In its simplest terms, social media marketing is the use of social media platforms – such as Facebook, LinkedIn, X, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok – to build a company’s brand awareness, increase sales and drive traffic to the website.
Mostly, it involves publishing appealing, informative content, engaging with followers, tracking campaign results, and, in some cases, managing paid social media campaigns (also known as pay-per-click).
As of January 2024, the UK was home to 56.2 million social media users, equating to a sizable 82.8% of the whole population. This is why, if done correctly, social media marketing can be an extremely powerful tool for companies of all sizes, across a whole range of diverse industries.
Why should I use social media marketing?
There are three main reasons why social media marketing is such a powerful tool, and these are; interaction, connection and data.
Social media allows businesses to connect with their customers and target markets on a more personal level, showcasing the personality of their brand. Some big brands excel in using social media to present characterful content, and smaller organisations can also use social media to build an engaged audience. Take a look at how well this video we made for the Lincolnshire Show has done – as of writing it’s had 26.6k views among a key audience they were targeting:
The nature of interaction on social media can really help set your brand apart from your competitors, building relationships and communicating key messages to both existing and potential customers. Whether you use direct communication or a more passive approach, or a combination of the two, social media enables firms to leverage valuable recommendations through electronic word of mouth.
Another huge advantage of social media is that it enables you to have access to lots of useful data. You can extract this data directly from the platform, or from a third party source such as a scheduling tool, and use market analysis to turn it into a rock solid marketing campaign. This data means you can see exactly how many people have seen or engaged with your content, you can see your profile growing in realtime and you can optimise your campaigns based on what does and doesn’t work well.
There are five core pillars to social media marketing
To help develop an effective social media strategy, there are five ‘core’ pillars to consider when planning; strategy, planning & publishing, listening & engagement, analytics & reporting, and advertising.
Strategy
Before you start publishing, you need to take a look at the bigger picture and decide on the best strategy for your company. You’ll need to identify your goals – for example, brand awareness, sales, building relationships, driving web traffic.
Then, you’ll need to determine which social media platforms you’d like to focus on, which depends on your target audience. Finally, you’ll need to plan the sort of messages and content that you’d like to share, ensuring that it aligns with your company values and represents your identity.
Planning & publishing
By being present on social media, you’re opening your brand up to a huge platform of potential customers. The best social media strategies involve planning your content ahead of time, so that you’re not publishing spontaneously (unless it’s a very time sensitive post).
There are many social media scheduling tools available if you’d like to go down this route; we’ll take a look at those later.
Listening & engagement
As your social media following grows, you’ll need to be seen to be engaging with your audience – as this will then encourage more engagement, and more growth. You’ll want to monitor your profiles daily if you can, so if there are any negative comments, you can provide support and guidance to resolve any issues.
You should also use social media to identify emerging trends which you can emulate to create both engaging, creative content and also to make the most of the algorithms which promote trending content.
Analytics & reporting
Once you start posting, you’ll need to be able to monitor how well it’s doing, and what is successful and what isn’t. All of this data is extremely useful to your business, as you’ll be able to identify what’s driving web traffic and engagement.
Advertising
As well as having a huge focus on entertainment and engagement, social media is all about advertising and so they offer a huge variety of tools for paid promotion.
If you are able to increase your social media marketing budget, you may consider paid social advertising to improve your reach and exposure and cut through to a larger audience.
Social media paid advertising enables you to select your target audience and tailor your campaigns accordingly, providing lots of data to analyse and develop your strategy with. To find out more about paid advertising, check out our blog.
Do I need to use a scheduling tool?
You don’t have to use any type of scheduling tool to run your company’s social media, indeed some platforms have more detailed controls in-app (particularly on mobile) which aren’t available through schedulers.
But while they lack these finer options, schedulers can be very useful and more efficient, especially if you’re planning on posting regularly or across multiple platforms.
Here are some of the benefits of a social media scheduling tool:
- Run your accounts more efficiently
- Ensure a consistent posting schedule
- Publish at the most effective times
- Simplify posting
- No need to log-in every time you’d like to post
- Re-use content easily and quickly
- Increased flexibility
- Encourages a strategic, regular approach to your marketing
Some popular scheduling tools include Sprout Social, Buffer, Zoho Social, Hootsuite, Hubspot and Sked Social.
Are you interested in upscaling your social media marketing with the help of a team of experts? Get in touch with our team today to find out more!
