What is social media marketing?
Social media has a very broad use nowadays, but what matters to us is the marketing of our business. What is social media marketing? It is the use of platforms like social media to connect with your audience in order to build your brand, increase sales, and drive website traffic.
The main social media platforms (for now) are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, TikTok, and Snapchat.
Now that you know what marketing on social media is social media we will talk about how to do it for your business. There are also a variety of social media management tools that help businesses get the most out of the social media platforms listed above. Website.
A quick overview of social media marketing
Social media marketing initially began with publishing. Businesses shared their social media content to generate website traffic and, hopefully, sales. But social media has matured beyond just being a place to broadcast content.
Nowadays, businesses use social media in a wide variety of ways. For example, a business that is concerned about what people are saying about its brand will monitor social media conversations and respond to relevant mentions (social media listening and engagement). A business that wants to understand how it's performing on social media will analyze its reach, engagement, and sales through an analytics tool (social media analytics). A business that wants to reach a specific audience at scale would run highly targeted social media ads (social media advertising).
Overall, these are often also known as social media management.
The five main pillars of social media marketing
Strategy
Planning and Publishing
Listening and Engagement
Analytics and Reporting
Advertising
1. Strategy
Before you dive in and publish something on social media, let's take a step back and look at the bigger picture. The first step is to think about your social media strategy.
What are your goals? How can social media help you achieve your business goals? Some businesses use social media to increase brand awareness, while others use it to drive traffic and sales to their websites. Social media can also help you generate engagement around your brand, create a community, and serve as a support channel for your customers.
Which social media platforms do you want to focus on?
The main social media platforms mentioned above are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, and Snapchat. There are also smaller and emerging platforms, such as Tumblr, TikTok, and Anchor, as well as social messaging platforms like Messenger, WhatsApp, and WeChat. When starting, it’s better to choose a few platforms where you think your target audience is, rather than being on all platforms.
What type of content do you want to share? What type of content will best attract your target audience? Are they images, videos, or links? Is it educational or entertaining content? A good place to start is by creating a marketing persona. This will help you answer these questions. And it doesn’t have to be fixed forever. You can always adjust your strategy based on how your posts perform on social media.
To help you create an excellent social media strategy, here are our comprehensive guides. Step by step for creating a social media strategy and social media marketing plan.
2. Planning and Publishing
Social media marketing for small businesses usually starts with consistent presence on social media. Around three billion people (3,000,000,000!) use social media. By being present on social media platforms, you allow your brand to be discovered by your future customers.
Posting on social media is as simple as sharing a blog post, an image, or a video on a social media platform. It’s just like you would share it on your personal Facebook profile. But you will want to plan your content rather than create and post content spontaneously. Also, to ensure you are maximizing your social media reach, you need to post great content that your audience enjoys, at the right time and frequency.
Now there are a variety of social media planning tools, such as Buffer Publish, that can help you automatically post your content at your preferred time. This saves you time and allows you to reach your audience when they are most likely to engage with your content.
3. Listening and engagement: What is social media marketing?
As your business and social media presence grow, conversations about your brand will also increase. People will comment on your social media posts, tag you in their posts, or send you direct messages.
People may even talk about your brand on social media without informing you. So, you'll want to monitor social media conversations about your brand. If it's a positive comment, you have a chance to surprise and delight them. Otherwise, you can offer support and correct a situation before it worsens.
You can manually check all your notifications on all social media platforms. But this is inefficient, and you won’t see posts that didn’t tag your business’s social media profile. Instead, you can use a social media listening and engagement tool that collects all your mentions and messages on social media, including posts that didn’t tag your business’s social media profile.
4. Analytics and Reporting
Along the way, if you are posting content or engaging on social media, you will want to know how your social media marketing is performing. Are you reaching more people on social media than last month? How many positive mentions are you getting per month? How many people used your brand's hashtag in their social media posts?
The social media platforms themselves provide a basic level of such information. To get more in-depth analytical insights or to easily compare across social media platforms, you can use the wide range of available social media analytics tools, such as Buffer Analyze.
5. Advertising
When you have funds to increase your social media marketing, you may consider social media advertising. Social media ads allow you to reach a wider audience than just those who follow you.
Social media platforms are so powerful that you can specify exactly who to show your ads to. You can create targeted audiences based on their demographics, interests, behaviors, and more.
If you run multiple social media advertising campaigns at the same time, consider using a social media advertising tool. To make bulk changes, automate processes, and optimize your ads. Ç’është marketingu në rrjetet sociale?
Social media marketing resources ç’është marketingu në rrjetet sociale
Social media platforms are constantly evolving. When Facebook first started, people could only share text updates. Now, there are so many content formats like images, videos, live videos, and Stories.
Therefore, social media marketing is also constantly changing. We want to help you stay up to date with all the latest changes and strategies. Here are some resources to get you started:
Guide to social media marketing
The complete beginner's guide to creating a social media marketing plan. For those who are new to social media and looking for a straightforward way to get started.
Guide to social media listening and engagement
Here’s why we believe social media listening and engagement are so important. How to overcome challenges in developing a successful strategy.
Social Media Analytics Guide
There is a wealth of information and insights in your social media data. Here are seven simple, quick, and actionable tips for social media analytics.
Social Media Advertising Guide
There is so much to learn about social media advertising. It can be difficult to know exactly where and how to start. Here’s everything marketers need to know about social media ads.
