The Ultimate Guide to Social Media Marketing

As a result of the sheer rise in popularity of short-form video we saw in 2022, one thing became unmistakably clear: you need to be leveraging social media for your business. Marketers have been using social media marketing as a viable way to increase brand awareness for quite some time, but now more than ever it’s important to have a diversified strategy that meets your audience wherever they may be engaging. So where do you start? Let’s jump in!

Social Media Marketing Defined

Social media marketing is a broad term used to describe content creation for any social media platforms. It’s leveraged in an effort to build community, increase brand awareness, showcase your products and services, engage directly with your target audience, and increase traffic to your website. This can include creating organic posts, carousels, long and short-form video, as well as paid social media advertising for any of the channels. Let’s have a closer look at some of the most popular platforms.

Platforms

Facebook
Potentially the most famous of them all, Facebook has lead the social media scene since launching in 2004. It mostly attracts Gen X and Millennials, and as of July 2022 there were 2.9 billion users, which equates roughly to 36% of the global population.

Instagram
Falling not too far behind Facebook is Instagram, which has had an online presence since 2010. The platform became the go-to place for sharing compelling photo and video content and it is the reason hashtags are relevant. Currently the host to a primarily Millennial audience, there were 1.4 billion Instagram users as of July 2022.

LinkedIn
With the aim of providing a presence for professional online networking, LinkedIn has established itself as the ultimate B2B online marketing tool. Primarily reaching Boomers, Gen X and Millennials, there were 849.6 million users engaging as of July 2022.

Pinterest
A social networking platform used to create visual storyboards, Pinterest provides users with inspiration for anything from digital marketing to new recipes to wedding trends. While the majority of its 433 million users as of July 2022 are Millennials, it also attracts Boomers, Gen X and Gen Z users.

TikTok
At last, we arrive at the short-form video platform that has taken the world by storm: TikTok. Gen Z, the platform’s primary audience, has taken over social media trendsetting (along with some Millennials) on the app. With 1 billion monthly active users, projections suggest that TikTok will only continue to grow for both B2B and B2C marketing.

Twitter
While there have been some significant changes to the app in recent months after Elon Musk’s takeover in October 2022, Twitter has been the main platform for Millennials to discuss things online in 280 characters or less. As of July 2022, there were 486 million users, though given the company’s current instability, additional declines are expected.

YouTube
Finally, the second most visited website globally who has maintained its status as a leader in long-form video for music and entertainment content, YouTube is a social media powerhouse. While Millennials are its primary audience, it successfully attracts users of all age and gender demographics, with almost 2.5 billion users as of July 2022.

How Social Media Can Benefit Your Business

While the benefits of social media are plenty, here are five ways that it can truly impact your business once you’ve established a solid online presence:

1. Organically increase brand awareness
2. Help you gain new leads
3. Increase your conversion rate
4. Help build personal relationships with your audience
5. Allow you to learn from the competition

Creating an Effective Marketing Strategy

The content you create will likely differ across the platforms you choose. However, developing an effective strategy does follow a specific process. Here are the essential steps:

• Establish your goals
• Define your buyer persona
• Get to know your target audience
• Choose the right channels
• Assess and get to know your competitors
• Create a content calendar
• Determine your post cadence
• Begin content creation
• Schedule your posts
• Measure the results

Think of your strategy as the roadmap to your content plan and be willing to try new ways to engage your audience, always keeping in mind how they like to be reached.

Using Analytics to Measure Your Impact

A crucial part of the process is analyzing how your content performs by tracking the metrics. Here are 10 metrics to focus on:

1. Engagement: This is any action a user took to interact with your content (a like, a comment, etc.)
2. Reach: The total number of users who have seen any of your content
3. Follows: Indicating how many people decided to follow you after viewing your content
4. Impressions: Better understood as the number of people who saw your content appear in their feed
5. Views: The number of times users watched your video content
6. Profile visits: The number of people who decided to click on your profile
7. Mentions: How many times a user made a reference to your profile in a post, story, or other piece of content
8. Tags: How many times a user added your profile to a piece of their content
9. Reposts: The number of times a user posted your content to their own profile
10. Shares: The number of times a user shared your content with their own network

When you have a chance to review the data, it becomes apparent which content is resonating with your audience. If you have high engagement, several profile visits, and some reposts or shares, then you can draw a data-informed conclusion that your audience is looking for more of this type of content. Use your data insights to gauge what works and what doesn’t —  the numbers tell you a story.

At King’s Crest Global, we offer all of these services and more so that you can be sure you have an effective social media marketing strategy that is aligned across all of your business channels. Get in touch here to get started with us!