Business and Social Media
Posted: Wed Jan 22, 2025 4:36 am
While anyone can sign up for social media, social media platforms have become an important part of marketing for businesses of all sizes. The key to being successful on social media is to not treat it as an extra appendage, but to treat it with the same care, respect, and attention as the rest of your marketing efforts.
Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms to connect with your audience to build your brand, increase sales, and drive website traffic. This involves posting great content on your social media profiles, listening to and engaging your followers, analyzing your results, and running ads on these social networks.
The major social media platforms (at the moment) are Facebook , Instagram , Twitter , LinkedIn , Pinterest , YouTube , TikTok , and Snapchat .
Instagram
There are also a variety of social media management tools that help businesses make the most of the social media platforms mentioned above. For example, Buffer is a social media management tool platform, which can help you achieve success with your social media marketing. Whether you are looking to build a brand or grow your business.
A quick overview of social media marketing
Social media marketing started with advertising. Businesses would share their content on social media to drive traffic to their websites and hopefully generate sales as well. But social media has matured far beyond just being a place to broadcast content.
Today, businesses use social media in many different ways. For example, a business that is concerned about what people are saying about its brand would monitor social media conversations and respond to relevant mentions (social media listening and engagement). A business that wants to understand how it is performing on social media would analyze its social media reach, engagement, and sales with an analytics tool (social media analytics). A business that wants to reach a specific audience group at scale will run highly targeted social media ads (social media advertising).
In general, they are often also referred to as social media management.
Fundamental pillars of social media marketing
Strategy
Before we dive in and post anything on social media, let’s take a step back and look at the bigger picture. The first step is to think about your goal, your social media strategy.
What are your goals? How can social media help you achieve your business objectives? Some businesses use social media to increase brand awareness, others use it to drive website traffic and sales. Social media can also help you build engagement with your brand, build a community, and serve as a customer service channel for your customers.
Which social media platforms do you want to focus on? The main social media platforms as mentioned above are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, TikTok, and Snapchat. There are also smaller, up-and-coming platforms, such as Tumblr and Anchor, and social messaging platforms, such as Messenger, WhatsApp, and WeChat. When starting out, it's better to choose a few platforms that you think your target audience is on than to be on every platform.
What type of content do you want to share? What type of content will best engage your target audience? Is it images, videos, or links? Is it educational or entertaining content? A good place to start is by creating a buyer persona, which will help you answer these questions. And this doesn’t have to be this way forever – it’s not set in stone – you can always change your strategy based on how your social media posts are performing.
Planning and publishing
Social media marketing for small and medium-sized businesses usually starts with a consistent social media presence. Nearly three billion people (3,000,000,000!) use social media. By being present on social media platforms, you give your brand the opportunity to be discovered by your future customers.
Posting on social media is as simple as sharing a blog post, image, or video on a social media platform. It’s exactly like you would share on your personal Facebook profile. But you’ll want to plan your content ahead of time rather than creating and posting content spontaneously. Additionally, to ensure you’re maximizing your social media reach, you need to post quality content that provides value and that your audience likes, at the right time and frequency.
There are now a variety of social media scheduling tools that can help you post your content automatically at the time you prefer. This saves you time and allows you to reach your audience when they are most likely to engage with your content.
Listening and commitment
As your business and social media continue to grow, conversations about your brand will also increase. People will comment on your social media posts, tag you in their posts, or message you directly.
People may even talk about your brand on social media without letting you know. So, I’m sure you’ll want to monitor social media conversations about your brand. If it’s a positive comment, you have the opportunity to chiropractor email list surprise and delight them. If not, you can offer assistance and correct or fix the situation before it gets worse.
You can manually check all your notifications across all social media platforms, but this isn't efficient and you won't see posts where your business profile wasn't tagged. Instead, you can use a social media listening and engagement tool that aggregates all your social media mentions and messages, including posts where your business profile wasn't tagged.
