What is Social Media Marketing? 5 Things You Should Know

Social media is something we all seem to know about nowadays. You might even have a social media profile or maybe even appear on a few social media channels. But what is social media marketing? It’s the use of any of these social media platforms where you can promote your products or service to anyone who has a profile on them. But it’s more than just that.

1. Different Types Of Social Media Channels

Starting with the basics, there are many different types of social media channels. You might even have a few profiles, whether they be business or personal profiles. 

Facebook is great for staying in touch with family and friends, but it’s also a vital way to stay connected with your customers, prospects, and even company fans. With Facebook you’re allowed to build a business page which you can post updates, videos, images, or really any type of content either organically or paid. This is a great platform to track how well or poorly your marketing efforts may be and where there could be room for improvement. 

Twitter is another great channel that is similar to Facebook in the aspect of staying connected with people, but in a much shorter way. What we mean by this is that there is a character maximum that you cannot exceed when making a post. You also can’t exceed more than four images per post. Although it has some slight restrictions, it has some qualities that are slightly different than other social media platforms. You can use hashtags (the # symbol) in front of any word or phrase that acts sort of like a keyword you would use in a traditional search engine marketing campaign. When someone goes to search the hashtag, you will appear. Depending on how relevant or irrelevant you are for that trending hashtag depends on where you will appear in the page. Overall, Twitter is great for quick, short updates, as it’s more of a fast moving social media channel compared to others.

Instagram is a social media channel that is all about pictures and videos. This is a great platform if you have a brand that is more visual than others. You are able to post up to ten photos right in the Instagram feed itself or even make a short story that will appear at the top of the channel for all your followers to view. 

LinkedIn is a little different from a normal social media channel and some might not even consider it “social.” But it’s great for businesses or companies that are more B2B (Business to Business) since it’s primarily used to connect with other brands, coworkers, employees, companies, and so forth. If you want to promote a service or brand on LinkedIn, simply write a post, post a picture or video with it, and send it out to the LinkedIn world. 

There are plenty of other social media channels, but these are the main four that GoingClear likes to focus on. We’ve seen great success with each depending on what type of industry a company is in, since each social media channel is unique in its own way.

2. Meet Your Marketing Goals

Social media might not seem like the place where you can actually meet some of your marketing goals, but in reality, it’s actually one of the best marketing strategies to utilize in today’s day and age. 

Maybe you have a marketing goal of increasing your site traffic, raising leads for the month, or simply enough just growing your brand awareness. Social media channels are great for all three of these metric goals. 

3. Communication Is Key

Some companies may find it hard to communicate with customers or prospects without social media. This is why many of them utilize the different platforms for social media marketing – to stay connected. 

Each social media channel features tools where you can chat or message in real time. For example, you or your business can also post comments back if a customer comments first on your post or advertisement. This communication is actually a vital part of using social media channels to market a product or service. It shows you are engaging customers individually and that every customer matters. You might have ten customers if you own a small business or you might have hundreds of thousands of customers that you could give a response to quickly and easily. 

Social media allows you to show the effort you are willing to give to each unique customer or prospect, and it makes people more likely to do business with an actual person compared to a company that doesn’t communicate in a more humanized way. 

4. Different Strategies for Different Goals

Social media marketing also allows you to approach with different strategies depending on what your goals are. Are you looking for more leads? Are you just looking to drive traffic to your website or a certain landing page? Social media marketing is great for many different types of goals.

Depending on what social media channel you are using, you are able to choose what your main goals are when you start to develop your campaign. Let’s say you want to show to as many people as possible to raise brand awareness. The social media channel of your choosing will be able to do that and your audience will be broader than usual. 

If you are looking to drive sales or gain more leads, you can set up audiences that are interested in your brand or have similar interests in a certain category that is related to what you sell. You can also track your website to see what people have visited your website and have your ads show to those specific individuals. There are many ways to drive leads, and these are just a few.

5. Huge Audiences for Little Cost

Lastly, social media marketing is one of the best marketing formats to utilize. Not only are you reaching people that are very likely to be a customer, if they aren’t already one, but you can reach new people that can turn into customers very quickly depending on how strong your marketing efforts are. The best part is, it’s relatively cheap compared to other marketing strategies! 

When you decide to market a product or service on Facebook or LinkedIn, for example, you get to pick out audiences that have similar interests to what your brand is all about. This can range from 100 people to over 100,000 people. Your budget doesn’t even determine how many people you are eligible to show to. As long as you have a budget set, whether it’s $5 or $5,000, you can show to as many people as your audience is set to.