5 Benefits Of Building Social Media Marketing Skills
Digital marketing is still a relatively young discipline in the grand scheme. In some aspects, this is a good thing. The industry is still a fairly even playing field, meaning that both trained specialists and students alike have equal opportunities to develop new models and strategies that could go on to shape industry growth.
One particular avenue that boasts great promise for innovative marketing specialists is social media marketing. An often underestimated offshoot of digital marketing, social media marketing has the potential to catapult businesses, brands, and individuals into the cyber stratosphere, that is if you strategize conscientiously and use the tools at your disposal as effectively as possible.
There are also a number of ways that modern marketing professionals and students alike can learn how to utilize the power of social media in order to create multi-channel marketing strategies. From enrolling in dedicated social media marketing courses to seeking out freelance social media management opportunities, or even taking the initiative to slowly introduce social media platforms to your own existing marketing strategy, there’s no limit to what an eager student stands to learn by simply dabbling in social media marketing wherever they can.
But why invest your time and perhaps even your own resources in learning the ins and outs of social media marketing? As social media is being heavily utilized across a growing range of industries, there are more benefits to gaining proficiency with social media marketing methodologies than you may think. We’ll be exploring just five of these benefits today.
1. Expand on Your Tech Skill Sets
There’s no denying that digital marketing is a multidisciplinary skill set for any modern professional to have. Not only are digital marketing specialists expected to be tech-savvy, but they also need to possess foundational knowledge in the realms of consumer psychology in order to effectively predict how best to reach their target audience using digital channels.
Experimenting with social media marketing undoubtedly also requires marketing specialists to develop and maintain a strong understanding of consumer demographics as well as consumer behaviors online. In other words, knowing which users you’ll be able to find on which platforms, and how best to communicate to these users is quintessential for all capable social media marketers.
In this regard, developing your social media marketing skills can make you not only a better digital marketing specialist but also a more well-rounded tech industry worker. Social media marketing is a highly transferable skill, making it a valuable addition to any tech specialist’s resume.
2. Deepen Your Understanding of Social Media and The Web
Speaking of developing tech skill sets, although the concept of social media has only been around for the past two or so decades, it has well and truly taken global industries by storm. Social media is embedded in many modern business processes today, including website design and even product development.
In fact, with the growing popularity of omnichannel marketing strategies, it’s common for social media platforms to act as bridges between a company’s different tech offerings, alongside being the primary source of ‘news’ for many of your brand’s daily or monthly active users. Social media profiles with a large following have the power to facilitate holistic digital marketing strategies that may see consumers completing a variety of desired user actions across multiple platforms and not just on your business website.
Harnessing the interconnectedness of social media and the wider web is likely to position your business or client as a highly reputable and recognizable presence in your industry. Of course, it’s important to note that producing this effect is also reliant on investing in the UI of your website and ensuring that clickthrough from social media profiles to your website, and vice versa, is as smooth and convenient for your customer base as possible.
3. Make Your Digital Marketing Budget Work Better For You
As we mentioned earlier, a social media profile with a large following has the power to be highly influential. As a result, social media campaigns may be able to deliver results that no traditional SEO or EDM campaign could.
And speaking of SEO marketing, social media marketing efforts can also help generate a great chunk of site traffic with minimal monetary investments, that is if you develop a social media marketing strategy that effectively considers all the affordances of the platforms you’re looking to use. This means using hashtags on Twitter, stories on Instagram, and making the most of TikTok trends, if you feel that your brand may benefit from maintaining a presence on TikTok.
The ability to use these platforms in the ways they work best will naturally take a lot of the strain off your digital marketing budget, as your business can benefit from producing strategic content and promoting that content without having to bear additional costs.
4. Build Your Own Personal & Professional Social Media Presence
On top of social media specialists being superb assets to organizations, having well-rounded social media marketing skills can naturally also be a game changer for individuals looking to build up their career and digital portfolios. How so? Well, with social media screening now becoming an established component of the onboarding process for companies across the globe, it’s no secret that a strong digital presence can help set you apart from other candidates when applying for jobs in the present day.
If you’re looking to start a career in digital marketing, a strong and meticulous social media presence can also double up as a real-world sample of your work. This comes with some pros and cons, with one major con being that most of us might not want our personal social media profiles to be highly manicured for professional purposes. And nor should they be! Even though we may live in a digitizing world, that doesn’t mean that social media can’t still be fun.
This is exactly why many modern professionals opt to develop separate socials for their professional brand. Switching your personal accounts to private and setting up public accounts for your professional image can help you maintain a squeaky-clean digital presence whilst still being able to have fun with your friends on Facebook and Instagram.
5. Stay in the Loop with Industry Trends by Being Active on Socials
There’s a reason why print media is slowly being overtaken by social media news sources. The immediacy of posting on social media allows users to stay in the loop with current affairs as they’re happening. For high-profile events like local protests or the happenings in war zones, both individuals and even news media agencies alike have come to rely on social media platforms like Twitter to provide authentic insights.
It’s actually surprising how many people use Twitter as a news source, with a sizable segment of global Twitter users going so far as to call the platform their primary source of news. And the business world is by no means an exception here, with many business owners, entrepreneurs, and industry professionals turning to the convenience of Twitter to stay aware of developments or emerging trends in their industries.
In this regard, staying active on social media can actually play an important role in helping you and your stakeholders stay educated, agile, and ready to make well-informed decisions that will help guide business growth in the face of economic discord or other rapid-fire changes.
In Conclusion
Although we’ve only explored five benefits of building social media marketing skills today, you better believe that there are dozens more. But outlining all these other benefits would see this article go on indefinitely, and chances are you may already know a few of them yourself. Social media marketing is hands down, the most direct and personable way to reach and engage with your target audience. It’s the best way to build strong connections that can help transform curious consumers into passionate patrons and advocates of your brand.
So what are you waiting for? Start learning by doing, learning by watching, learning by studying, or all of the above in order to reap these benefits and many more!
This article has been published in accordance with Socialnomics’ disclosure policy.
