Social Media Marketing: Everything you need to know

Has it been like this? Suppose you were scrolling your go-to social media platform and within a few seconds of scrolling you found yourself stalking a random brand. 

Do you know how it happened? It’s not only the product that you were attracted to but the method of approaching. It made you navigate to their brand page. Now that’s what you call powerful social media marketing.

Whether you’re a business owner trying to grow your brand or a marketer wishing to connect with a wider audience, social media is a one-stop solution for you. But here’s the big question—are you making the most of it?

This guide is all about the benefits of social media marketing, how to do social media marketing for the best results, social media automation tools to do social media marketing, and more.  

Ready to create another success story?

What is social media marketing?

Social media marketing is another form of digital marketing. This marketing is all about, promoting and selling products across popular social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. 

In a nutshell, social media marketing is a practice of creating engaging content, increasing brand awareness, and forming meaningful relationships. 

You can do this in multiple ways. Like sharing informative posts, interacting with users in comments, and increasing engagement by holding different contests and Q&A sessions. Go through the following list and you’ll get an idea about the types of social media marketing.

Types of Social Media Marketing

▶ Content Marketing

It is about creating and sharing engaging and valuable content to reach the target audience. Plus, to achieve profitable customer involvement. The content can be of different categories for example, you can share blog posts, articles, videos, memes, infographics, and more. 

Additionally, the platforms suitable for content marketing are Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc. 

Take the example of Hubspot, it engages in multiple forms of content marketing. Starting from providing blog posts to hosting podcasts and webinars. They share interesting snippets from their educational content across popular social media platforms. They fully utilize content marketing to its core to attract potential customers. 

This type of social media marketing, including eye-catching snippets encourages readers to visit your website and build brand authority. 

Note: If you want you can also automate your process of sharing these interesting portions of your blog on different social media channels. You can simply use a social media auto poster and scheduler plugin like Bit Social, to share your WordPress blogs or snippets across different platforms. 

▶ Influencer marketing

Believe it or not, almost 70% of consumers blind-foldedly trust recommendations from influencers they follow. This is human nature, people look for suggestions from experts before buying any new product.

This is why influencer marketing when done with a strong influencer who has a larger fan following, can be highly beneficial. In today’s digital world, influencers have the power to affect their followers’ opinions. Their credibility and strong social presence allow them to easily influence purchasing decisions.

However, you cannot randomly choose any trendsetters. You need to choose such social media figures that can draw in potential customers and resonate with your target audience.

One proper example of influencer marketing is when Revolut, a digital banking app, partnered with MrBeast to promote their application. When MrBeast featured Revolut in his videos and social media posts, the brand noticed a significant increase in sales and popularity. This successful collaboration came from the trust and connection MrBeast has built with his audience over time.

▶ Paid Advertisement

This is a common type of marketing that we see on every social platform every second of scrolling.

I mean, when we scroll on social media channels like Facebook or Instagram, we often see some posts labeled as ‘Sponsored’ or ‘Paid’. 

Those are paid promotions.

So, paid advertising on different social platforms is an effective way of reaching a wider audience. Typically these advertisements contain a sense of urgency, which creates FOMO among users, enabling them to grab the deal asap.

Unlike traditional ads, most of the social platforms offer targeted advertisement options. This way you can reach specific demographics based on shared interests, age, location, etc. 

For example, Spotify’s goal is to make it to potential subscribers through YouTube ads. These Ads are categorized based on listening preferences and demographics. That’s the reason Spotify receives 100% of its advertising efforts. Moreover, these targeted advertisements maximize the dollar spent and make each dollar worth it.

▶ Video Marketing

Video marketing is a fantastic strategy for promoting your business and products. As we all know videos do wonders when it’s about storytelling, grabbing attention, or delivering any messages in a visually appealing manner. 

For video marketing, platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, are perfect as they prioritize video content. Therefore, sharing video content across these platforms not only improves user engagement and brand value but also boosts conversion to a great extent.  

Let me give you a popular example of successful video marketing, I am talking about Duolingo. Its presence all over TikTok has made a great impact on the app’s visibility. Duolingo is ruling over a huge younger generation by just sharing funny, relatable, and viral content featuring its iconic green owl mascot. Isn’t it great?

By following this type of strategy, brands can expand their reach, and user base and strengthen their authority.

▶ User-generated Content

Try user-generated (UGC) content, trust me! It works. 

UGC, these are content created by users about the brand. These contents act as social proof of the product, where users show how they use it and benefit by using it. 

When any random visitor sees these proofs, they are more likely to feel reliable towards the brand and try their products.  

I’m sure you’ve heard of Coca-Cola, they majorly use user-generated content in their marketing campaigns. 

