Basics of Social Media Marketing

Digital Marketing or social media marketing is very useful for businesses, causes, and events. It’s easier to reach out to more number of people across the locality or even the globe.

This tutorial isn’t going to give you an in-depth understanding of advanced Digital Marketing. But it would certainly make marketing across the social media easier for those who aren’t familiar with some of these concepts.

1. Unless you already have all of these dedicated to the purpose of your business/event/cause, make a page on Facebook, and accounts on Twitter, Instagram. WordPress (only if you’d like to also blog for this), and connect a gmail account with YouTube (if you have videos as relevant resources). (Caution: Use similar and relevant names for all of this as it’s to be dedicated to whatever you’re marketing. You may market similar things on the same page/account. But if you’re trying to market drastically different things, I’d suggest that you create new accounts later. Accounts with personal posts may not serve well for professional purposes.)
2. Update the description and other details of the page as well as each account. Make the description comprehensive but not redundant. This gives readers clarity on what you are marketing here.
3. Assuming that you have a WiFi connection/economic data plan, download the apps for ‘Facebook Pages’, Twitter, Instagram, WordPress, YouTube, etc. Experiment with them sufficiently.
4. Optional: Syndication: You may experiment to find out simple ways in which these accounts, the blog-site, and the page may be inter-linked. Otherwise, you may still manually share the posted content across your social media.
5. SEO: Use hashtags behind every important keyword (only during the first mention of each word) in your text descriptions or blog’s keyword box in the menu. This is important to attract attention from people all across your specified/global scope, who are yet to subscribe to your media.
6. Invite your friends (who are yet to like your Facebook page) to like your page after it’s ready with the basic updates. The app called ‘Facebook Pages’ makes this an easier task.
7. Make sure that your respond to important responses regularly. People love a responsive page/media.

A certain Facebook page’s setting allows you to specify (and hence limit) your target audience if you must.

Make sure that your Instagram is changed to a public account using the settings.

If you have more than one Facebook page which may have similar objectives (usually not advisable as it spreads out your possible audience) then try a certain setting called cross-posting.

Update the social media enough to keep it active but don’t keep it too aggressive all at once. I found hootsuite.com (also has an app) which has a private algorithm to broadcast content across different connected social media, auto-schedule these broadcasts,  and even set the timing of auto-scheduling using a private algorithm. This app is quite easy to experiment with but the website on laptop/desktop is more convenient as of today. Their private algorithm determines when most of your connections/friends are online the most.

 

Images carry more preference over text. Psychologically visitors just like audio or visuals more than text.

An easy to use app called Textgram allows you to quickly learn to make images which fit within Instagram, are easy to share across WhatsApp, and the resolution is decent enough even for Facebook and WordPress.

Else, you may still use stock/license-free images or photographs owned by you for this purpose.

Caution: Make sure that all your intellectual property have watermarks or at least a mention of your website/social-media link(s). This is only if you want to make it difficult for plagiarists.

This should be good for now. Perhaps I’ll create a new tutorial when I recall/learn some other tips for you.

​How to schedule/publish a blog:

1) Please log in to your WordPress. The top right corner says ‘My site’.  Click on it. 
2) Hypothetical: Ensure that you are posting on the desired blog site (if your WordPress account has multiple) and not the wrong one. Else, the top left corner of your WordPress (after logging in) will give you an option to switch blog sites.

4) The third option on the left menu says ‘blog posts’. Click on ‘add’ right beside it.

5) You must see  blank blog page. Enter your title and then your content. After editing it for one last time, please ensure that your text is ‘justified’. See the formatting tools for the option. 

6) At the end of the post, please mention your signature message if any, depending on the purpose of your blog site.

7) The formatting tool also has a (+) sign which allows you to add media (like pictures, if any) to your content. This media will be posted exactly where your cursor is located on the blog’s body. Preferably, the left menu has an option called ‘featured image’. (If you do not have your own images you can still add a license free image from google as a relevant feature image for your post.)

8) The left menu has an option called categories. Then check the box of what it is that you are scheduling/posting. Create a new category if you don’t find a relevant one.

9) SEO: Beneath the list of categories, there is a text box which says ‘tags’. Please enter as many keywords as you think necessary to describe your article. These are keywords like the twitter hashtags. They fetch you readers who may be searching for what you’re posting about across the internet. (This comes in handy on the social media too.)

10) In the sharing section, let all the check-boxes be checked, if you’ve specified the right social media to syndicate across. 

11) Optional: Just below the check boxes is a text field. Please mention your entire signature in this field. The remaining number of limited characters are for you to write what you want to just above the signature to briefly explain the post.

12) Optional: The last option on the left menu says ‘more options’. If your article has a very lengthy heading (not encouraged) the slug would naturally be lengthy. At least shorten the slug (but only if necessary).

13) Optional and Advanced: The text field right below is for your excerpt. Take a couple or more of your most favorite lines from your post and copy them onto this field as your excerpt. You may modify this copy if you feel like it.

13) Finally, there is a button on the top which says ‘Publish’.

(IF YOU WISH FOR DELAYED AND TIMED PUBLISHING, DO NOT CLICK THIS.) Click the calendar icon beside the same button and select the date and time. The time is a 24 hr format clock. (E.g: Mid-night is 00:00 and mid-day is 12:00.) Then click ‘schedule’ (where the publish button once was).

After the article gets published immediately or as per the defined schedule, please share across your personal social media.