What is Social Media Marketing? SMM Tips, Benefits and Best Platforms
Social media marketing is a great way to promote and establish your business online on the internet on different channels. This article summarizes what social media marketing is, provides SMM tips, and lists the best social media marketing platforms.
What is Social Media Marketing?
Social Media Marketing is the use of social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram to develop a business, drive traffic, increase and drive sales and revenue.
Anyone can also use these social media marketing platforms to develop his personal brand or a strong identity.
Social Media Platforms are online channels where a user shares their information, stories, and lifestyle and connect with like-minded people.
Most companies and businesses use SMM platforms to post interesting content on daily basis, engage with their target audience through those posts, convert interesting people to their regular customers, and generate a handsome revenue for their businesses.
Social Media Marketing is considered among the most popular types of digital marketing. By developing communities on different platforms, businesses can establish a strong presence to increase their trust factor among customers.
Important Social Media Marketing Tips
As Jeff Ragovin, the owner of “Buddy Media” says:
“Brands That Ignores Social Media. Will Die. It’s That Simple”
The business that ignores SMM, is losing too much potential for sales, growth, and revenue. If you own a business and you’re thinking of utilizing social media to drive sales and growth, here are some important social media tips for you:
Create and Optimize profiles on different platforms
Create a profile for your business on different social media marketing platforms. Dominating on a single SMM channel is easier but for businesses, it is necessary to meet the customers where they are.
As Kevin Stirtz, the author of the book “More Loyal Customers” says:
“Know What Your Customers Want More and What Your Company Does Best. Focus on Where Those Two Meets”.
Posting irrelevant and non-interesting content can ruin your business image on social media. Focus on your audience analytics, understand what they want, and keep posting content according to their interest.
People and businesses mostly use social media platforms completely wrong. They create simple profiles and post content but they don’t focus on optimizing content and profiles for better ranking and user experience.
Optimizing your social media profiles and content for users can boost your reach to the top. Use the best keywords, hashtags, images, and videos to expand your business reach.
By leveraging different social media marketing platforms and posting great content everywhere, you will have a clear understating of where your customers engage more and what type of content they like to see from your businesses or company.
Focus on that one channel where your customer interacts and engage more and keep providing updates on other social media marketing channels to establish a strong presence.
Manage Content Through A Social Media Marketing Calendar
Posting and managing content on different SMM channels on a daily basis can be a difficult task. A social media content calendar makes it easier for businesses to manage their posting schedule.
Prepare a social media content calendar. Conduct research on trending topics in your niche. Include content that engages your audience. Create posts on the topics that are already trending.
As Ann Handley says:
“Good content always has an objective; It’s created with intent. It therefore carries triggers to action.”
If you own a big business and your business has a strong presence, you can create your own trends. There are different tools and resources that can be utilized to make your research stronger.
Google trends is one of the most popular resources that people use on a daily basis to find trending topics for their blogs, social media, and SEO. You can search topics on the basis of location, age, interest, and niche.
Diversify Your Content
Content is king when it comes to social media. Post content on your social media channels wisely. Great content tells your audience what your business is about. People evaluate your business on social media through your posts.
Make sure the content you are posting is valuable and helpful for your audience. Post industry news, quick tips, how-to, and guides to educate your audience. Create different polls, contests, and quiz competitions to increase engagement.
A stronger social media strategy focuses on different formats of social media content. You can post images, gifs, texts, and videos to develop a strong presence.
Go live on different platforms to educate the audience on different topics and provide answers to their questions.
Use different content templates and keep the one that brings high engagement. You can use different online tools to create engaging content by using eye-catching templates.
Canva is the most popular design tool for social media. Anybody can create stunning social media posts by using their pre-made templates. You can create carousels for Instagram, Pinterest pins, Facebook posts, and videos through Canva easily in no time.
Stay Consistent
Social media marketing enables your business to project your brand image across a variety of different social media marketing channels. Each channel has its own values.
Consistency is important for growing your social media presence, building trust, and keeping your audience engaged. Consistent posting helps your brand become recognized and memorable.
Keep consistency on each social media marketing channel. Post content on a daily basis to keep your audience informed and up to date.
Most people think consistency is how often they post on social media. But consistency goes way beyond that. It includes brand voice, design, and content. These elements come together to create a consistent brand that shines on social media.
According to Techipedia, consistent brands are worth 20% more than those with inconsistency.
Engage and Participate
Mostly people just log in once a month to schedule posts for the entire month. In the end, they failed to achieve a good engagement rate.
Don’t just post, engage with your audience. Give replies to their comments and messages. Appreciate their loyalty to your business. You need to pay attention to those who are interacting with your business.
You can monitor your audience engagements in one place through different free digital marketing tools.
There are many more communities on Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social media marketing platforms. Join those communities.
These communities can also help you in collecting feedback on your business. Based on those feedbacks, you can improve and maintain the quality and perfection of your business.
Use social media management tools
There are hundreds of free and paid social media marketing and management tools in the market. These tools can save you time in different ways. Utilize these tools to maximize your output.
Almost all social media marketing and management tools provide analytics and insights into your audience’s daily activity with your business. Based on those analytics, you can make stronger decisions to make your business successful.
Social media marketing tools like Zoho Social, provide options for connecting all your social media accounts in one place. This makes scheduling and posting your content on different social media channels easier.
If you feel uncomfortable with finding tools, we created a list of the best digital marketing tools for your ease.
