What is Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing refers to social media platforms to connect with audiences. Social media like Facebook and Instagram are quite popular in Nepal. Simply telling, Social marketing is using these platforms to promote your brand and business by engaging with the broader audience, increasing your business's sales and brand awareness.
Usually, this marketing involves sharing or posting your business-related blogs, images, and videos and improving audience involvement. If the audience is interested, they will promote your business by sharing your post. Nowadays, many people and organizations use paid advertising on social media.
If you are involved in sales, social platforms are the best place to promote your product and brand. It is one of the best marketing strategies you have in your arsenal. To do this, you will need to post about your products with high-quality user-generated content regularly. If you do this, then traffic and your followers will increase, resulting in more sales. This will inevitably result in more return on investment (ROI).
Many people use social media, so if you do it right, people's engagement will grow gradually. The more people, the better the hype and traffic for your business. You can increase user engagement on social media and boost your social media presence in the following ways:
- Open a social media profiles to promote your product
- Create and listen to conversations every single day
- Share knowledge with the audience
- Participate in discussions and suggestions
The number of social media users is increasing daily, and Nepal isn't far behind this trend. As of January 2020, there were approximately Ten million social media users all over Nepal. There was a rise of (+9.6%) users between April 2019 and January 2020. This gives an idea of the "What is social media marketing's importance in Nepal?"
Everything is going digital in this modern world. This makes the social platform the best source of information and entertainment. The craze of social media strategy has never been more significant than it is now.
Top Social Media Platforms in Nepal
Even two-year-old toddlers are using smartphones nowadays. Almost every household possesses a mobile laptop. This makes social media platforms easily available in every nook and corner of the country. From kids to elders, websites and apps such as YouTube and Facebook are very popular. People are using social media platforms to raise their voices, raise concerns and follow the social media brand of their likings.
Here is the list of top social media platforms used in Nepal that best promote your business.
1) Facebook
Nepal's number of monthly Facebook users has reached more than 11 million. If you use this platform correctly, this is 11 million potential customers for your business. Facebook is, without a doubt, the most used platform in Nepal. It has 2.6 billion monthly users globally, making it the best platform to promote businesses, brands, and products.
Facebook is the best platform to engage a wider audience and share your thoughts.
How can you promote your product on Facebook?
With the help of Photos, quizzes, Q&A, videos, posts, and articles, one can easily promote his/her business by targeting an appropriate audience. Photos and videos work very effectively on Facebook. People seem to engage more in the comment sections providing hype for your products every time you post something.
2) Instagram
There are approx. 1.5 million users in Nepal.
Instagram is very famous among youth. Initially, it was considered Facebook for the rich, but now, many people are engaging on Instagram daily. This social media platform that uses the image as its primary means of social interaction is very famous for photos short videos, and especially daily stories.
Instagram is especially regarded as a business marketing platform. A lot of celebrities earn thousands of dollars from a single post.
The best content to use on Instagram?
Being the number 1 image-based social networking site worldwide, relevant photos, short videos, and stories are the best-used content for business promotion on Instagram.
People are combining short videos to tell a story that interests a lot of people. The use of a hashtag is very popular on Instagram. A single hashtag can start a big movement with the engagement of people. This is the best platform for your brand, especially if it concerns the youth.
3) LinkedIn
LinkedIn is strictly for professionals. Many people might not know about this platform, but every professional uses it and uses it to promote business, get a job, freelance, etc. It is considered the best platform for any editorial content. Besides, the primary use of LinkedIn is to network with professionals within or related to your field of work.
The best content to use on LinkedIn?
Being a professional network, you need to be very subtle and show your professionalism. You need to make sure that your post is suitable for your targeted audience. People use this platform to read articles, news, and blogs, so you have to target that audience who are interested in learning.
4) Twitter
If your business is related to news, podcasts, or blogging, then Twitter is the place to go, which will boost your business. Twitter is all about breaking news, hashtags, and announcements.
Articles, lists, citations, and images work way better on Twitter than videos, but short videos are also popular. Twitter is best if you run a meme page, informative page, and breaking news article.
Besides these, Twitter is also useful for posting updates for your business. These combined make this social media platform with a character limit of 280 one of the best means to conduct your SMM campaigns once your business has gained a certain audience.
How can you promote your product on Twitter?
On Twitter, you are limited to 280 characters in a tweet. Therefore, your message should be direct and contain a lot of hashtags. Usage of links and hashtags is a must for Twitter promotion.
5) YouTube
YouTube is rapidly replacing TV shows. People seem to enjoy watching YouTube in their leisure time more than TV. If you open YouTube, then you will just go on and on; it is that addictive. The most important part of YouTube is that anyone can create their channels instantly and upload a video that could earn them millions of dollars.
A lot of companies and organizations pay YouTubers to promote their products on their channel. People earn a lot of money just by showing the logo or promoting a company's product on their channel. Along with this, you can create your channel and create contents that subtly promote your products as a form of Social Media Marketing.
There are a lot of product review channels, movie review channels, and how-to-do videos where user interaction is very important. You can post your travel videos and earn a lot of sponsors.
Honourable mention:
Although TikTok is a new form of social media, it is gaining popularity. Because of this, this video-streaming social media platform has attracted a ton of people both for entertainment, information, and marketing.
Side note: If you are unaware of how to market on social media, you can hire a social media manager to let them do the marketing for you on social channels and social networking websites i.e. social media platforms through the use of compelling content delivered towards your target audience. Their duties include:
- Analytics and reporting through the use of analytics tools
- Planning and publishing of the contents
- Creating custom and compelling content for their target audience
- Keeping track of market trends
- Interacting with social media followers
- Conduct Competitive analysis through tools like Google Analytics and such
Why use Social Media Marketing in Nepal?
If you are new to the concept of social media marketing, then you may have no idea why it is necessary. But as we mentioned, since we are in the time of digitization. This implies that a lot of us rely on digital media for our daily tasks, which includes using social media for communication. This makes social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram the perfect place for a form of digital marketing also known as Social Media Marketing.
Increase Brand Awareness
With the use of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Linked In, and Instagram, You can gain a lot of followers just by simple promotion or paid promotion. Once you gain the follower, it is easy for you to make your brand recognized internationally as well.
High Conversion Rate
Any blog post, image, video, or comment can make you famous overnight.
You can gain a lot of traffic just from one post or one video. You can attract a lot of sponsors and clients. There is no loss in this marketing, only gains.
More Incoming Traffic
If you are not active in social media, only limited people will know about your brand or products, making it hard for you to enhance your business to a wider audience. But if you are active on social media, the whole scenario will be different. You can be recognized globally if you can attract various audiences with your content and posts.
The more you post, the more followers you gain and the more traffic you receive. This is the perfect platform to flourish your business and brand.
Very Cost-effective
If you don't want to do paid promotions, it is fine. You can promote your product on your social media. If your content is funny, humorous, and attractive, a lot of traffic will come and along will come clients and money. You can literally spend zero and earn thousands of dollars with the use of social media. You just have to be creative and professional.
In Conclusion
Social Media platforms are spreading like wildfires and their userbase has increased to a few billion over the past few years. Because of this, social media marketing is one of the best tools you can have for your business. By increasing the social media presence of your business through carefully customized social media strategy and digital marketing strategy, along with targeted branding, you can gain a big return on investment in your business.
For this, you can use different tools and social media planners to boost your social media presence on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. The best thing about this is that you can either do this yourself or hire a social media manager. Although not completely free, you can get a rather good return on investment if you plan things well. Remember that social media marketing strategy is an important aspect of Social Media Marketing also known as SMM.