For example, let’s talk about their “Share a Coke” contest, where customers are encouraged to take pictures of themselves while sipping Coke from customized bottles. When they share these pictures on social media, they get the chance to establish personal connections with the users. 

This marketing approach enhances user’s loyalty to the brand and the product. 

▶ Running Contests and Giveaways

To skyrocket engagement and grow brand credibility, running relatable contests and giveaways is a shortcut yet effective method. By offering exclusive gifts in exchange for love, liking, sharing live, or commenting on live podcasts you can feasibly create buzz and make the brand talk of the town. 

Fun events like this generate excitement among customers and motivate them to participate. Your advantage here is that, as a business owner, you’re getting purely organic traffic. 

Take Sephora for example, quite frequently they run different types of beauty contests to interact with their beauty community and to boost customer engagement. 

These contests are like this– ‘Share your favorite makeup look created using the Sephora collection, use #sephorahaul tag, and mention your friend to join the campaign. That’s it! The 5 best looks will get the reward.’ 

Such contests, not only increase the brand’s visibility but also strengthen the relationship with loyal customers. It creates an opportunity to attract new users, expand the community, and drive better progress for the business.

In short, all these social media marketing improves brand visibility, increases sales, and strengthens the online presence of the brand. 

However, just following the marketing types stated, in posting content, and engaging with users randomly isn’t enough. So, what can be done?

To reach potential customers, drive sufficient traffic, and grow your business productively, you must maintain a certain social media marketing strategy. 

Top 8 Benefits of Social Media Marketing for Business Growth

1. Boosts your brand visibility online: Social media is a global platform for marketing, especially for business or startup owners. With over 63% of active users globally, social media platforms act as key channels for greater exposure. Through social media marketing, you can boost your brand visibility at the same time reach the right audience.

2. Better Customer Engagement: When you promote on social media, you get the chance to communicate with your customers on a personal level. Through social activities like problem-solving, responding to their queries, and encouraging them to like, comment, and share, you can ensure better customer engagement. Plus, you can get unfiltered feedback and improve your branding accordingly. 

3. Improves brand loyalty and reliability: When customers will see you’re engaging with them through different channels. Putting effort into giving them original info or products will eventually make them feel more reliable towards the brand. They will remain loyal to your brand and do unpaid promotion of your brand to their knowns. As a result, you will get a community of loyal customer base. 

4. Increases conversion rate: By cross-promoting your business on multiple social networking sites, you invite more traffic to your website. Since, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. are quite powerful social referral sources, this will also help to turn more visitors into customers.

5. Competitive advantage: Staying active on social platforms besides allowing you to be aware of your competitors also updates you about the latest industrial trends.
6. Gain valuable customer insights: Almost every social media platform has some analytic tools to track customer behavioral patterns, their subject of interest, and other aspects. This data helps to modify your business marketing strategy for higher development. 
7. Smart and Affordable Marketing: Undoubtedly it is true, compared to traditional marketing, social media marketing is way cheaper. Social media marketing is a marketing approach, using which without breaking the bank you can engage with a large number of people. Plus, you can expect a beautiful return on investment.
8. Increased sales and revenue: Through effective social media campaigns and targeted advertisements you can boost sales by driving traffic to your product pages. 

One thing to remember is to avoid any mistakes that could ruin all your marketing efforts. Check out my latest blog on the most common social media marketing mistakes and how to avoid them. You’ll thank me later!

7 Steps to create a solid social media marketing strategy

Now that you know how social media marketing can be beneficial for your business. Next, it’s time to uncover some easy steps to create a perfect social media strategy, that will give you an impressive ROI (return on investment). 

Step 1: Clear your social media marketing goals

The first step for a successful marketing campaign is to set goals. 

Take time, and ask yourself what your business wants to achieve from these social media platforms. Is it, brand recognition? Better customer engagement? More traffic? Improve brand authority? Increase sales? 

Make it clear, since different business has different requirements. Make sure your goals are SMART. That is set Smart, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timebound goals.

Step 2: Maintain a consistent presence across social platforms

Having multiple business accounts on different social platforms isn’t enough. You need to maintain an active presence across these channels. 

Especially if you’re a seasonal blogger or digital marketer it may be a hassle to share your WordPress blogs manually on several social accounts. 

How about if you have a social media management plugin, that will automatically post your WordPress content on these platforms? Amazing right?
Bit Social is such a plugin for WordPress users. You can maintain a content calendar where all your scheduled events will be visible. In case, you forget to post you can always pre-schedule the posts with Bit Social “WP Post Schedules”. Plus, you can also customize instant messages and share without creating any WordPress posts, using the “Share Now” feature.  

