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SMM – Social Media Marketing – Introduction

Social Media Marketing (SMM) is a method to promote products and services using Social Media & Networking platforms.

We can say that Social Media Marketing is one aspect of Digital Marketing (also called Online marketing or Internet Marketing sometime).

What is Social Media?

Social Media refers to websites and applications where users can find and interact with people of similar interest. Social Media Platforms allow users (as well as business) to talk with each other, share a media or build relationships online.

Social networking refers to build a social relationship using an online platform such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram etc. Social Networking helps us to stay connected with friends, family, colleagues, customers, or clients.

What is the Need of Social Media Marketing (SMM)?

Today, a large number of users available on Social Media. Therefore, SMM is a great way to reach more users, build brands, increase sales and get more traffic on websites. Here, we will share some data related to the popularity of Social Media platforms, so that we understand the importance of using them.

History & Timeline of Social Media:

  • 1997: Six Degrees Launch – The world’s first social networking site.
  • 2001: Six Degrees Shuts down
  • 2002: Friendster Launch – Social networking and gaming site
  • 2003: LinkedIn Launch – Business-oriented social networking service
  • 2003: Skype Launch – Instant messaging and video/voice calling service (VoIP)
  • 2003: Myspace Launch – From 2005 to 2008, it was the largest social networking site in the world.
  • 2004: Facebook Launch – The most popular social networking service to-date
  • 2003: del.ici.ous (Social bookmarking) & WordPress (Blogging CMS) launch
  • 2005: Reddit Launch – The social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website.
  • 2005: YouTube Launch – Most popular online video-sharing platform. YouTube is acquired by Google in 2006.
  • 2006: Twitter Launch – one of the most popular social networking & microblogging sites worldwide
  • 2010: Pinterest Launch – a photo-sharing website
  • 2010: Instagram Launch – a photo/video sharing and social media service
  • 2010: Quora Launch – a popular question-and-answer platform
  • 2011: Google+ Launch – a social networking service
  • 2019: Google+ shuts down – due to low user engagement

Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_social_media

Overview of Social Media Users:

As of 20 April 2020, Facebook is the world’s most widely used social media platform, but there are now six social media platforms that claim more than one billion monthly active users each.

  1. Facebook has 2.498 billion monthly active users.
  2. YouTube has 2 billion monthly active users.
  3. WhatsApp has 2 billion monthly active users.
  4. Facebook Messenger has 1.3 billion monthly active users.
  5. WeChat has 1.165 billion monthly active users.
  6. Instagram has 1 billion monthly active users.

Reference: https://datareportal.com/social-media-users

As you can see that there are millions of users using these social media websites. As Smartphones & Internet reach is increasing day by day, these numbers are expected to grow. Therefore, it is very important for every business and brand to market themselves over these platforms.

What we will cover in Social Media Marketing?

There are 2 important aspects of SMM which we need to take care while using Social Media for marketing.

  1. Creating an effective social media profile
  2. Social media content strategies

We will learn more about Social Media Profile & Content creation Tips in next chapters.

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