Social Media Marketing in Nepal

1. https://hansikar.com/social-media-marketing-in-nepal/ Social Media Marketing in Nepal We have learned from our childhood textbooks that humans are social animals and these being want to live in groups and societies. Civilizations grew and collapsed; monkeys became human, the world change, but this trait of being social is intact from the very origin of our existence. With the development of technology, our way of being social also changed, our way of consuming information and news changed, our way of communicating with our loved ones also changed. In this fast-growing world, we invented something called Social Media, and we never looked back. With being social into the core of human beings it is not going anywhere anytime soon. So people started making business out of it. We started marketing in social media and again, the way we market our business and products changed. Today in this article, I will discuss why you and your business want to be social. Why every business around you are trying to brand themselves in social media. Why every politician is on social media and why even some dogs and cats have social media accounts. Snowie Karki What is the future of social media marketing, and why you should start it today? Questions will be answered, and you will be treated with an extra-large dose of information. So fasten your seat

2. belt as we are going for a long drive to your destination of successful social media marketing in Nepal. So, What is Social Media Marketing? You must have heard the word social media till now. Social media has entirely changed the internet; actually it has changed the whole world and also the world of marketing. This is a new way of communication with your consumers in an effective and most affordable way. It is a platform where you can build relationship with your customers and remain in contact with your loved ones. It is most powerful tool at this time for marketing and sales in business world. The first social media website was started in 1997 called Six Degrees, which enables the user to create a profile and get connect with their friends. After the beginning of blogging, social media was used widely all over the internet. Likewise, newspapers, radio, television and other traditional media ruled our homes for almost a century. But the need for social media marketing has risen now than ever before in Nepal. Social media marketing in Nepal has rapidly grown in this last decade. It’s all about sharing information through internet mediums using social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, etc. Social media marketing in Nepal has become an effective and affordable way to promote your business products and posts with lots of successful leads and conversion generation. Nowadays, digital marketing agencies do have a separate social media management team. Due to easily accessible smartphones, people from children to old everyone are connected with social media. The use of social media doesn’t seem to end ever till the world exists because it provides numerous amount of benefits. So, why is social media marketing getting on the top of the online advertising field? Let’s discuss everything you need to know about social media marketing. What is Social Media Marketing? Social Media Marketing is the use of social media platforms to market or advertises your products and services. Every advertisement has a similar purpose of marketing, i.e. to increase brand awareness, increase sales and conversions and drive traffic to their website.

3. Social Media Platforms Social media was first created with the purpose of communication and information sharing. But, the time has changed in completely different ways. People nowadays sees social media as their promotional site to promote their business within millions of audiences. It involves sharing of images, videos, advertising, and different other contents that lure the people to their site for their beneficial purpose. It is the most powerful and effective tool to reach your targeted and potential customers. Now, as the topic targets social media marketing in Nepal, let’s discuss more the situation of social media marketing in Nepal. Current Social Media Marketing Situation in Nepal Social media marketing is a never-ending source of free online marketing that is available to every individual all over the world. The recent research on social media facts of Nepal shows that Facebook is the leading market with a total of 9,857,000 people, with 32.6% of its entire population. Likewise, various platforms like Instagram consist of 1,300,800 users, Twitter of 2,300,000, YouTube of 3,800,000, Pinterest of 500,000, LinkedIn of 540,000, and so on, which is growing every day with rapid pace.

4. Digital marketing agencies are focusing more on their social media factors as it has the largest number of audience in Nepal. Marketing your business through the use of social media is a bonus that rewards your business. Usually, those companies that do the online business of selling their products like clothes, gadgets, accessories, etc. rely on social media like Facebook and Instagram. Why on Facebook and Instagram? It is because that platform covers maximum traffic available in Nepal, and that platform provides advertising facilities. You can advertise your products to the millions of users with less cost and also control your advertisements like you can target your desired audience and desired location for better conversions. Sajha Deal Facebook Page The above image represents the Facebook page of the Sajha Deal that sells accessories and clothes as their business product. Now, to increase their brand and business, this Facebook page has helped them a lot. You can see the likes and followers of the page, which are huge numbers. Social Media platforms, i.e. Facebook has made their business and sales more convenient and effective.

