How to start a social media marketing agency this month

Starting a social media marketing agency can be quite a challenge. From finding clients and getting work done, to staying organized and ensuring that you’re making money and not losing it, there are a lot of things that can go wrong. To help you out, we’ve compiled a step-by-step guide on how to start a social media marketing agency.

Starting a social media marketing agency seems an obvious choice for entrepreneurs who already have a presence on social media. In other words, if you ARE using social media networks to do business, why not transform it into a lucrative social media marketing agency?

Creating a social media marketing agency is one of the most popular initial business ideas for new entrepreneurs. It’s also the most difficult to fund and run successfully. A lot of entrepreneurs make the mistake of using wrong or ineffective strategies when starting a social media agency that will ultimately prevent them from reaching their full potential – not knowing who to hire, how much to charge, where their target markets are, and more. 

Today, we bring you all there is to know about how to start a social media marketing agency.

What is Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing is about using social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+, etc.) to market or promote businesses or products. A social media marketing campaign usually uses a combination of paid advertising, search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, and other techniques to create a strategy.

Social media marketing is not a new concept. Marketers have been using social media for years. Social media marketing, however, has gained popularity in recent years. Social media marketing has grown in popularity because social media have become an integral part of our daily lives. People spend a lot of time on social media. Marketers realized that they can take advantage of people’s time spent on social media to market and promote their products or services. 

Social media marketing is ideal for targeting specific groups of people. Marketers can target people by location, age, gender, interests, hobbies, and other demographic information. Social media marketing is also ideal for capturing attention. Marketers can use visual platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat to attract people’s interest.

Social media marketing is cost-effective. Marketers can save money on traditional advertising methods, like newspaper, radio, and television. Social media marketing is also cost-effective because it generates more leads than traditional advertising methods. Marketers can use social media to collect feedback from customers. They can also track customer behavior, which can help them craft an effective marketing strategy.

Social media marketing is measurable. Social media marketing offers marketers the opportunity to track and measure their campaigns. Marketers can measure their campaigns’ success by measuring likes, shares, comments, and sales. Social media marketing is interactive. Marketers can interact with customers on social media. They can also reply to customer reviews and comments.

These Top 10 marketing strategies that work cannot be ignored if your aim is to grow fast.

Basics of a Social Media Marketing 

Before learning how to start a social media marketing agency, one must know the basic know-how of it. Marketers must determine how to get their brand in front of the right customer at the right time. They need to know who is online, what their interests are, and how they behave. With social media, these marketing opportunities are vast. While marketers may understand the basics of social media, many don’t know where to start.

Here, we outline the basic elements of social media marketing.

1. Defining the social media landscape

2. Understanding social media

3. Planning social media activities

4. Integrating social media into your marketing plan

5. Measuring results

If you are starting from scratch, Fundamentals of Digital Marketing is the best place to start.

Why use Social Media Marketing?

With its increasing penetration into the daily lives of consumers, social media is making its presence felt in a lot of ways. Businesses realize that they need a presence on social media if they want to stay relevant in today’s competitive marketplace. Social media offers a plethora of benefits and avenues to expand a business, and the following are a few:

• provides businesses with the opportunity to connect with their customers and prospective customers.
• Provides businesses with an opportunity to connect with influencers who could influence purchasing decisions.
• Provides businesses with the opportunity to reinforce their brand image.
• Provides a business with an opportunity to share engaging content.
• Provides businesses with an opportunity to interact with their communities.
• Provides businesses with an opportunity to expand their brand identity.
• Provides businesses with an opportunity to showcase corporate culture.
• Provides businesses with an opportunity to promote special offers and discounts.
• Provides businesses with an opportunity to promote events.
• Provides businesses with an opportunity to promote customer service.
• Provides businesses with an opportunity to promote community awareness.
• Provides businesses with an opportunity to reach new employees.
• Provides businesses with an opportunity to reach existing employees.
• Provides businesses with an opportunity to reach the media.

Start with a Strong and Active Social Media Presence

The first step in learning how to start a social media marketing agency is to have a strong and active social media presence. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs, YouTube, Flickr, Pinterest, Instagram, Snapchat, Tumblr, Reddit, Foursquare, Quora, Slideshare, and dozens of other social media services now account for as much as 70% of all time spent on the Internet.

And social media is transforming everything from how you make friends to how people find jobs. It has also changed how people interact with each other, how they talk about themselves and each other, how companies market themselves, and, most important, how they communicate with each other.

But social media is still new, and some people are still figuring out how to use it. Not all of them are making wise choices. Even people for whom social media is a natural extension of who they are, and who use it not because they want to, but because everyone else is using it, are still making mistakes.

