What is Social Media Marketing?
- Declan Rix
- May 10, 2024
- 7 min read
Discover the Secrets.
Introduction
With over 4.8 billion active users on social media platforms worldwide, understanding social media isn't just useful for your business. It's essential.
This blog post covers the Introduction to Social Media Marketing, Benefits of Social Media Marketing, Key platforms for Social Media Marketing, How to get started with Social Media Marketing and Challenges and Considerations with Social Media.
By the end of this blog we hope you'll have a greater understanding of Social Media Marketing and enable you to kickstart your online journey in the social space.
Weekly Quote:
"Content is fire, social media is gasoline." - Jay Baer
The Basics
Introduction to Social Media Marketing
What is it? Social Media Marketing is one of the main pillars in the online space, it bridges the gap between a business and their customers.
Social media started off as a something for users to communicate and share content amongst friends, family, colleagues and online groups. But what does this mean for a business, well you have two ways to approach social media marketing. Those being organic and paid outreach.
Organic content is like that of a post to your personal account, it will reach whoever follows you or those that happen to discover it via the platforms recommendations.. Whereas paid outreach is defined on data such as demographic information, interests & behaviours and engagement metrics to hundreds of thousands of users.
Benefits of Social Media Marketing
Brand Awareness is an amazing benefit to social media marketing, whether paid or organic. You can showcase your brand online for free with organic. A post on social media from your business is akin to that of leaving a poster in the town square, however on social media the town square is the platform. Brand awareness is a luxury for big businesses, as it has no clear call to action apart from saying "We exist, this is who we are" . If you are a smaller business its better to do brand awareness organically. Because even though you can measure the results of paid content online through social ads, brand awareness ads are like throwing money to the wind, focus your budget on clear goals with a CTA. (Call to Action)
Engagement, using the town square analogy if you put a poster up its hard to track its effectiveness and how many people actually interact with it. Whereas on social media, you know how many people have viewed it, how many repeat views, if they engaged with a reaction or a comment. It allows customers existing or potential to directly interact with your brand on a more personal level. But its not just a one way street, you too can comment back and interact with the community, of which you should be doing! It all helps to build a "fanbase" and earn rapport.
Lead Generation, platforms have the people, your target market is likely there. Lead generation on social media is like casting a fishing line into a lake full of favourite fish to catch. Your target market is there you just need to reel them in with relevant content.
Customer support, social media acts as another channel for your business. Some people may find it easier to message your business directly on a social platform opposed to emailing you. Even if you redirect the user to an email system its another form of outreach for your business. This approach is the same as a business offering multiple payment methods, you want to make it as easy as possible for people to pay. Just like you want to make it easy for people to contact you.
Key Platforms for Social Media Marketing
Facebook, The most used social platform. Whilst Facebook is aging and perhaps falling off with the younger generations its still relevant and an essential platform for your business. Its great for all use cases.
Instagram, acquired by Meta in 2012 is an aesthetic storytelling, portfolio, visual showcase style platform. This is the got to platform to showcase designs, artworks or photos to your audience.
Meta, Allows for great targeting and analytical tools across its platforms like Facebook and Instagram (and most likely Threads, when its settled in) all of which can be managed in the Meta Business Suite.
LinkedIn, its the Facebook for Business. LinkedIn thrives in B2B (Business to Business). Like said before, you want to go where you target market is. If your selling SaaS (Software as a Service) you will thrive on LinkedIn but if your a Local Café not so much. Recommend actions on LinkedIn for more B2C (Business to Consumer) would be showcasing awards, staff achievements, promoting job opportunities, and connecting with colleagues.
X (Formerly Twitter) is not as regulated as other platforms mentioned. Although while some may find success on X based on your niche I wouldn't recommend it widely because of the content on the platform. X as of 2024 is flooded with significant adult content, political debates and hate speech. Of which you most likely don't want your brand associated with. A safer alternative to this format would be Meta's Threads.