5. Likewise, there are many different social media-based businesses like daraz, sasto deal, etc. which are promoting their products with the help of Facebook. You might figure out that social media marketing is a gem to promote your products and business with lots of benefits. But not every business is successful in its first attempt. There are many things that you need to consider to get success in Social Media Marketing. Things you need to consider for Social Media Marketing 1. Identifying Your Goals Set your goals before executing any of your plans. This is a smart business practice everyone should prioritize. You don’t know what your business is going to turn in the coming days. So, plan everything with effective strategies that enhance your social media marketing. Here are some of the effective goals you can set for your business: Conduct a social media audit Engage with customers Driving traffic to your site Boosting posts and brand engagement 2. Engaging Contents Content is the King! If you have really engaging content with graphical attractions like images, videos, gifs, etc. then people will automatically get attracted and engaged in your post. If your content consists of only text and ugly images then people won’t even stop on your post. They will immediately scroll down for better content that they grab their attention. Here are the lists of contents that people drive for: Videos Videos are the most engaging and attention-grabbing content you can ever create. It provides more detailed information with proper explanation, and people enjoy watching informative videos rather than texted and images contents. Images Images are better with text on it. Catchy text with attractive images works 100% to drag the people’s attention. It provides quick information to your viewers. Status

6. Status is a simple texted message that you can share without any effort of creativity. Short and sweet status are more preferred than the long description in the status box. LiveChats Live chats are similar to video marketing that take actions at the same real-time moment. It is useful for a quick message transferring that is happening at that moment. People usually view more live videos. So, the initial and primary work you need to perform with 100% attention is the creation of engaging content even though it takes days. Because it will drive traffic towards your content and create high chance of a conversion. The more informative your content is, the better will be your conversion rate. 3. Regular Post with Activeness Your activeness creates trust and reliability to your audiences and followers. A good relationship between customer and vendor is always a bonus to the business. So, get active and post regularly if you can and also reply to your customers as soon as possible. The customers are the gem to your business so, always keep your customers in high priority and post the contents targeting their needs and requirements. Your site ranks in a better position when you are actively involved in social media marketing. Your brand will be displayed more and more in social media that way. 4. Create a larger community The larger community is always appreciated by everyone who desires more traffic into their sites. Followers are the free traffic that you can trust and depend upon. If you lack followers into your pages, then no matter how good your content of the page is, there will be very fewer people to view your posts. There won’t be visitors and sales in your business. So, you need to work on collecting your people and create a larger community because they are your future customers. What are the Major Benefits of Social Media Marketing in Nepal?

7. 1. Increase Brand Awareness Sharing on social media directly increases your brand awareness as your brand would be displayed to millions of users. People will learn and know about your brand and business. You can create your business page on social media that boost your brand awareness. One of the major successes of the company is to create public awareness regarding their business, which can easily be done through social media marketing. You can maintain a good relationship with customer through social media and makes your work easy to find the customer for your products.

8. 2. Targeting location and audience Another great facility you can get through social media marketing is, you can target your desired location and interested audience to make sure you get high conversions. Without targeting your audience, your advertising won’t be displayed to the interested individual. Wrong targeting can highly affect the profitability of your business. So, your ads should be displayed to those people who have a high interest in your products and are ready to buy it. It will save your time, cost, and increase your sales and conversion rates. 3. Cost-Effective Social media marketing might be the best cost-effective technique in this era. With less investment, you can get high benefits to your business. Nepal has made good progress in social media marketing through Facebook marketing. People rely on Facebook posts to purchase their requirements, which have made it easier for the business to sell their products. With $1 of post boosts, your post can be shared with thousands of people with targeting options, which is really cost-effective to low investors and beginners. 4. Improve SEO rankings Social media marketing drags tons of traffic to your site, which is really good in the case of SEO. Having more traffic every day is a bonus point to your SEO rankings when people view and engage with your content, it increases clicks and impressions. Social media marketing is an easy way that helps your SEO as it works as a catalyst for rankings. The more people love and view your content, the more your site ranks on Google. Well, your social traffic doesn’t really affect a lot, but it helps in ranking. So, never miss sharing your content and blogs on social media for traffics and conversions. It will increase the quality of your website. 5. Improve Customer satisfaction Having a good relationship with your customers is always better for your business. It increases the customer’s trust and engagement on your every post. For gaining the trust, you need to satisfy your customers, earning their trust. Now, for the satisfactory of your customer, you need to improve certain activities on your social media like:

