Letter 3 – “How should the right Social Media Marketing in Russia look like?”

Hello,

Today we will talk about marketing in the Russian social networks.

Have you met people with these opinions?
Promotion in the social networks does not work.
I spent money on SMM, but got no gains.
Why do we need social media marketing? We can publish links in groups ourselves.

They are the victims of black SMM. They really spent time and money on publications of cats’ photos and creating fake web accounts. Cheap semblance of the social network marketing does not work.

What should not SMM be like?

Slightly off-topic to start with. Search engine marketing became bicolour long time ago. You may have heard about black and white SEO. You know, how can any schoolboy instantly determine belonging of a particular tactic or tool to the good or bad practices?

Black SEO is always cheating, manipulations, deception of both audience and search engines. Representatives of the old school achieve results by exploiting imperfections of the search algorithms. White SEO meets the needs of audience and creates added value. Representatives of the new school pay attention to technical optimization, but do not look for ways to trick the search engines.

Black marketing in the social networks can be recognized by a number of signs: bots growing, subscribers buying, purchase of social activity, absence of objectives and monitoring, effectiveness of the marketing campaigns.

Why is the wrong SMM in great demand?

The answer to this question involves three points. Firstly, black SMM provides quick and measurable results. For example, if you buy an increase of subscribers to 10 thousand so you get it.
Did you order 15 thousand subscribers? Here they are!

Why does not Black SMM work?

Very simply, your customers are not fools. You show contemptuous disregard of your present audience when collecting bots in the group, posting silly memes, filling subscribers up with advertising, ignoring the opinions of the users.

Remember yourself. You spot with a bang the fake accounts, notice a spammer from far off, and laugh at clumsy attempts of a seller to praise their own goods from someone else's profile.

How does Black SMM differ from the White one?

In short, everything.

«M» — means marketing

The main letter in the acronym SMM is the last one. You need a social media marketing. What is it? If you come down from heaven to earth, marketing involves an impact on demand, promotion of both business and product, as well as sales promotion. But your products, services, and ideas must be valuable to the people. In other words, the product and information about it should be offered people in the right place, at the right time and having chosen the most relevant way for it. Mind, the people also have to be right.

Goal-setting and planning

The goal is a planned result. Therefore, SMM effectiveness depends on the properly designed goal of the marketing campaign. With the advancement in social networks, you solve the following problems:

• Inform the audience about the company and the product.
• Manage your reputation.
• Form the clients’ community.
• Involve users in the conversion script.

Normal SMM is not limited to mechanical posting and reposting, commenting and sending invitations to the groups. To do this, you have to work hard, as well as to use special tools.

Informing the audience

To inform the audience it is not enough to write a comment to someone else's note in an unfamiliar group, that "A" company sells a cool product. To have your voice heard, you need to provide users with relevant and useful information.

Reputation management

Broadly speaking, the notion of the "reputation management" will be extended to almost all business activity on the Internet. In the context of SMM, reputation management includes monitoring of the mentions of the company or product, as well as the reaction to them, the survey of the users’ attitude to the business and the interaction with potential and existing customers.

Formation of the customers’ communities

Self-organizing consumers’ community is a dream of every producer and seller. In online, the most convenient way to form them is to do it on the basis of publics and groups in the social networks, as well as in thematic forums.

Involving users in the conversion script

Involvement in the conversion script is not limited to traffic and lead generation. But for easy description, the problem can be formulated as follows: SMM must provide redirections to the company’s website. If you are selling makeup or jewelry, traffic can be partially converted directly into social networks. But in niches with a more complex product, conversion of visits to treatment and deals occurs at the site.

Is it true that effective SMM is expensive?

No. Effective SMM is worth properly exerted efforts and planned result. Compare the following: cheating the size of groups through programs and bots against the natural development of the community, spam and intrusive flogging against identifying needs of the audience and shaping demand, false repost and comments against sincere communication of professionals with potential clients.

Read more in RMAA Group blog post:
SMM brand promotion in Russia, or how can you lead your brand to popularity in Russian social media?

Best regards,
Vadim Tylik

P.S. RMAA Group specialists are ready to assist you in creating Digital Marketing strategy as well as adopting it to Russian market.