Analytics
Along the way, whether you're posting content or engaging on social media, you'll want to know how your social media marketing is working. Are you reaching more people on social media than last month? How many positive mentions are you getting each month? How many people used your brand's hashtag in their social media posts?
Social media platforms provide a basic level of such information. For more detailed analytical information or to easily compare across social media platforms, you can use the wide range of social media analytics tools available.
Advertising
When you have more funds to grow your social media marketing, one area you can consider is social media advertising. Social media ads allow you to reach a broader audience than just those who follow you.
Social media advertising platforms are so powerful these days that you can specify exactly who you want to show your ads to. You can create target audiences based on their demographics, interests, behaviors, and more.
When you run many social media advertising campaigns at once, you should consider using social media advertising tools to make bulk changes, automate processes, and optimize your ads. This will make it much easier for you to manage or optimize your campaigns.
Social media marketing is fleeting
By its nature, social media is a short-attention-span medium – you have to be very skilled at capturing the attention of your customers and potential customers as they quickly scroll through dozens of posts at once. Headlines and ad copy are harder to fit into an attention-grabbing tweet than a traditional newspaper ad so you have to take this into account as well.
You must be active on social media
One of the biggest mistakes small businesses make is opening accounts on every social media platform they deem relevant and then leaving them alone without activity.
It's always best not to have a social media button on your website if you're not going to actively engage with it on a daily basis.
Focus on the customer
Another big mistake small businesses make is using social media to talk about what’s important to them instead of talking about what’s important to their customers. SMBs that use social media, for example, may think it’s great to spread the word about a sale. In some ways, this would be true, but if that’s the only reason you’re engaging on social media, it won’t be beneficial. Your goal should be to provide content that’s relevant to your customer and engage with them to the point that they want to share your post with others.
If you use social media, you should engage with your customers, engage them in a dialogue, and ask for their opinions. For example, you could post a photo of two items you're considering putting up for sale and ask customers which one they like best. This creates a dialogue that leads to shared posts and engaged followers. Plus, if you successfully engage with your customers, you'll be helping yourself to better identify their tastes and preferences.
Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms to connect with your audience to build your brand, increase sales, and drive website traffic. This involves posting great content on your social media profiles, listening to and engaging your followers, analyzing your results, and running ads on these social networks.
The major social media platforms (at the moment) are Facebook , Instagram , Twitter , LinkedIn , Pinterest , YouTube , TikTok , and Snapchat .
There are also a variety of social media management tools that help businesses make the most of the social media platforms mentioned above. For example, Buffer is a social media management tool platform, which can help you achieve success with your social media marketing. Whether you are looking to build a brand or grow your business.
A quick overview of social media marketing
Social media marketing started with advertising. Businesses would share their content on social media to drive traffic to their websites and hopefully generate sales as well. But social media has matured far beyond just being a place to broadcast content.
Today, businesses use social media in many different ways. For example, a business that is concerned about what people are saying about its brand would monitor social media conversations and respond to relevant mentions (social media listening and engagement). A business that wants to understand how it is performing on social media would analyze its social media reach, engagement, and sales with an analytics tool (social media analytics). A business that wants to reach a specific audience group at scale will run highly targeted social media ads (social media advertising).
In general, they are often also referred to as social media management.
Fundamental pillars of social media marketing
Strategy
Before we dive in and post anything on social media, let’s take a step back and look at the bigger picture. The first step is to think about your goal, your social media strategy.
What are your goals? How can social media help you achieve your business objectives? Some businesses use social media to increase brand awareness, others use it to drive website traffic and sales. Social media can also help you build engagement with your brand, build a community, and serve as a customer service channel for your customers.
Which social media platforms do you want to focus on? The main social media platforms as mentioned above are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, TikTok, and Snapchat. There are also smaller, up-and-coming platforms, such as Tumblr and Anchor, and social messaging platforms, such as Messenger, WhatsApp, and WeChat. When starting out, it's better to choose a few platforms that you think your target audience is on than to be on every platform.
