Information in this blog post was obtained from Hubspot Blog, Hootsuite, and Sprout Social.
Remember late the other night when you were scrolling through social media and you saw an ad or a picture of that product that you just had to have? Maybe it was that pair of Jordan 1’s, that graphic tee, or those perfect pants that you ended up buying. What made you buy that product so suddenly? Simple, it was social media marketing or SM marketing for short. In this post, I am going to cover the basics of social media marketing in hopes that I can simplify the concept and help you to better understand what it's all about.
What is Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing is exactly what is sounds like, marketing through social media. It’s when businesses used social media platforms to raise brand awareness, promote their products, and ultimately drive people to purchase it. Without marketing, whether it be on social media or in any other form, businesses wouldn't be able to put their product in front of customers which means that they also wouldn't be able to make a profit either. While that might sound complicated, lets break it down below. First we will talk about the basic components of social media marketing, then we will move onto the steps to create a social media marketing strategy, and finally we will will cover the different types of social media platforms that can be used.
Basic Components of Social Media Marketing
This blog post by Hootsuite does a great job of outlining and explaining what social media marketing is and the important components that make it up. These components include things like content creation, scheduling and publishing content, data analysis, advertising/paid promotions, and social listening. Below each term is explained to help you better understand them.
Content creation: creating new things like posts, photos, videos, etc. that your customers or potential customers are interested in.
Scheduling/Publishing content: process of deciding when (schedule) and where (publishing) to share the content you created. Keep in mind that several layers of editing have to happen before content can be published.
Data analysis: keeping track of and examining how your content is performing after it was published.
Advertising/Paid promotions: advertisements or campaigns that help increase the popularity of the content you published. Think of all the ads you see just when you scroll through different social media platforms.
Social listening: keeping up with and listening to social trends or posts that could be potential opportunities for your business. This can also allow you to be proactive by letting you eliminate possible things that could hurt your business or brand reputation.
Each of these components helps contribute to a social media marketing campaign and helps a business to raise brand awareness, promote their products, and hopefully convince a customer to buy. Remember that social media marketing, just like any other type of marketing, the main goal is to convince people to buy your product/service and create a profit for the business. Now that you are familiar with the basics of what social media marketing is, let’s look at how to create a social media marketing strategy. Without a strong social media marketing strategy, a business can’t expect to be effective or to have a strong social media presence.
Creating a Social Media Marketing Strategy
Every business is going to have a different social media marketing strategy because every business is unique. A social media marketing strategy should be based on the audience the that the business wants to reach, the product the business is trying to sell, and the social media platforms they are going to use. Below is a list of steps from Hubspot that helps outline how to create a social media marketing strategy.
Research you buyer personas and target audience
Decided which social media platforms you will use to market your product
Establish important metrics
Know your competition
Create content that engages your customers or potential customers
Create and organize a schedule for your content
Keep in mind that the purpose of this strategy is to promote the product or service that a company has and ultimately, get people to consume it in the form of views, purchases, likes, etc. The first step is to research your buyer personas. This means that you need to know the people who are buying your product. Why are they buying it? What needs or wants do they have? How can the product meet those needs and/or wants? The more you know your target audience, the better you can tailor your social media marketing strategy so that it will capture their attention. The second step is to decide what platforms you will use. Every social media platform reach a different audience, so it is important to understand each and decide which one is best for your product and audience. The third step is to establish important metrics. Metrics are the ways that you can measure the success of your posts on social media. Examples of metrics are things
Reach: number of users that saw your content
Number of Clicks: number of people who clicked on or engaged with your content
Hashtag success: how often was your hashtag used, and was it popular
Engagement: how well audience the perceives your content and their willingness to engage with and use it
Each of these metrics can be used to see whether or not your content was a success. Obviously, the more people you can reach and the more your audience engages, the more successful your content, and in turn your social media marketing strategy will be. The fourth step in creating a social media marketing strategy is to know your competition. It’s important to know what other people in the industry are doing because you are most likely competing for the same target audience and other resources. If you know what your competition is doing, you can not only get ahead of them, but also might be able to learn from them and use their strategies as well. The fifth step is then to create content. Remember from the beginning that content creation is one of the basic components of social media marketing. Without good content, social media marketing is pointless. The whole purpose of it is to promote good content that your customers, or target audience, wants to consume. Content creation is key for a good social media marketing strategy. The last step is to then organize a schedule to post your content. Remember that this was also one of the basic components of social media marketing that we talked about at the beginning as well. Just like content creation, a content schedule is vital to a good social media marketing strategy. You need to know how often to post content based off how often your consumers want to see it. That might be daily, weekly, monthly, or even yearly. It all depends on the company, the brand they are trying to promote, and what the target audience wants. Now that we’ve discussed how to build a strategy, let’s look at the different platforms that can be used to implement that strategy.
Social Media Platforms
Now that you know more about the basics of what social media marketing is, and how to create a strategy, let’s talk about the platforms that can be used. A platform is any type of social media that let's people share, post, and engage with content. It’s important that when a business is using social media marketing, they fully understand each platform and the target audience that it is reaching. Remember that part of creating a successful social media marketing strategy is to research and know who you want to reach, or your target audience. This is important because not every product or service that a business offers is going to be suited for every person. If a business targets the audience that their product is designed for then they will be more likely to convince that audience to buy or consume the product/service. For social media marketing, that means knowing which social media platform to use so that you can reach your desired audience. The image below gives examples of several common social media platforms that a business might choose from.
Notice that each of these platforms illustrated in the image is unique in both the content it provides and the people that use it. For example, most people in their 20’s probably don’t use Facebook much anymore. They are going to be more likely to use Snapchat or TikTok. Before a business uses a platform in their social media marketing strategy, they need to analyze who the product is for and then choose the platform based off the type of people who use it. Hubspot and SproutSocial both have great posts that provide detailed data about social media platforms including the best use for each platform, the generation that is most likely to use the platform, the number of users on the platform, and the impact that the platform has on the industry.
Now, What's Next?
Although it might seem complicated at first, social media marketing is simply when a business uses social media to market their product or brand. Keep in mind that marketing is important to every business because it is how they get customers to see and hopefully buy their product/service. In the case of content, the goal is the same, to get people to consume, read, like, and even share the content. It all goes back to the bottom line, making a profit. The more people that buy a product/service or consume content, the more money a business can make. It all starts with knowing your audience, creating the content or product they want, and then using social media to put your content or product in front of that audience. To make the most of social media marketing, it’s important to first understand the basic concepts, know how to create a strategy, and understand how to utilize the different platforms available.
Since you are now more familiar with social media marketing, you might be asking yourself what's next? If this post interested you, then you should continue learning more the topic. My colleague Jordan has a great post about some crucial pointers for social media marketing that can be found here. There are also many other great resources to help you learn which are listed below and linked throughout this post. Social media marketing is a field that will always be changing which means that we, as future professionals must always be adapting and learning so that we can change with it.
Resources
Baker, K. (2022, March 11). Social media marketing: The ultimate guide. Hubspot. Retrieved February 26, 2022, from https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/social-media-marketing
Hootsuite. (n.d.). Social media marketing. Hootsuite. Retrieved February 26, 2022, from https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-definitions/social-media-marketing/
Kenan, J. (2022, September 22). Social media marketing: What is it and how to build your strategy. SproutSocial. Retrieved February 26, 2022, from https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-marketing-strategy/
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