Social media marketing has evolved from posting regularly on Facebook and Instagram to building and perfecting social media marketing strategies. The competition comes from your competitors, social media trends, celebrities and social media influencers.
If you want to stand out, get your brand voice out there and make audiences interested in your offering, you need a strategy that works. To develop this strategy, you need to stay updated on the shifting trends in social media marketing.
For instance, in the last decade, Facebook marketing was the most effective advertising tool. Today, TikTok and other platforms are stealing the spotlight in the digital world.
Knowing what works and what doesn’t requires you to stay plugged in. You don’t have to do this on your own. You can partner with a proven digital marketing agency to develop your business’s best social media marketing strategies.
In this blog, we’ll provide a general overview of what you should know about social media marketing.
A Few Social Media Marketing Terms You Should Know
Social media marketing has its lingo; here are some common terms you should know.
- Content: This refers to what you share on social media. It can be in the form of a text, video, audio or image. What matters is the context.
- Context: This is where and how you format your content. For instance, short texts are great for Twitter but perform poorly on Instagram (a visual dominant platform)
- Hashtags: A tool that helps you add meta-information about your post, such as your niche, target audience, location and such, for users to quickly discover your content.
- Shares: Neil Patel calls this the “currency of the social media world.” The more people share your content, the more people you can reach.
- Engagement: This refers to how people interact with your content. It can be in the form of shares, likes, comments, or some other reaction.
The Five Aspects Of Social Media Marketing
As a smart business owner, you need to ensure you have a grip on these five aspects:
- Strategy: This is your plan for developing and publishing content that will help you achieve your marketing objectives.
A sound social media marketing strategy should have clear, measurable goals and specific plans for achieving each goal. It should also have metrics to measure its success.
- Media planning: This involves creating and publishing the right content for the right audience on the right platform at the right time.
Getting social media marketing right requires understanding your target audience, developing a brand voice, and sharing regular, helpful information.
- Engagement: Engagement is essential as it means someone at the very least is interacting with your content. You need to pay attention to trends, customer online behaviors, working with influencers, and other marketing tools to drive up engagement.
- Analytics: This refers to data that helps you track the performance of your social media marketing campaigns. With this data, you can optimize your strategy, get better than your competitors, and drive engagement.
- Advertising: Essentially, social media marketing means advertising your business to the digital world. Social media advertising is of three kinds:
- Organic: Your content gains traction naturally without an extra boost
- Paid: You pay the platform to show your content to more people
- Earned: Your content gains more views due to your audience’s likes, comments, and shares.
The Different Types Of Social Media Marketing
There are different types of social media marketing. This section will focus on the ones that bring the most ROI for businesses.
Facebook Marketing
Facebook is the largest social media platform. It offers amazing marketing tools and robust data to allow anyone to precisely target another person with the ads.
To use Facebook Ads, you need to learn how to use the Facebook Business Suite tool. To get started, log in to Facebook, go to the Facebook Business landing page, and create an account.
On your Business Suite dashboard. You will find several advertising options. Facebook allows you to design the goal for your ads. It could be to:
- Drive conversations
- Boost engagement
- Promote your Facebook page
- Drive traffic to your website.
Next, you can create a customized audience for your ads or go with Facebook’s simple suggestions.
The last step is to pick the devices you want to target and where you want to display your ads. You can choose to apply Facebook’s recommendations or make your own choices.
Instagram Marketing
Instagram is primarily a visual platform; it is best for pictures, although the videos are getting popular too. It has a very high engagement rate, which is excellent for brands that want to connect with customers.
You can also sell using the platform, but that would require you to leverage influencer marketing. You can also post your Facebook ads on Instagram as the two platforms are connected.
YouTube Marketing
Youtube is easily the biggest video-sharing platform in the world. It has been the birthplace of many brands and careers. With Youtube, you can turn your long-form articles into video tutorials.
There is no limit when it comes to posting on Youtube, but you want to ensure consistency. You can also post ads on Youtube.
For YouTube Video Ads, you can allow viewers to watch your entire ad or be able to skip them after a few seconds.
What you should go for depends on your business type, the nature of your video, and your advertising goal. It takes a bit of experimentation and A/b testing to figure out what works best for you.
LinkedIn Marketing
Yes, LinkedIn marketing is a thing. If you are in the B2B category, you should consider going on Linkedin. You should focus on new trends in your industry and how your products/services can help businesses optimize their performance.
You can also run advertisements on LinkedIn via LinkedIn Advertising, especially if you run a B2B company.
Snapchat Marketing
Snapchat is a great place to connect with young active internet users. There are almost 300 million users on the platform daily.
Content on the platform is short-lived, so you should post content of that nature. This can include snaps taken before a conference, behind-the-scenes videos, or company parties. Focus on sharing those tiny memorable moments.
You can also market your company using Snapchat advertising. You simply have to ensure your ads are engaging and informative.
TikTok Marketing
TikTok is a Chinese video-sharing platform that was launched in 2016. Users typically use the platform to share short videos of themselves lip-syncing, dancing, sharing takes on subjects, or making short jokes. It packs a lot of editing features that allow users to create fascinating and well-edited videos.
TikTok advertising is excellent for businesses as the platform is yet to be flooded with ads. You can use it to try out marketing strategies that might not work well on platforms like YouTube and Linkedin.
The best approach for business is to share short explainer videos on topics your audience will be interested in. You can also use it to show the human side of your business, advertise new products, or interact with your audience.
You can choose between paying TikTok influencers or using TikTok Ads for paid marketing. TikTok gives you many options, such as boosting your videos, designing and promoting a filter for your brand, and much more.
How To Build A Social Media Marketing Strategy
You need a social media marketing strategy to get the most out of your social media platforms. This will be a kind that helps you build your online presence to increase customer loyalty and boost brand recognizability.
Essentially, you should focus on answering the following questions:
- Target audience: Who are the people you want to reach?
- Content: What form of content will interest your target audience?
- Engagement: How do you intend to drive engagement on your content and ensure maximum visibility?
- Social channels: What are the best social media channels for connecting to your target audience?
Not every business owner gets this right on their first attempt. They are most likely working with an experienced digital marketing agency if they do. You can get this unique headstart by scheduling a free business consultation call today.