Social media marketing
Social media marketing is a powerful way for businesses of all sizes to reach prospects and customers. People discover, learn about, follow, and shop from brands on social media, so if you’re not on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, you’re missing out! Great social media marketing can bring remarkable success to your business, creating devoted brand advocates and even driving leads and sales.
What is social media marketing?
Social media marketing is a form of digital marketing that leverages the power of popular social media networks to achieve your marketing and branding goals. But it’s not just about creating business accounts and posting when you feel like it. Social media marketing requires an evolving strategy with measurable goals and includes:
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Maintaining and optimizing your profiles.
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Posting pictures, videos, stories, and live videos that represent your brand and attract a relevant audience.
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Responding to comments, shares, and likes, and monitoring your reputation.
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Following and engaging with followers, customers, and influencers to build a community around your brand.
Social media marketing also includes paid social media advertising, where you can pay to have your business appear in front of large volumes of highly targeted users.
Benefits of social media marketing
With such widespread usage and versatility, social media is one of the most effective free channels for marketing your business today. Here are some of the specific benefits of social media marketing:
Humanize your business: Social media enables you to turn your business into an active participant in your market. Your profile, posts, and interactions with users form an approachable persona that your audience can familiarize and connect with, and come to trust.
Drive traffic: Between the link in your profile, blog post links in your posts, and your ads, social media is a top channel for increasing traffic to your website, where you can convert visitors into customers. Plus, social signals are an indirect SEO factor.
Generate leads and customers: You can also generate leads and conversions directly on these platforms, through features like Instagram/Facebook shops, direct messaging, call-to-action buttons on profiles, and appointment booking capabilities.
Increase brand awareness: The visual nature of social media platforms allows you to build your visual identity across vast audiences and improve brand awareness. And better brand awareness means better results with all your other campaigns.
Build relationships: These platforms open up both direct and indirect lines of communication with your followers through which you can network, gather feedback, hold discussions, and connect directly with individuals.
The best social media marketing platforms for business
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Facebook is the largest social media platform globally, as well as one of the biggest local business directories. People of a diverse range of age groups use it to communicate with friends and family, participate in groups and forums, find and visit businesses near them, and follow brands.
Facebook is a great social media marketing platform to: Build relationships with current customers, Announce hours changes, events, and milestones, Hold discussions and live streams, Market to baby boomers
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YouTube
You may not think of YouTube as a social media marketing channel, but it fits the bill: you can post videos to your channel; share, comment on, and like other videos, and follow other accounts you like. Plus, you have a curated feed in your homepage with recommended videos.
The key to social media marketing on YouTube is not to try to “go viral,” but to add value. It’s best for: Tutorials, how-tos, and explainer videos, shoppable YouTube live streams, advertising (video ads and display ads on the platform), SEO (video is dominating the “how to” SERP!)
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Snapchat
Snapchat isn’t just for teens. Its largest age group (75%) ranges from 13-34, and with Snap Maps, geofilters, and its partnership with Gannett, it’s more locally-focused than you might think. While you can’t build relationships on the platform, you can build an audience through fun images and short videos. Use Snapchat for: Location-based marketing, App marketing, Feel-good content
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LinkedIn may be a professional network, but it’s also an inspiring community that celebrates leadership, learning, and core values. So, in addition to using it to network, find prospects, and share industry insights, it’s also a great place to express your company culture and build your personal brand in parallel with your business brand. There are tons of LinkedIn company page features to take advantage of, so take care when building your page. LinkedIn is a great platform to: Attract top talent, network with partners, peers, and customers, share company milestones and culture, and post industry news and insights.
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X (formerly Twitter)
X is a beautifully tangled network of quick thoughts, useful tidbits, and energized discussions. You should be regularly active on every social media platform, but it’s especially important here. Many people use Twitter to get news, follow brands, and get customer service. Be sure to retweet when a customer has something nice to say about you, and don’t forget to answer people’s questions when possible. For effective social media marketing on Twitter, you may want to: 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.
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TikTok
TikTok is the fastest-growing social media platform of all time, taking only five years to reach one billion monthly active users. While it’s known for dancing, there are countless popular categories on the platform that continue to grow. Businesses are finding ways to use it as a marketing channel, but just remember, the primary reason people use TikTok is for entertainment, so make sure your videos align with that. Use TikTok to: Participate in trending challenges, post funny and inspiring videos, and be relatable.
Social media marketing services
At S-Media, as free and easy as each platform may be, a solid social media marketing strategy requires multiple platforms and often a mix of organic and paid methods. This can be resource-heavy, and while it’s a good problem to have, the more you grow your audience using social media, the harder it will be to keep up. Social media marketing services come in all kinds of shapes and sizes to help businesses get the most out of social media. For example:
Social media management software
Social media management platforms like HootSuite and Sprout Social use proprietary technology to help more experienced social media marketers streamline their processes and get advanced analytics.
Social media marketing agencies:
Some agencies specialize in social media marketing only, like Akvertise, or even just paid social advertising only.
Digital marketing agencies
Just as one platform doesn’t do it for social media marketing, one channel doesn’t do it for overall marketing. Digital marketing agencies can help you to incorporate social media marketing into your broader strategy that includes email, website, SEO, and more.
Hybrid services
Some offer a mix of the above. For example, LocaliQ’s social advertising uses proprietary technology to manage your strategy, allowing you to focus on social alone or as part of a broader plan.