What type of content do you want to share? What type of content will best engage your target audience? Is it images, videos, or links? Is it educational or entertaining content? A good place to start is by creating a buyer persona, which will help you answer these questions. And this doesn’t have to be this way forever – it’s not set in stone – you can always change your strategy based on how your social media posts are performing.
Planning and publishing
Social media marketing for small and medium-sized businesses usually starts with a consistent social media presence. Nearly three billion people (3,000,000,000!) use social media. By being present on social media platforms, you give your brand the opportunity to be discovered by your future customers.
Posting on social media is as simple as sharing a blog post, image, or video on a social media platform. It’s exactly like you would share on your personal Facebook profile. But you’ll want to plan your content ahead of time rather than creating and posting content spontaneously. Additionally, to ensure you’re maximizing your social media reach, you need to post quality content that provides value and that your audience likes, at the right time and frequency.
There are now a variety of social media scheduling tools that can help you post your content automatically at the time you prefer. This saves you time and allows you to reach your audience when they are most likely to engage with your content.
Listening and commitment
As your business and social media continue to grow, conversations about your brand will also increase. People will comment on your social media posts, tag you in their posts, or message you directly.
People may even talk about your brand on social media without letting you know. So, I’m sure you’ll want to monitor social media conversations about your brand. If it’s a positive comment, you have the opportunity to chiropractor email list surprise and delight them. If not, you can offer assistance and correct or fix the situation before it gets worse.
You can manually check all your notifications across all social media platforms, but this isn't efficient and you won't see posts where your business profile wasn't tagged. Instead, you can use a social media listening and engagement tool that aggregates all your social media mentions and messages, including posts where your business profile wasn't tagged.
Analytics
Along the way, whether you're posting content or engaging on social media, you'll want to know how your social media marketing is working. Are you reaching more people on social media than last month? How many positive mentions are you getting each month? How many people used your brand's hashtag in their social media posts?
Social media platforms provide a basic level of such information. For more detailed analytical information or to easily compare across social media platforms, you can use the wide range of social media analytics tools available.
Advertising
When you have more funds to grow your social media marketing, one area you can consider is social media advertising. Social media ads allow you to reach a broader audience than just those who follow you.
Social media advertising platforms are so powerful these days that you can specify exactly who you want to show your ads to. You can create target audiences based on their demographics, interests, behaviors, and more.
When you run many social media advertising campaigns at once, you should consider using social media advertising tools to make bulk changes, automate processes, and optimize your ads. This will make it much easier for you to manage or optimize your campaigns.
Social media marketing is fleeting
By its nature, social media is a short-attention-span medium – you have to be very skilled at capturing the attention of your customers and potential customers as they quickly scroll through dozens of posts at once. Headlines and ad copy are harder to fit into an attention-grabbing tweet than a traditional newspaper ad so you have to take this into account as well.
You must be active on social media
One of the biggest mistakes small businesses make is opening accounts on every social media platform they deem relevant and then leaving them alone without activity.
It's always best not to have a social media button on your website if you're not going to actively engage with it on a daily basis.
Focus on the customer
Another big mistake small businesses make is using social media to talk about what’s important to them instead of talking about what’s important to their customers. SMBs that use social media, for example, may think it’s great to spread the word about a sale. In some ways, this would be true, but if that’s the only reason you’re engaging on social media, it won’t be beneficial. Your goal should be to provide content that’s relevant to your customer and engage with them to the point that they want to share your post with others.
If you use social media, you should engage with your customers, engage them in a dialogue, and ask for their opinions. For example, you could post a photo of two items you're considering putting up for sale and ask customers which one they like best. This creates a dialogue that leads to shared posts and engaged followers. Plus, if you successfully engage with your customers, you'll be helping yourself to better identify their tastes and preferences.