Using social media to market is a strong tool for all kinds of businesses. It helps them connect with potential customers. People find, learn about, follow, and buy from brands on social media. If you’re not on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, you’re missing a lot! Doing good marketing on social media can bring great success to your business. It makes loyal fans of your brand and can even help get more leads and sales.
In this full guide about social media marketing, you’ll find out:
- Understanding what social media marketing is, along with its advantages, some statistics, and helpful tips.
- Creating a social media marketing strategy and developing a plan to put it into action.
- Exploring the top seven social media marketing platforms and learning how to effectively utilize them.
What is social media marketing?
Social media marketing is a type of digital marketing that uses the influence of widely used social media networks to accomplish your marketing and branding objectives. However, it’s more than just making business accounts and posting whenever you want. Social media marketing demands a dynamic strategy with measurable goals and involves:
- Keeping up and enhancing your profiles to ensure they present your brand effectively.
- Sharing images, videos, stories, and live videos that showcase your brand and draw in a suitable audience.
- Interacting with comments, shares, and likes while keeping an eye on your reputation.
- Connecting with and engaging followers, customers, and influencers to establish a community around your brand.
Social media marketing also covers paid social media advertising, where you have the option to pay for your business to be showcased in front of extensive numbers of precisely targeted users.
Advantages of Social Media Marketing
With its extensive usage and flexibility, social media stands out as one of the most powerful cost-free channels for promoting your business in today’s landscape. Below are some of the distinct advantages of engaging in social media marketing:
- Humanizing your business: Social media provides a platform to transform your business into an active participant in your market. Your profile, posts, and interactions with users create an approachable persona, allowing your audience to connect and build trust.
- Driving traffic: With the link in your profile, blog post links in your content, and ads, social media becomes a key channel for boosting traffic to your website, where you can convert visitors into customers. Additionally, social signals indirectly contribute to SEO factors.
- Generating leads and customers: Platforms like Instagram and Facebook offer features such as shops, direct messaging, call-to-action buttons on profiles, and appointment booking capabilities, enabling you to generate leads and conversions directly on these platforms.
- Increasing brand awareness: The visual nature of social media platforms empowers you to establish and enhance your visual identity across diverse audiences, leading to improved brand awareness. Elevated brand awareness, in turn, contributes to enhanced results in all your other campaigns.
- Building relationships: Social media platforms facilitate both direct and indirect lines of communication with your followers. This enables you to network, gather feedback, host discussions, and connect directly with individuals, fostering meaningful relationships with your audience.
The more substantial and actively engaged your audience becomes on social media networks, the smoother the path to accomplishing your marketing objectives will be.
Social media marketing statistics
When it comes to the advantages mentioned earlier, don’t just rely on our statement. Let’s delve into some social media marketing statistics that substantiate its influential impact:
- The average US adult dedicates 2.25 hours daily to social media engagement.
- Over 70% of individuals who encounter a positive interaction with a business on social media are inclined to recommend that business to their networks.
- On Facebook, users, on average, click on 12 ads per month.
- Approximately 81% of people turn to Instagram for researching products and services.
- Nearly 80% of Twitter users hold a more positive view of a business when their tweet receives a response.
- A significant 4 out of 5 individuals on LinkedIn actively influence business decisions.
- A noteworthy 46% of TikTok users engage with the app without any other distractions.
The Fundamental Elements of a Successful Social Media Marketing Strategy
A good plan for social media marketing will be different for each business, but they all share some common things
- Understanding your audience: Know which platforms they use, when they use them, why they use them, what kind of content they like, who else they follow, and more.
- Brand identity: Figure out the message you want to share with your audience. How do you want them to feel when they see your content?
- Content plan: Even though there’s some spontaneity on social media, you’ll need a plan for your content to have a consistent voice and create good content regularly.
- Analytics: Use measurable insights to guide your strategy. This includes who you’re reaching, what content works best, the optimal times to post, and more.
- Regular activity: Social media happens in real-time. If you want to grow your business with it, you need to post regularly, stay on top of interactions, engage back, keep up with trends, and maintain accurate profiles.
- Inbound approach: Instead of using social media just to promote your business, focus on adding value through useful and interesting content. Build connections with others. This will naturally promote your business, and others will promote it for you.
Making Your Social Media Marketing Plan
Now that you understand the basics of a social media marketing strategy, it’s time to get things moving. Your social media marketing plan is like the guide for putting your strategy into practice. It gives a framework to your efforts, helping you track your achievements and ensure you’re using your resources wisely. Here’s how to build your social media marketing plan:
- Choose Your Platforms: Pick the platforms based on your target audience, those popular in your industry, and what you can handle. Start with a number you can actively manage, adding more as you get comfortable. Begin with one and gradually include others.