9. Improve customer service Customer service is a key part that you need to involve while connecting with customers. You need to help and solve customer’s problems. Customers can directly get in contact with you, and you can provide a quick response, as well. Listen to your customers Listen to every word your customer shares with you. They might know more about your business than you. Never ignore their sayings and opinions because they are your business enhancers. Try replying and solving every problem that your customers are facing from your products. Build Trust and Reliability If your customer believes in your business, then the customer will never back down whenever he/she sees your posts on social media. So, be good and polite with every customer of yours and try making a peaceful relationship. Also if people believe that they can blindly rely on your products then in need, they will check your social media account giving high priority. Never cheat on your customers Not every people believes in social media products because of some fraud activities that they might have faced in the early days. Provide 100% to your customer’s needs. Make your service fast and provide qualitative products just like you display on your social media posts. Be really honest with your customers because they are the ones running your business. Various platforms of social media marketing in Nepal 1. Facebook Facebook is the most popular social media marketing platform in Nepal. 32% of the total population is connected with Facebook social media. The trend of using Facebook in today’s era has changed from communicating, information sharing to social media marketing. People create a Facebook page with their business name and start marketing their business products and services. Given below are facts of Facebook users of Nepal of stat 2018.

10. Facebook Stats in Nepal Facebook is the most trusted social media platform in Nepal, where people easily buy and sell their products. It provides service of Facebook ad management where you can advertise/boost your posts that displays to your targeted location and audience for thousands of user in less investment. It is a really cost-effective medium to market your business that provides many facilities for advertising your business.

11. Facebook Ads No doubt the number of Facebook users is increasing on daily basis and also converting their pages into business. Facebook provided this really useful Ad running platform that became gem to every business to grow more effectively. We our-self provide this service to our clients which now are growing their online marketing business with successful outcomes. Running ads on Facebook makes a better connection with the clients as you can have direct communication whenever you need. Let me list out some of the benefits you can get from Facebook Ads implementation. People spend lots of time on Facebook Over 1 Billion Users

12. You can target your audience and location while advertising Awesome for Remarketing Turns visitors into Leads and Customers Super Easy to manage your ads Advertising is cheaper Example of Facebook Advertising This is how your Facebook Ads look like on the Facebook page. One of the best benefits is that you can add images or even videos on your advertising. It increases the visibility of your ads and engagement of people increases automatically. With the ad manager, you can promote your advertising to thousands of interested people with $1 of money and can provide you around 5000 impressions on your post. Facebook Ads is appropriate for almost every kind of business like digital marketing, tours and travel agency, fitness, e- commerce site.

13. 2. Instagram Instagram is a rapidly growing social media platform in Nepal. Most of the youth are transferred to Instagram from Facebook as it provides better user experience, qualitative content, faster load speed and many more. Given below are the facts of Instagram users in Nepal. Instagram Stats in Nepal Instagram also provides the facility of running ads campaign to every individual Instagram users. You can get a better audience, sales and conversion rate on Instagram than on Facebook as the users of Instagram are increasing day by day. The business has also spread to Instagram from Facebook knowing the importance of Instagram in this era of social media marketing. 3. YouTube

