What is Social media marketing?
Social media marketing, or SMM, is a form of marketing on social media platforms. This includes both organic content (posts without paid promotion), as well as paid social media advertising. Social media marketing can bring remarkable success to your brand if done in the right way.
The major social media platforms today are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tik Tok, YouTube, and Snapchat. But there are more, you have probably also heard about platforms such as Tumblr and Anchor, and also social messaging platforms like Messenger, WhatsApp, and WeChat.
Do you want to get a better understanding of how to efficiently work with social media marketing, and what platforms are right for your brand? Continue reading, and you will find out!
Strategy
Performing social media marketing without a strategy is like wandering without a map. Instead, let’s take a step back and look at the bigger picture:
- What do you want to achieve through SMM?
- Who is your target audience?
- On which platforms are they spending their time?
- What type of content will attract your target audience?
Remember that your social media strategy and the social media content that you create should reflect what business or industry you are in. For example, a clothing or travel business will probably benefit from being on platforms where people enjoy visual content, like Instagram or Pinterest. B2B companies, on the other hand, might perform better on channels like Twitter or Linkedin where people consume industry-related content.
Goals & KPIs for Social
Before you begin posting and sharing content on social media, consider what your purpose is. Think about your business goals; in what ways can social media marketing help you achieve them? Perhaps by:
- Increasing website traffic
- Increasing brand awareness
- Connecting with your audience
- Strengthening your brand identity and creating positive brand association
There are several benefits of setting clear goals or KPIs for your social media marketing campaigns. It will give you guidance on what type of content to create, how to create it, where to post it, and how to measure the success of your efforts.
Plan and publish
Being present on social media might seem easy. However, it requires a lot of planning! Many companies prepare content calendars with posts to schedule in bulk.
Scheduling your posts through a social media publishing tool will save both time and energy, but also enable you to maximize your reach by publishing the right content at the right timing and frequency. You want to publish your posts when your audience is most likely to engage with your content. Consider when you think your audience is the most active: on the commute on their way to work, on lunch breaks, in the evening, or in the middle of the night? Try posting at different times and analyze to maximize your results.
Social media advertising
Paid social media advertising is one of the most efficient ways to advertise today. It’s a highly cost-effective way to reach your audience, and most platforms offer very specific data for targeting which makes it easy to reach your target audience. This enables you to spend your SMM budget in the best possible way.
The major social media platforms right now are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, TikTok, and Snapchat. Which channel you focus your SMM campaigns on should be based on your strategy and your goals and KPIs.
There are some general ways that people use these platforms, which can help you choose which to focus on. For example, Pinterest is a very image-centered platform with lightweight content, while LinkedIn is a more text-focused channel that is perfect for professional dialog with people in similar industries.
Listen, monitor and engage
When being present on social media, people might talk to or about your brand. This can be both positive and negative. Therefore, you might want to consider social media monitoring.
You can monitor your brand manually, by checking notifications across all channels. Although, you won’t be able to see the posts that didn’t tag you. A social media listening and monitoring tool will gather all your social media mentions and messages, including posts that didn’t tag your business’s social media profile – all in one place!
Analytics & tracking
Analyzing the results of your SMM campaigns can be done by tracking data in, for example, Google Analytics. It’s important to perform a social media analysis to find out if you reached the goals and KPIs that you set in the beginning of the campaign. This way, you will also find out what worked well, what can be improved, and what you simply should not do in your future campaigns. This will also help you determine which channels work best for your audience.
Another way to measure your success is by tracking competitors as they can provide valuable insights. Consider what they are doing on social media; what are they doing that’s working, or what type of improvements do you see? Are they using a channel you are not? What type of content are they using? Let your competitors inspire you to be even better!
Summary
This article has introduced you to the most important parts of social media marketing and the results it can bring if done correctly! Hopefully, you feel like you have enough information about social media marketing to start planning your own campaigns!
Here’s a short recap of what you have learned:
- What social media marketing is
- Which channels there are to choose between
- What to think about when creating a strategy
- What to think about when setting goals and KPIs
- What social media advertising is
- How to plan and publish your social media content
- How to analyze and measure your results