What Is Social Media Marketing?

Jun 15

Social media is used by more than 53% of the global population, so there’s no wonder it has become one of the primary - if not the most important - marketing channels. But what actually is social media marketing? What does it involve? (We’ll give you a clue, it’s more than simply heading to Facebook, taking a photo and hitting send!)

What is social media marketing?

Social media marketing is the use of social media networks to connect brands with their audience. It is primarily used to help brands reach their goals, including increasing sales, building brand awareness, and driving people to their website.

Social media marketing involves everything from creating and posting content to your social media accounts, listening to and engaging with your followers, tracking and analysing your performance on platforms, and running paid social media campaigns (ads).

platforms and tools used in social media marketing

Social media marketing involves a great number of platforms, features and tools. The major social media platforms used in social media marketing include:

Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
YouTube
LinkedIn
Snapchat
Pinterest

Each of these platforms have a variety of different features within them, for instance Instagram’s features include in-feed posts, Stories, IGTV videos, Reels, and Live video. Instagram also provides other features that help social media marketers to achieve other purposes, such as Shops which allow brands to sell products directly in-platform.

Outside of the major social media platforms, social media marketers also use other tools to make their job easier to manage. Here are some of the key ones:

Scheduling tools, such as Agorapulse, Buffer, Hootsuite, ContentCal, and more. These make planning and scheduling content to post on multiple social media platforms more manageable and efficient.
Analytics tools, such as Talkwalker, Google Analytics, Sprout Social, and more. Analytics are a key part of a social media marketer’s strategy, as they tell them what content is helping them reach their goals and what is not, among other insights.
Social listening tools, such as Falcon.io, Maybe*, Talkwalker, and more. Social listening is slightly different from analytics: rather than analysing the performance of your own points, it allows you to monitor social media channels for mentions of your brand.
Project management tools, such as Trello, Asana, Zoho, and more. These allow social media marketers to manage many projects or brands they may be working on, as well as collaborate with the broader (marketing) team.

5 key stages of social media marketing

There are many different approaches and strategies when it comes to social media marketing, but it can be broken down into 5 key stages:

1. Strategy

Crafting an effective strategy is all about deciding on your brand goals, selecting which platforms you want to have a presence on, and determining the content you’re going to share.

2. Planning and publishing

Social media marketers can maximise how many people your brand reaches with well-planned content that’s both the right type and is published at the right times.

3. Listening and engagement

Monitoring and responding to social media conversations about your brand is the next step in a social media marketing strategy. This can be achieved through social listening tools (as listed above).

4. (Paid) Advertising

A key difference between traditional and social media marketing is that the latter allows you to specify and target exactly who you want to advertise to. It also allows you to access a far greater audience than those who are already following you or know about your brand.

5. Analytics

This step should be implemented at every possible stage of your social media marketing strategy. Tracking your social media performance with analytics allows you to know how you’re performing and informs your future content and marketing activities. Analytics tools can help social media marketers to do this.

Summary

Social media is one of the primary marketing channels and is crucial to business’ success
Social media marketing is the use of social media networks to connect brands with their audience
Social media marketing involves a great number of platforms, features and tools, including the major social media platforms (like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube) and a range of scheduling, project management, analytics and social listening tools
Social media marketing can be broken down into 5 key stages: Strategy, Planning and Publishing, Listening and Engagement, (Paid) Advertising, and Analytics