- Set Goals and Objectives: Start with simple, task-like goals, such as posting once a day for a month, setting up your profiles, or conducting a competitive analysis. As you get into a routine and gather insights, you can set more specific goals, like increasing your following by a certain percentage or publishing a specific number of content types your audience likes each month.
- Report and Adjust Regularly: Use each platform’s analytics to figure out which posts engage the most, if you’re gaining more followers, and to understand your audience demographics. Keep what works, scale it up, and drop what doesn’t. Regularly review and tweak your approach.
Social media marketing tips
Ready to dive into social media marketing? Here are some tips to kickstart your social media campaigns and get started with marketing on these platforms.
Make Different Kinds of Posts
Like in other online marketing, what you share is crucial in social media marketing. Regularly post and provide genuinely useful information that your perfect customers will like and find interesting. This includes:
- How-tos and quick tips
- Local and industry news
- Data and insights
- Polls, questions, contests
- Updates and announcements
It also means using different kinds of things social media lets you do, like pictures, videos, stories, live streams, online stores, and more.
Stay consistent
Using social media for marketing lets your business show your brand on various social media platforms. Each platform has its own style, but your business’s main identity, whether it’s friendly, fun, or trustworthy, should stay the same.
Don’t Just Post—Engage
Put simply, don’t just log in once a month to plan all your posts. Social media channels are like communities. You should notice who’s interacting with your content and interact back—answer comments, like, share, and comment on their posts. Run live streams, post polls and real-time questions to start discussions, and repost others’ content.
Use content creation tools
Don’t believe it when people say Instagram is the only visually appealing social media platform. In fact, all of them are! To catch someone’s eye in their feed, jazz up your posts with eye-catching stuff—like pictures, drawings, or text transformed into cool art. Tools such as Freepik and Canva make it super easy to make good-looking visuals. They’ve got templates and features that let you create professional-looking stuff with your logo on it, and it’ll match your brand style. Easy peasy!
Repurpose, repost, recycle
Social media is like a busy marketplace, so if you want people to notice your stuff, you’ve got to share awesome content often. Wondering how? Well, it’s all about the three Rs:
- Repurpose: Take a customer review and make it a Facebook post, break down a blog post into a series of Tweets, condense a case study into a spotlight on Instagram, or transform a webinar presentation into a carousel post on LinkedIn. The options are limitless.
- Repost Use this sparingly, but it’s a smart way to fill in the gaps in your content schedule. Re-share on Instagram, retweet user-generated and influencer content, and curate material from trustworthy sources, sharing those links in your posts.
- Recycle: Share your TikTok videos and Instagram Reels on YouTube; reshare your most popular blog posts each month to reach new followers; upload your Facebook Live recordings to your YouTube channel.
Build your unique content collection
We’re often eager to grab attention in other people’s feeds, but we overlook the benefits of our own. Follow your competitors to keep an eye on them, gather ideas to tweak for your strategy, and spot opportunities to stand out. Follow influencers for trend updates and self-education. Connect with brands that align with your values or showcase innovative content strategies for inspiration and fresh ideas.
Measure success with analytics
To know if your social media strategies are working, you must track data. Google Analytics serves as an excellent tool for social media marketing. It helps measure your most successful techniques and identify strategies to let go. Add tracking tags to your campaigns for effective monitoring. Additionally, leverage the analytics provided by each social platform for deeper insights into which of your content resonates best with your audience.
Try paid social
There are numerous advantages to advertising on social media, with cost-effectiveness topping the list. When executed wisely, you can showcase your content and offers to a vast audience at a minimal cost. Social media platforms often provide precise targeting options, enabling you to concentrate your budget on individuals who are most likely to engage with your business. Here are some tips and tools to kickstart your journey into paid social media marketing:
Facebook ads
Pinterest ads
Instagram ads
Read more about Social media Markting:
- HOW TO CREATING A SUCCESSFUL SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT CALENDAR
- How To Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy
Discover the prime platforms to elevate your business through social media marketing
For effective business marketing, key social media platforms include Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok, and Snapchat. Each platform demands a unique strategy, so here’s a quick rundown on each—detailing their user base, predominant vibes, pros, cons, and preferred content types.
As the largest global social media platform, Facebook also stands out as one of the most extensive local business directories. Embraced by users across diverse age groups, it serves as a communication hub for connecting with friends and family, engaging in groups and forums, discovering local businesses, and following brands. Utilize Facebook as an effective social media marketing platform to:
- Foster connections with existing customers
- Communicate changes in hours, events, and milestones
- Facilitate discussions and live streams
- Target marketing towards baby boomers
Given the limited organic reach on Facebook, the most effective strategy for generating leads or discovering new audiences is through Facebook advertising.