14. YouTube is the second most viewed website in the world that surely makes Nepal one of them. Nepali YouTubers are being more active nowadays leaving their footsteps in YouTube marketing. Also, people are getting more involved in making vlogs and earning through YouTube. YouTube Facts YouTube also has the facility of running their YouTube ads campaign that helps a lot in their content marketing. People are making a career on YouTube by creating video content as YouTube provides attractive money. 4. Twitter Twitter is not widely used in social media in Nepal, but it has some craze as well. It is similar to Instagram where people share their images, status, and videos. Advertising service is also available on Twitter, but it consists of fewer users in the case of Nepal. 5. LinkedIn LinkedIn is a social media platform where professionals get connected and engaged for their own benefits. Rather than communicating medium, LinkedIn works more as a business/profession uses. People share their professional details and await for the request of jobs. You can also post your business products, posts for marketing purposes and advertise them to millions of users. LinkedIn possesses 590 million globally and 540,000 users in Nepal. As

15. LinkedIn possesses a lesser number of audiences, marketing in LinkedIn is more relevant. It is great for increasing your brand awareness. Payment Method Used for Social Media Marketing in Nepal. This is the part where most people get stuck while running Facebook ads because your debit/credit card is not valid to use for payment in context of Nepal. It is clearly an impossible job to get transactions through Nepali debit/credit cards including Standard Chartered and other FDI banks. This is why people even wanting to start online businesses aren’t being able to create a career in online marketing because they cannot use Western Union, MoneyGram, etc. to send money outside the country. Now, for the solution, you can connect your friend living abroad to let you use his/her debit/credit card for your money transactions. Or another easier method that maximum people use is through a website called admanager.com.np which provides you access to pay with Nepali rupee for Facebook ads. If your business is locally targeted like daraz.com, sajhadeal.com, sastodeal, etc. then your debit/credit card is valid to pay through online because your money remains with the country. An application like Khalti also allows transacting using debit cards. For more, you can use Visa, Mastercard, and SCT. Effective sales funnel implementation with social media channels. Generally, people have a mindset of creating social media pages with tons of followers to view their posts. But unfortunately you are missing an important link that is “Sales Funnel“. What is Marketing Sales Funnel? Marketing Sales Funnel is the journey of a customer since his/her first visit in your site and all the way up to conversion. It consists of three steps top, middle and bottom.

16. Social Media Marketing Sales Funnel Generally, this funnel works as the filtering of people that actually end up being customers. The top funnel consists of those (Leads) who are aware of our products and might have the interest to engage in the posts for further process. Then comes middle funnel (prospects) that shows actual interest and get engaged on to your post but couldn’t end-up being customers. And finally comes, bottom of funnel with opportunists and winners. Opportunists are those who propose for your products i.e. negotiation and lastly, winners are those that actually buy a product from you. Why sales are funnel important for business? Sales funnel is used to filter the qualified leads that convert into customers. Also, you can collect leads from each stage of sales funnel and retarget those who were unable to convert. If someone engaged in your post but bounces out without converting then you can track and know the behavior of that individual. Also, you will be able to fill up that missing piece or update effectively to change your strategy for better conversions.

17. The more you test the funnel the more leaks you discover and recover the leaks for more conversions. Courses available for learning social media marketing: Knowledge about social media marketing can be gained while sitting on your couch and there are many online courses available for you to learn with absolutely no cost. You don’t need to visit an institute to learn it neither study books. You can learn through Google, YouTube videos, and many more. Here are some of the best sites that provide you detailed information on social media marketing: 1. Coursera.org (What is Social?) Coursera is a trusted online learning platform founded by Stanford professor in 2011 with 280 active employees working to teach you for free. You can achieve and earn a credential from top universities like Yale, Michigan, Stanford and soon which you can add on your C.V. to increase your potentiality. 2. Udemy.com (Social Media Monitoring) Udemy is the largest online learning platform of the World with 30million+ students and 50,000 instructors with over 60 different languages. You can get any kind of education-related knowledge with udemy. 3. HubSpot Academy HubSpot Academy is a worldwide leader that provides free online training courses and educates people. It is specialized in comprehensive certifications and grows the career and business of their students. If you are looking for marketing knowledge, this one is a perfect site for you. 4. Skillshare.com Skillshare is another great online learning platform with educational videos. The majority of the courses are focused on interaction (practical) rather than lecturing the student. It provides 2 months of a free learning environment then charges you for its course. More than 7million+ students are active with 25,000+ classes available. 5. Lynda.com

