What is Social Media Marketing?
Have you ever seen a post on Instagram from an account you follow, promoting their latest all-natural skin care line or custom vitamin blend that will “change your mind, body and soul”? I bet some of those ads have even convinced you to try the products and you aren’t alone in that. One of the smartest and most successful forms of marketing in 2023, is social media marketing. Social media marketing allows businesses to promote their products and services on a platform where most, if not all, of their target audience is spending the majority of their time scrolling and double tapping.
As the internet space continues to grow and become more popular (who knew that was even possible?) – so does marketing your business on it. Feeds become more and more full of promotions, ads, targeted posts and most commonly, influencer promotions. Businesses are getting wise to the tool of social media and utilizing it to their benefit more and more. So, the real question is - are you jumping on the social media marketing bandwagon? Keep reading to learn more about what social media marketing really means and how YOU can use it in your business.
What is Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing – also known as SMM, is the use of social media platforms (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) to promote one’s business, attract ideal clients, create website traffic, drive sales and create brand awareness and recognition. Through informative and curated posts, businesses can use social media to invite their audience in, inform them on products and services and also engage with existing clients in an authentic and genuine way. Social media marketing is incredibly helpful for many reasons. One of which being the way it allows businesses to track analytics easily and effectively. Social media platforms are now catered to marketing for businesses and have simple, easy-to-use analytic tools that allow businesses to see how their promotions and content are landing and translating to sales and website traffic. In addition to analytical benefits, social media marketing allows businesses to reach their potential and existing clients in a way that feels more organic and genuine, in a space where their clients were already choosing to spend their time.
Why is it so impactful?
With over half of the world (58.4%) using social media, it makes sense why social media marketing has the potential to be so powerful. A whopping 4.62 billion people on this big green planet are now using social media – with those numbers rising daily. What’s even crazier, is that those individuals are spending an average of 2.5 hours on social media platforms PER DAY. It sounds ridiculous and over-the-top, and it definitely is, but if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, right? With such a staggering amount of the population being on social media platforms, businesses are able to reach so much of their target audience in one place.
Not only does social media allow you to REACH your target audience, it allows you to meet them where they’re at and form a connection. Through each platform, there are multiple ways to communicate and connect with your audience; informative content and captions, direct messages, story responses, comments and more. You can connect personally with your potential and existing clients in a way that doesn’t feel “salesy” or invasive and is actually successful and beneficial to both parties. Through social media marketing, users are able to purchase and invest in products and services on their own terms, which leads to a better and more long-lasting client relationship.
How it works
It’s easy to see WHY social media marketing is so successful. Millions of people on a platform for multiple hours per day equates directly to successful marketing and client relationships. But how exactly does it work? How can you and your business use social media to market your product or service successfully? We’ll tell you.
1. Define your goals.
Ask yourself this question, what are you trying to accomplish in your business? As a business owner, you’ve most-likely set goals for your business and what you are aiming to accomplish in what amount of time; how many clients you want to get in your first year, how much revenue you want to bring in within your first five years, etc. The key to social media marketing is to tie in your business goals with your SMM goals.
Some factors to think about when setting your SMM goals include:
How many followers you want to obtain
Conversion from social media followers to clients
Goals for website traffic
Engagement aspiration
2. Develop a strategy.
This is your HOW – how will you reach your goals? When you’re developing a strategy, it’s good to think about your ideal client demographic and what they are looking for. Your potential clients have a pain point, and you have the solution. So, start by defining your ideal client and then create your content based on that information.
The things you will want to consider most when formulating your strategy are:
Who is your ideal client and what do they need?
What social media platforms should you be targeting the most?
What type of content should you be sharing? (graphics, pictures, informative videos, etc.)
There are many social media platforms to utilize and the ones you choose to focus on should be solely based on your target audience and their demographic. Whether your audience is entrepreneurs who reside mostly on LinkedIn, or social media master teenagers on Twitter or TikTok - you want to focus your content strategy in the direction of those individuals. Pro tip: don’t waste your resources and effort on a social media platform that won’t serve you.
3. Analyze your current social media strategy.
If you’re already on social media, study the content that you’ve already been producing. What has been working for you and what definitely has NOT been working? Look at your posts and their analytics and base your strategy on those findings. If an informational graphic is getting next to no engagement, it’s clearly not appealing to your audience. If a photo of your team, or yourself as an individual is getting a lot of traction (likes, comments, saves and shares) you can assume that it’s catching your following’s eye and that you should keep up on those posts. Put simply, the more views and engagement your posts are getting, the more you should produce THOSE.
4. Analyze your competition’s social media strategy.
While we definitely don’t sign off on copying the content of your competitors, it is in your best interest to spend a good amount of time studying their work and picking up on their analytics as well. Check out what content they are posting and how it is landing with their audience. It’s not cool to be an imposter, but it’s a great tool to use what others are doing in their business and apply it to your own. And guess what, everyone’s doing it. When you’re creating your SMM strategy, it’s in your best interest to use ALL of the information you have and can possibly gather, to put your resources into creating the most impactful content on your social media. Work smarter, not harder, right?
5. Schedule and publish your content.
Often when you are a business owner, the last thing you have time for is managing your social media. And if you aren’t yet in the position to outsource a social media manager, it can be difficult to make a SMM strategy happen. In fact, it can be the LAST thing on your list of things to do. The best thing you can do is create your content ahead of time, schedule it and then either have your posts get published automatically or have them completely ready so all you have to do is press “post”.
An important piece to this is to use your analytics when scheduling your content. Find out what time your followers are most active on social medias and create your schedule around that. Another tip in scheduling and publishing your content, is to utilize one of the many social media planning apps out there; and there are many. Choose your app based on what makes the most sense for you. Hot tip: we love the planning app Planoly. It’s so easy to use, inexpensive, and can manage multiple social media platforms at once.
6. Study newfound analytics and adjust accordingly.
Once you’ve started implementing your SMM strategy, your analytics will change. You will start to see different trends and habits. It’s important to then reassess the information you have and continue to evolve your strategy accordingly. A good SMM strategy is always evolving. What worked for your social media a month ago, may not work for you today. Stay vigilant. Stay current on the trends of the internet (hashtags, social media trends, etc.) and make sure that your strategy aligns with what the rest of the internet space is currently doing. You want to aim to stay ahead of the game, so constantly remaining aware of the social media trends, as well as your own content’s successes is a very valuable use of your time and energy.
How we can help you
If all of this is sounding a little overwhelming, we get it. Usually if you are a business owner, you don’t double as a social media marketing manager and that is A-okay. Part of our job, in addition to creating and implementing your perfect brand, is to help you develop an effective marketing strategy and implement that throughout all of your platforms including social media. We want to help you maximize ALL of your resources - and as you’ve read here, social media is one of the heavy-hitters. Reach out to us for a consultation so we can answer your questions and help you to better understand the world of branding and social media marketing. Your business will only go up from here!