Below is a list of things you must avoid if you want to keep your online presence professional and positive:

1. Don’t post anything you wouldn’t say to your boss

There are two kinds of people who post things on social media: people who don’t know any better and people who should know better. If you’re in the first group, stop it. If you’re in the second group, stop doing it to yourself.

2. Don’t use social-media shorthand

When you write an email to a friend, you carefully choose each word. But on social media, you’re under pressure to cram as much information as possible into as few words as possible. And people use shorthand because they often have to.

3. Don’t makeup stuff about yourself

Nobody would ever make up stuff about anyone else. If you post things to social media that you haven’t said out loud to anyone, you are lying.

You don’t need to be a social media expert

The most important thing while learning how to start a social media marketing agency is that you don’t need a social media expert. You don’t need to be a marketing expert. You don’t need to be a PR expert. You don’t need to be a business expert. You don’t need to be an expert in anything. You only need to be interested and willing to experiment.

In 2009, Mark Zuckerberg, the 21-year-old founder of Facebook, did none of these things. He was interested in them, though, and willing to experiment. And that was good enough. He created Facebook, and the rest is history.

If you want to try something new today, you don’t need to have studied it. You don’t even need to have experienced it. You only need to be willing to be interested and willing to experiment.

Of course, it helps to know what you are talking about. And it helps to be able to explain what you are doing. But only a little. The smart people among us who study something new are often the ones who find it least interesting, who find it least interesting because it seems so far removed from what most people do.

But there is nothing inherently interesting about social media. It isn’t like alchemy or theology. It isn’t like trying to discover something entirely new. It’s just a new way to talk to people you already know. Everyone has had that experience — talking in text-message shorthand with a friend.

Hire a Great Team to join you

While learning how to start a social media marketing agency, learning the art of hiring the right team/people is the point of make or break. When the founders of Facebook hired their first employees, they did so on a simple basis: if they could hire the right team, everything else would work itself out.

An essential element of this criterion is trust. An essential element of trust is chemistry. You need people who get along well and work well together. Their personalities have to mesh. You don’t need total compatibility, but you do want people who like and respect each other. And it helps if they like and respect you.

The crucial question in hiring is: “Can I count on this person to be a team player?”

And the answer is: “Probably not.” Everyone is different, so you can’t predict who is going to fit well into your company. But you can tell whether one person fits better than another. It’s like a chemistry test.

There’s another question you can ask yourself: “Is this an individual whose contribution would be worth it even if he didn’t work well with the rest of the team?” If so, then hiring this person is riskier, but it’s not impossible. But when you’re looking for a good fit, don’t ignore chemistry.

If the perfect match turns out to be a bad hire, you’ll regret it. And you’ll also regret it if you hire a person and then find out that it’s the wrong person. The good news is that the best teams are self-organizing. They don’t need management. They’re competitive but self-correcting. They don’t make excuses. They expect that people will do their best. And above all, they are trustworthy and dedicated to their jobs. 

Be transparent in your marketing

One of the most bent-around rules of social media marketing is if you are marketing a product or service, you have nothing to hide, and success comes from being transparent. So, if there’s one lesson you take from how to start a social media marketing agency, then let this be the one. 

This may seem obvious, but it is surprising how often businesses deceive their customers. For example, suppose you are selling a software package to a client. The software company tells you, “Don’t worry, our software is easy to use. Just follow along in our manual.”

But the manual is confusing and unhelpful. The client has to struggle to understand how it works. So your client is frustrated, and your software company loses money. The client has every right to complain. You promised him ease of use, and you didn’t deliver.

But the client is also at fault. He should have asked more questions. He could have asked, “What’s the best way to use your product? What’s the best way for me to use this software?” But instead of asking, he trusted your salespeople, who lied to him.

Of course, lying is counterproductive. But, it’s even worse when there’s a genuine misunderstanding.  You have to understand that you are selling something. You are selling yourself. Your product is not some widget, some object, or some service. It is you.

Marketing is storytelling — not about your product, but you.

A story has to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. It has to have characters, conflict, and resolution. A story can be about anything, but the way you tell it makes all the difference. You are selling yourself, but you are also selling your product. With each story you tell, you are advertising both your product and yourself.

The better your story, the better your product. The better your product, the better your story. When your story is good, people will talk about it. If the story of your product is good, people will use it. But your story has to be good. And you have to be able to market it. If you expect your story to resonate with people, you have to tell it honestly. If you don’t, people will know: and they will tell other people.

Summary

In conclusion, one can assume that learning how to start a social media marketing agency can seem like a steep task. It is a fulfilling one if performed with utmost dedication and honesty. And with the lessons learned here, one can go on to build a very successful social media marketing agency that delivers what it promises and is made up of the best people in its fields.