18. Lynda is an American online learning platform website that offers video courses by experts. It was founded in 1995 by Lynda Weinman and Bruce Heavin. I personally have attended many courses on Lynda.com and found it really helpful for my career. It also provides you with course completion certificates which glorifies your C.V. 8 Steps to create a social media strategy for your company. Now, learning everything about social media marketing, you might think of starting your own company and grow your digital business. Also, for your successful marketing business, I have collected some steps to create social media strategies for your ease. 1. Identify your business goal

19. This is the very first thing that you need to do before running a business. You need to identify what your goal is and do everything to reach that goal. Identifying and planning before even starting the business helps to lead you to the right pathway. 2. Content planning Your contents are the source of your social media marketing. There is huge competition in creating better content day by day. From text status to image and now well-explained videos, people are creating really engaging and attractive content that gain more number of leads and conversions. People want something creative and extra every time they scroll down their social media pages. So, take your time and plan for really great content. 3. Social Media Calendar Social media calendar works like your normal calendar which guides you on your daily routine. Having your personal calendar that defines your job for that particular day can save your time and protects you from missing the job. Everything will be well organized and pre-planned when you have a calendar as it shows every upcoming event. Benefits of social media calendar: 1.Never miss important updates 2.Save time 3.Organize content 4.Effectively allocate resources 5.Collaborate Easily 4. Perform Social Media Audit Before you start, you have to examine every tiny bit of knowledge about social media like advantages and drawbacks. Your audit should be once a week if possible where you might discover fraudulent accounts using your business name. There should be a clear picture of your social media marketing whether it is making progress or not. If any fault occurs on time-space then you can act accordingly and look for the solution. 5. Understanding your audience

20. Understand your audience and do what works best for them making friendly-environment with your audiences. Your audience is the stairway to success which carries maximum percentage to convert into customers. Inspect the behavior of the audience and find out their interest then target them as your customer while advertising your products. It will increase the chances of sales and leads. 6. Grow your community The larger your community the more your audience and customers you will have. Without any audiences to visit your site, there is no use of social media marketing. So, create your fan-followers as much you can and have a healthy relationship with all the members. Always treat your followers with huge respect as they followed you for a reason. 7. Competitor Analysis Everywhere you go or anything you do, there is a competitor that you must overcome with and get better than them. Competitor analysis is a great marketing strategy to find out the strength and weaknesses of the competitor. Learning about the success story of the competitor you can get even more better and lead your business to success as well. 8. Remarketing Remarketing is the process of marketing to those individuals who were unable to connect at the very first attempt. In this process, while remarketing you can inspect the behavior of that visitor and know the reason that couldn’t lead them to convert into a customer. After that, you correct those issues and remarket them which increase the chances of conversion and generate sales from that same customer. Future of Social Media Marketing in Nepal You can see clearly the bright future of Social Media Marketing in Nepal with the current status as well. Every day more and more people are getting involved in social media marketing, including myself because of its effectiveness.

21. Social Media Marketing Facts of Nepal In every digital marketing agency of Nepal, people are focusing more on the social media team as it plays vital role in marketing. The demand for social media managers is getting higher due to its importance in marketing agencies. No doubt the rating of social media stats of Nepal will rise in a few years of time span. If you are new to business then better get started to involve in social media marketing for your business growth with 200%. Social Media Marketing doesn’t seem to end its priority until the existence of human being. Finally, the future of social media marketing in Nepal and all over the world is secured. Conclusion Hence, social media marketing could be your life-changing opportunity if you are running a business. So, get involved and create your social media accounts on every possible platform mentioned above. It is really essential to take advantage of technology that could change your business, i.e. social media marketing. So, when are you creating your own social media market for your business?