Step 3: Know your target audience

Before applying any technique you need to know about the potential customers that you want to target. What I meant by knowing them is not just knowing them by their username only. 

It is very crucial, to research them, and find out:

• What type of consumers are they? (Based on age, gender, location, etc)
• What platforms do they use?
• On which platform do they spend most of their time?
• What content do they like to see? For example, educational content, case studies, entertainment, etc.)
• What media type do they prefer most?

Step 4: Select your preferred network where you’ll market on

Well, there are numerous platforms where you can do your promotional activities. But the thing is, don’t just post on all the social media platforms. Research on platforms that resonate with your brand perfectly. Moreover, select only the number of platforms that you can manage simultaneously.  

Now, you might have queries like, which platforms are suitable for your business. Go for the channels that:

• Fulfills the needs of your targeted people.
• On which platforms your audience spends most of their time?
• Goes with the type of content you create.

“It’s important to be where your customers are today and anticipate where they’ll go next,” said Jeff Bezos the American business tycoon and the former president and CEO of Amazon.

Let’s say your content is video type, I would suggest TikTok and YouTube would be the best options to showcase your brand for maximum exposure. P.S. You can target Generation Z. 

If you’re targeting millennials then I would recommend you to include Instagram in your marketing strategy. So there are several criteria, choose the one that ticks all your boxes.

Step 5: Know your competitors

See, whether you’re newly starting social media marketing or you’re a pro marketer, keeping a keen eye on the current state of your industry is crucial. It is even more important to know about your competitors like what they’re up to, what their plans are, where they’re falling short, etc. 

This way you can get a clear view of what’s steaming in your industry as a result it’ll help you realistic social media goals for your business.

For example, your competitor is mainly active on Facebook but barely shows up on other popular platforms including Instagram, LinkedIn, or Twitter. So if your business has potential on these platforms, this is your chance to shine!

Along with Facebook you can maintain presence on other platforms and stay ahead of the competition. 

This way you’ll not only keep you updated in the game but also create a reliable and professional image in the eyes of your audience.

Step 6: Determine your key metrics and KPIs

Now let’s focus on actual data that truly matters for your business success. Your business should always be data-driven, whatever your goals or company is about, let the metrics guide your decisions.

Let’s highlight the essential metrics, I am talking about:

• Post Reach: This number shows how many unique users saw your post. Answer this question– How’s the reach of your content?
• Post Click: This figure shows how many clicks your content receives. It is another important metric to consider, to know what type of content is gaining more popularity or encouraging people to make a purchase.
• Track performance hashtags: Identify which hashtags you use very often and which goes more well with your business. Knowing these fundamental insights will help you scale your business strategy and hashtag usage.
• Post Impressions: It shows the level of user engagement. The more the number of impressions the more people are willing to interact. Plus, it shows how your audience connects with your content. 
• Emotional Connection: You need to find out how users feel about your brand. What type of emotion works when people see your business post? 

This metric will help you stay in tune with your audience’s perception and make your marketing campaign more impactful.

Step 7: Post engaging and relevant content

Personally, I follow many brands on Facebook and Instagram. But surprisingly not everyone’s content attracts me enough to approach them. 

Exactly, that is why sharing engaging and informative content is so important. Your posts should be 70% informational, 20% emotional, and 10% promotional. 

Since compelling content not only grabs consumers’ attention but also gets noticed by the platform’s algorithm. This causes your posts to come in front of more users. 

According to social media strategists, the first thing they suggest is to do market research. If you know what your target audience wants, you can always deliver relevant content. 

Try to provide various forms of content such as images, infographics, videos, stories, short videos (reels), live streams, and more. For instance:

• Gen Zs can relate to and enjoy more humorous content.
• Almost 53% of users engage most with images/photos/infographics. So try to use them more in your posts.
• Unlike Boomers, Generation Z, and Millennials love reels.

Also, try providing content in different categories to keep users interested and keep coming. For example, give content like:

• How-tos, expert advice
• Industry insights
• QnA sessions, polls, and contests
• Exciting announcements

Conclusion

This guide is all about building a strong social media presence for your brand. I know it may seem overwhelming to promote across multiple social platforms. But don’t worry! By following the easy steps I’ve outlined above, you can create an effective social media marketing plan that works for your business.

Additionally, to make your marketing campaign more successful, consider using Bit Social. With its Auto post feature, you can automatically share your blogs on several platforms. Plus, using its advanced scheduling feature, you can ensure your posts go live during peak engagement hours. 

Start your free trial today and see how Bit Social can simplify your social media strategy. Trust me, it’ll be worth it!