Article: Free digital marketing tools
Benefits of Social Media Marketing
Social media is a great way in this digital marketing era to develop a strong brand image. Businesses that don’t utilize social media are losing too much potential. Here are a few of SMM’s advantages:
Reach Wider Audience – As of 2024, the number of social media users worldwide is estimated to be 5.22 billion. A single post on a social media platform can potentially lead to a broader exposure that even anyone cannot imagine reaching in years.
Improve Website Traffic – Social media channels are a great way to drive wider traffic to your website. Promoting your website, landing pages, and offers through social media can significantly increase your sales, appointments, traffic,c and even revenue.
Improve Customer Satisfaction – People interact with your business on social media channels and they provide feedback through comments, shares, and likes. By analyzing all those feedback, you can find weak points of your business easily and you can take necessary actions to improve customer satisfaction on time.
Gain Better Insights – You can gain better insights into your business progress through different social media marketing channels by analyzing your analytics report. By using the analytics feature of social media channels, you can easily find who is interacting with your business for what and from where.
Best Social Media Marketing Platforms
The most popular and best social media marketing platforms include Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat. Each platform has its own user-based, unique environment and a separate impact on the businesses.
Below is a little bit of effort from my experience and research about all these platforms.
Facebook is the largest social media channel globally. Facebook provides a great opportunity for businesses to list their details through a page. This means Facebook is also among the biggest business listing directories in the world.
Anybody can list their business by adding their business name, location, services/products, opening hours, and other business details. This is also beneficial for improving performance through search engine optimization if you have a website.
A wide range of people from different age groups use Facebook to communicate and engage with friends and family, participate in different activities in groups and communities, and visit and follow businesses based on their interests.
Facebook is a great social media marketing platform and businesses must utilize this platform to spread awareness over the globe. Businesses can use Facebook to gain new customers, establish relationships with existing customers, promote offers and discounts, and many more.
If you’re struggling with organic social media reach, Facebook also provides paid advertising opportunities that can show your business to the world wherever you want.
Instagram is another best social media marketing platforms. It is popular for its unique content formats including feed posts, stories, carousels, lives, reels, and IGTV. People use Instagram to follow businesses and influencers that they like.
It’s also the biggest sales and purchase platform after Facebook. People mostly follow those brands from where they buy their routine products.
Businesses use Instagram for different purposes to scale their business. The most common ways are by creating a fan page and store on Instagram. Anybody can list their business on Instagram with all the necessary details so that customers can buy their products and services easily.
By posting regularly on IG, anybody can scale their business to its top. But, only posting will not help you in achieving your goals. You must have to engage with your audience in different ways.
The most interesting thing on Instagram is Hashtags. If you’re using them properly in your posts, there’s a great chance to receive a bigger exposure.
Creating an Instagram store for your business is a great way to boost your sales. You can also implement different SEO techniques to optimize your store for better performance. Instagram also offers advertising opportunities to reach your target audience.
LinkedIn is a professional platform. Businesses can utilize it to keep their audience up to date, find and hire top talents, and establish a strong presence.
Businesses use LinkedIn to express their culture, celebrate milestones, and appreciate leadership and their teams. You can also create a page for business on LinkedIn. It is a great way to attract top talents and connect with like-minded peers.
LinkedIn is very useful for businesses operating B2B procedures. It supports different tools that help professionals find and reach their potential customers. It also provides advertising opportunities to reach the target audience.
TikTok
TikTok is the fastest-growing and best social media marketing platform. As of April 2024, TikTok had 1.58 billing active users which makes it the fifth-largest platform with active users.
It has grown rapidly, surpassing the user base of Facebook and Instagram in a relatively short time. It’s estimated to cross 2.05 billion users by the end of 2024. Although TikTok is known for music and dancing but it has a great potential for businesses to grow.
Businesses are focusing on establishing their presence on TikTok by posting engaging content in the form of short and long videos.
Creating a business page on TikTok is much easier. It takes a little bit of time to build a strong presence on each one of the social media channels, but TikTok is different from all. A single viral post can attract thousands of new customers to your business.
The primary reason people use TikTok for is entertainment. So, there’s a great chance to promote your products and services through entertaining videos.
Participate in different challenges to get more exposure. Collaborate with niche-based influencers and ask them to promote your business. TikTok also offers paid advertising.
Pinterest is one of my favorites and the best social media marketing platform. Most people ignore the potential of Pinterest and many businesses even don’t know about this platform.
It has a 522 million monthly active user base. The most users of Pinterest are from the United States with 38% of the overall Pinterest user base. Pinterest has a great potential for you if you’re planning to start a new business.
It is also considered as a search engine. People come to Pinterest to find products and services that they need. It’s known for its post formats that include, simple pins, idea pins, and carousels. You can promote your website links along with all types of Pinterest Pins.
Pinterest provides a great analytics tool to analyze business growth and make future decisions based on those analytics. It also provides advertising opportunities to reach a wider audience.
Conclusion
Social media marketing is an indispensable tool for businesses and individuals aiming to thrive in today’s digital world. By implementing these effective social media marketing tips, businesses can maximize their reach, connect with their target audience, and achieve measurable growth.
Leveraging the best social media marketing platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and others, ensures your efforts align with where your audience spends their time.
The key lies in understanding your audience, crafting compelling content, and maintaining consistency across channels.
With the right strategies, tools, and commitment, social media marketing can transform your business, enhance your brand image, and open doors to endless opportunities.
Start small, stay authentic, and keep adapting to trends, success is just a post away!
