reinforce the Message

When people receive a new message once, they tend to forget it easily. Its therefore necessary to reinforce the message by repeatedly ensuring that individuals are exposed to the message from different channels. Promoting the media in various mass media, going door to door, holding group discussions, having debates on television are ways in which messages can be reinforced. People can eventually change themselves as agents when they start spreading the message that they have received from others.

4. Cultivate Images or Impressions

When the audience is not interested in the person, product or service being promoted, they will not seek out any information about them. In such a scenario, image advertising is used. Here recognizable and easily understandable images are shown and the new product or service is shown in relation to that image. This helps create a favorable setting for promoting the new product. For example, watching an old couple reminisce about their college days and romance while sipping a hot cup of coffee is a tactic where a familiar event is used to attach happy emotions to a new coffee product, thus developing its image.

5. Stimulate Interest

To make audience seek information, it is necessary to grab their attention and stimulate interest. Once this is done, information should be made easily accessible to the general public. Dramatic events or unexpected actions help capture the interest of the audience. A politician photographed cleaning a beach helps drive home the point that he cares for the environment. A dish washing product that claims one bottle will clean a thousand plates could organize an event where a thousand or more plates are washed in real using a single bottle. This event could be promoted as breaking the Guinness Book of World Record and immediately causes people to become interested in the product. Similar ideas could be used to further social welfare schemes and products.

6. Induce Desired Result

Once information has reached the intended audience, efforts should be taken to ensure that the desired decision is arrived at. A campaign against smoking needs to ensure that people stop smoking. A new product being introduced should result in actual sales or usage.

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Social Marketing Theory