TikTok is another platform with lots of debate around it because of its content but is by far the most popular app and platform amongst Gen Z. The content on the platform is naturally more "playful" and encourages more of a meme culture than serious traditional advertising. It involves hopping on trends, songs and UGC (User Generated Content). Due to its short form content any clip can go viral, if it can work for them it can work for you. Just make sure your memes are on the safer side.
How to get started with Social Media Marketing
Identify the relevant platforms that are associated with your niche and target market.
Acknowledge and learn platform policies of what content is suitable and continue to stay up to date.
Identify your goals, your brand voice and approach to crisis management.
Create a content plan.
Create relevant content for said platform and target market, whether organic or paid.
Sign up for said platforms and start posting according to your plan.
Stay consistent with posts.
Measure results of your posts, identify what works. Optimise for your goals.
Engage with your followers, like their comments and use intuition to reply where appropriate.
Scale your efforts as appropriate.
Create campaigns/ads for your goals.
Update/Revise plan and goals as appropriate.
Challenges and Considerations in Social Media
Brand voice before you even get started you want to establish a "Brand voice". Aka what tone and presentation do you want to portray to your audience online. The best approach across the board I'd recommend is typically a enthusiastic professional with a hint of playfulness . Remember to cater to your audience and use appropriate jargon/slang.
Crisis Management for not if but when you have to deal with one or multiple negative people online, have a structured approach to dealing with them. A good rule is if its blatant harassment/slurring with no real context then these comments/engagements can be hidden or deleted from your post or blocked if repeat offenders. But if its genuine criticism but with some anger mixed in the best thing to do is acknowledge the person and push the conversation off the platform to assist them via another private channel.
Platform evolution stay on top of policies, algorithms and features offered. Social Media Marketing isn't a "one and done" its constantly changing. Optimise your strategy to achieve the best results and stay within the rules.
"How do I make relevant content?" Put yourself in your customers shoes, what do they ask. What problems do they have. How can your product/service solve their problems. Perhaps your product/service isn't based on selling a solution to a problem, but instead is selling a lifestyle. Create content that the lifestyle of that person identifies with. Red Bull does this perfectly, they are an energy drink company that is involved in hundreds of things and all their socials are "X" event or "Y" event normally showcasing some crazy sporting achievement. Red Bull doesn't sell energy drinks on their social platforms, they sell adrenaline and action.
"I'm running out of Ideas, I cant keep posting daily content!" You will struggle with ideas and will bore your audience based on your content if you are posting every single day. In some cases daily posts can work but its a lot of effort and isn't a "spur of the moment" thing. Daily posts only work if the content is top tier and has some form of differentiation in its content. Posts need to be planned in advance and its okay to just post once or so a week at the start. Think quality over quantity.
"I don't know whether to do Paid or Organic content?" this entirely depends on your budget and your goal. If you want to promote your brand then organic is fine unless you have the extra in the budget. Where as if you are promoting a new product or service then paid content is preferable as you are reaching a larger market compared to just your fans and followers. Use intuition and allocate your budget appropriately, social media ad platforms like Meta Business suite show you how many users are likely to see your ad based on your ad budget allocation, this allows you to scale appropriately before spending.
"I have another problem not listed!" Please let us know, we'd love to help! Leave us a comment below or email us at hello@craveclixmarketing.com
Conclusion
As a business being active in a channel like social media is less of a choice and more of a requirement in modern marketing strategies, you need to be active where your customer base is, you need to engage with your fans and mostly provide consistent and relevant content.
Social media has stood the test of time and its here to stay with platforms like Facebook still knocking around since 2005. Its not some fad you can just skip out on anymore if you didn't have the interest at the time. Your competitors are likely already on it, so you should be as well.
You shouldn't have to learn and juggle another role on top of your existing busy work schedule. Even say for instance you wanted to start an internal team, how are you going to qualify the position of the vacancy when you yourself may lack the knowledge to know they can do the job?
Make the easy choice, take the stress away and book a discovery call today and we can help your business venture into the online space of Social Media Marketing.
Call on 01502 819777
Best regards, Declan Rix
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