What is social media marketing?
Social media marketing (SMM) uses various social media platforms, like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, as part of a marketing strategy to build brand awareness, increase traffic, and grow sales through social customer touchpoints.
Brands create and publish content across social media channels, engage with followers, and run ads across social media platforms to attract new customers. Many brands use social media management software to manage multiple social media accounts, manage workflows, and engage with online communities.
Creating a social media marketing strategy
An effective social media marketing strategy requires planning and careful consideration for the highest likelihood of success. Brands should consider the following when creating a social media marketing strategy.
- Outline clear goals and metrics: Brands ought to spend time developing clear goals and metrics to measure progress. Teams can use the goals to determine where to allocate budget and resources while also being able to measure and understand which tactics work best with audience members.
- Create an audience persona: Social media marketing is designed to attract relevant potential buyers with content they find useful or valuable. Businesses need to understand their audience to create content with their audience in mind and meet them on their social network platforms.
- Complete a competitor analysis: As with any marketing strategy, researching competition is crucial when planning social media marketing efforts. Competitor analysis gives businesses an idea of which social platforms their audience uses, the content they’re responding to, and how customers engage with brands.
- Choose which platforms to invest in. The number of social media networks a brand uses may depend on the size of the marketing team, the platforms the target audience uses, and what’s popular in the industry. A successful social media marketing strategy may require selecting one platform as a start and expanding to others over time.
- Obtain buy-in on the content strategy. After choosing which social media platforms the business will use, teams should create an overarching content strategy. When determining types of content, consider what audience members will find valuable and interesting. Finally, marketing teams should ensure business stakeholders support the content strategy.
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Benefits of social media marketing
An effective social media marketing (SMM) strategy and execution plan provide many benefits. Some of these include:
- Sustained community engagement. When conducted well, SMM allows brands to engage with their community for a prolonged period. Successful brands turn to SMM to build, connect, and engage with their community for more than just an exchange of products and services. This helps keep brands top-of-mind for their community members.
- Increased brand awareness. Because billions of people use social media networks daily, brands can increase their business offerings' awareness by merely being present in these spaces. With the right strategy and tactics, brands can rely on their social media presence to identify new customers.
- Boosted web traffic. As part of SMM, brands can share links to various web pages across the company’s website. From sales pages to blog posts to pricing to press releases, brands have many opportunities to drive social media users to the company website.
- Greater credibility. Positive social media interactions with customers show them that the brand and business are trustworthy and welcoming. Prospective customers may want a feel for how a brand operates before buying, and social media interactions are one way they can do so.
Social media marketing best practices
SMM strategies look different depending on the brand, voice, and goals for taking advantage of social media channels. Even though many approaches are used, teams should consider some universal best practices for the greatest chance of success.
- Understand the audience. Successful social media use requires building a following. Brands need to know their audience and how to attract new customers. Social media teams should know which platforms their consumers use, how they feel about the brand, and what content appeals to them. Buyer persona research is one way to gather some of this information.
- Audit performance to identify areas of improvement. SMM is an ongoing process, meaning social teams need to constantly evaluate their performance. Audits and self-reviews help teams understand which pieces of content perform well to better plan for future successful campaigns.
- Follow consistent brand guidelines. Branding should remain cohesive and recognizable to audiences across social media platforms and campaigns. This includes identifying a visual style, setting the tone, and using the same voice. In addition, businesses may want to create social media guidelines to outline which topics they’ll discuss online and which are off-limits.
- Use social listening. An effective SMM strategy includes monitoring a brand’s name and place in the industry across social channels; social listening is a great way to do that. This term refers to monitoring social media for brand mentions, competitors, and related keywords to gain insights into what customers have to say. It involves analyzing conversations and trends to make data-informed social media decisions.
Consider the audience! Learn about social engagement and determine how it fits into a broader social media marketing strategy.
Alyssa Towns
Alyssa Towns works in communications and change management and is a freelance writer for G2. She mainly writes SaaS, productivity, and career-adjacent content. In her spare time, Alyssa is either enjoying a new restaurant with her husband, playing with her Bengal cats Yeti and Yowie, adventuring outdoors, or reading a book from her TBR list.