YouTube
While you might not initially view YouTube as a social media marketing channel, it aligns seamlessly with the role. You can upload videos to your channel, engage with others by sharing, commenting, and liking videos, and follow accounts of interest. Additionally, your homepage features a curated feed with recommended videos. The crucial aspect of social media marketing on YouTube isn’t aiming for virality but rather adding value. It thrives for:
- Tutorials, how-tos, and explainer videos
- Shoppable YouTube live streams
- Advertising opportunities (utilizing video ads and display ads on the platform)
- SEO benefits (video content dominates the “how to” search engine results page!)
Although Instagram entered the social media scene later than LinkedIn and Twitter, it swiftly outpaced them, reaching one billion monthly active users in 2018. Renowned for its diverse content formats—Feed posts, Stories, Lives, Reels, and IGTV—Instagram is a go-to platform. Users turn to Instagram to follow influencers and brands aligned with their purchasing preferences and personal values. Optimize your Instagram bio and leverage it for:
- Social shopping
- Influencer marketing
- User-generated content
- Company culture
While Instagram ad costs typically surpass those on Facebook, the upside is the elevated organic reach on Instagram.
While LinkedIn is renowned as a professional network, it’s also a dynamic community that champions leadership, continuous learning, and core values. Beyond its role in networking, prospecting, and sharing industry insights, LinkedIn serves as an excellent space to showcase your company culture and cultivate your personal brand alongside your business identity. With numerous features for LinkedIn company pages, meticulous attention is essential during page creation. LinkedIn stands out as an ideal platform to:
Twitter unfolds as a vibrant tapestry of swift thoughts, valuable nuggets, and lively conversations. While consistent activity is key across all social media platforms, it holds special significance on Twitter. A hub for news updates, brand following, and customer service interactions, Twitter demands active engagement. Amplify positive customer feedback through retweets, and be responsive to inquiries. For an impactful social media marketing journey on Twitter, consider:
- Follow influencers to keep up with news and trends.
- Share a story through a series of Tweets in one thread.
- Make yourself available for customer service and FAQs.
Snapchat
Snapchat isn’t limited to teens; its predominant user age group (75%) spans from 13 to 34. With features like Snap Maps, geofilters, and its partnership with Gannett, Snapchat leans toward local engagement more than anticipated. Although building relationships may be challenging, you can cultivate an audience through entertaining images and brief videos. Snapchat is a fantastic platform for:
- Location-based marketing
- App marketing
- Feel-good content
TikTok
TikTok stands as the most rapidly expanding social media platform, achieving a remarkable one billion monthly active users in just five years. Despite its dance-centric reputation, TikTok hosts a myriad of ever-expanding popular categories. Businesses are increasingly leveraging it as a marketing channel, but it’s vital to recognize that TikTok’s core appeal lies in entertainment. Ensure your videos align with this focus. TikTok is an excellent platform for:
- Participate in trending challenges
- Post funny and inspiring videos
- Be relatable
Social media marketing services
Crafting an effective social media marketing strategy involves utilizing multiple platforms and a blend of organic and paid methods, despite the apparent ease and freeness of each platform. Managing this mix can be resource-intensive, and as your social media audience grows, so does the challenge of keeping up. Social media marketing services come in various forms to assist businesses in maximizing their social media impact. For instance:
- Social media management tools: Apps such as HootSuite and Sprout Social use their own technology to help experienced social media marketers simplify their tasks and access advanced analytics.
- Social media marketing firms: Some companies specialize only in social media marketing, like Akvertise, or focus solely on paid social advertising.
- Digital marketing firms: Just as using one platform isn’t enough for social media marketing, relying on a single channel isn’t sufficient for overall marketing. Digital marketing agencies can assist you in integrating social media marketing into a comprehensive strategy that includes email, website, SEO, and more.
- Combined services: Some services offer a combination of the above. For instance, LOCALiQ’s social advertising options use their technology to manage your strategy, allowing you to concentrate on social media alone or as part of a broader plan.
Begin focusing on your strategy for social media marketing.
Utilizing social media in marketing goes beyond enhancing website traffic and expanding your reach. It transforms your business into a personality that your audience can engage with on a deeper level.
Regardless of the platforms you choose or how you utilize them, it’s crucial to understand that social media isn’t merely a platform for promoting your business. It serves as a community where you can showcase your personality, convey your values, share valuable information, and uplift those around you. By naturally gaining followers and having your content promoted, there’s no need for a hard sales pitch. Adopting this approach allows you to achieve not only your business objectives but also the intangible rewards that lead to satisfaction and fulfillment.
