Table of Contents
Social media marketing encompasses a wide range of activities to promote products, services, or brands on social media platforms like Instagram or Facebook.
It’s important for businesses in today’s digital landscape, because people are spending more and more time online; the average American spends 2.5 hours a day on social media — that’s over 10% of their daily routine!
If you’re an entrepreneur, influencer or content creator, here’s how you can get started with social media today:
Setting Goals on Social Media
Ask yourself: what are you trying to achieve on social media?
Common goals are:
- increase brand awareness
- drive traffic to your website or landing page
- learn more about your audience
- generate leads or sales
The goals that you set for yourself will define the platforms you should use, and what kind of content to create.
Choosing a Social Media Platform
Think about your target audience, what’s their age group? Where do they live? Does your brand target men or women more?
Each social media platform has their strengths and weaknesses, and they often serve different demographics.
The most common social media platforms today include:
- Facebook – wide demographic across all age groups and countries
- Instagram – image-focused content for Gen Z to Gen X
- Twitter – text-focused content
- LinkedIn – for B2B businesses
- Pinterest – predominantly used by women
- Snapchat – image-focused content in a story-based format
- TikTok – video scrolling content for Gen Z and millenials
Create a Content Strategy
The type of content you create will depend on the platforms you’ve chosen.
Are you marketing on Twitter? Your content will be mostly text-based.
Facebook serves all content formats, whereas Instagram is more image and video-focused.
Using LinkedIn? Your voice should be more professional.
Regardless of where you post your content, the key to successful social media marketing is consistency.
Post regularly, even if you don’t see a lot of engagement at first. It can take months or even weeks until one of your posts go viral.
Engage With Your Audience
After you’ve started posting content, you need to continuously engage with people on your social platforms.
This includes liking others’ posts, responding to comments, and sharing content that you enjoy.
In other words: be social; it’s a social media platform, after all.
It’s all about fostering a community and showing the human side of your brand.
Advertising on Social Media
People hate ads, especially on social media.
However, when executed correctly, it can be very effective and will even speed your growth significantly.
Most social media platforms lets you boost existing posts to reach more people, in addition to running sponsored ads.
Alternatively, you can also reach out to influencers to feature your products, or promote a giveaway contest.
Further reading:
How to Structure Your Ads on Meta
Analyze Your Performance
You can only improve your performance if you actively measure it.
Social media platforms often come equipped with their own dashboard for advertising, so that you can track and analyze the key metrics of your campaigns.
You can then use these insights to optimize your copy and design for future ads.
Keeping Up With Trends
This is arguably the most important aspect of social media marketing that is often overlooked.
It’s crucial that your social media content is relevant, especially if you post memes or short videos, and especially if you’re targeting teenagers and young adults.
There’s nothing cringier than using an outdated meme.
Besides trending media, it’s also important to keep up with algorithm changes for each of your platforms.
Conclusion
Planning and executing a social media strategy isn’t difficult, just don’t overthink it.
Be human and be consistent with your content and engagement.