Social Media Marketing: The Complete Guide

Are you looking for methods to make your brand viral? If you answered yes, then this guide is for you! Social media platforms have been around for quite a long time. Social media has boomed since the inception of Facebook in 2004. It’s been quite a while since Facebook came into force and dominated the social media marketplace. It gave rise to social media channels like Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, LinkedIn, and so much more.

So, what exactly is social media marketing? Now that we have covered the basics of social media let’s jump right into social media marketing. Social media and marketing go together. It is a part of digital marketing that occupies a huge chunk of marketing services that agencies have to offer. Let’s now take a look at social media platforms that are best for marketing!

Prominent platforms for social media marketing

#1. Facebook

Facebook is a very hybrid platform as it supports all forms of content, along with a daily active user base of more than 2.23 billion. There is no denying that with these numbers, Facebook creates huge potential possibilities for your brand to foster deep relations with customers. However, to make the most of Facebook for your online business, you need to run advertisements. The CPC or Cost per Click for Facebook seems quite cheaper than other platforms.

That being said, there are two ways to work around the Facebook Algorithm and achieve your goal. Let’s discuss these in detail.

Method 1: Establish authority

Establishing authority essentially refers to educating people with your content that is related to the niche of your operations. High-quality content attracts your audiences and makes them want to stay with you for a long time. It would compel them to turn on post notifications, share your content, comment on how valuable your content is and send it across to people who need it.

So, you have established authority in that niche with your expert knowledge and content. Your known audiences will now search for you with the exact phrases or keywords. This means that the algorithm does not need to play a role for you to be discovered, you do not need to use a lot of relevant hashtags, nor do you need to post your content in other Facebook groups to be recognized.

Once you have established authority, people understand the quality of content that you are providing. They will start following you and eagerly wait for new updates. If people are following you, engaging with your content, and sharing your content, you don’t need to worry about investing a lot in Facebook algorithms.

Method 2: Make the most of Facebook Groups

Facebook groups are a very important part of any growth hack strategy. You can make most of Facebook groups by interacting, being social, asking questions, growing your network, thereby helping others in the community. If you only share your content consistently, then you might be kicked out of the group and considered a spammer.

#2. Instagram

Instagram has turned into an indispensable tool for marketers. It is considered as one of the best social media tools for business. In fact, Instagram is paving the way in the B2B ecosystem as well. So, what makes Instagram a class apart from other tools? Let’s look at some of the key factors of Instagram.

Engagement

The engagement on Instagram is in the form of likes, comments, and shares. As compared to Facebook, the engagement on Instagram is quite promising. To increase awareness or to increase the discovery of your content, you need to use fresh, relevant, and evergreen hashtags. One of the most common mistakes that people make with hashtags is that they simply add them without curating the choice of hashtags.

IG Stories

Instagram stories are huge and act as exclusive content as the content disappears in 24 hours. Using IG stories ensures that your customers have a distraction-free focus on your content. These are also interactive in nature, and so you can add CTAs, or ask your viewers to ‘Swipe Up’ to make a purchase or visit a landing page.

IGTV

Instagram TV or IGTV gives Instagrammers a platform that acts as a TV channel. IGTV supports vertical content, and you can share great announcements, updates, adverts along with hashtags for your videos to be discovered.

#3. Twitter

Twitter is a great micro-blogging platform and allows a maximum of 280 characters per tweet. So, as a marketer, your challenge is to send across the message in this text limitation. Apart from this, you can also tweet a picture, video, share your blogs, and website links. Brands and active on Twitter, thereby engaging and conversing with other brands. Research has shown that the best time to reach out to audiences on Twitter is between 12 noon to 3 pm and between 5 to 6 pm.

You must remember that Twitter feeds move quickly as compared to other social platforms. So consider tweeting a few times in this time frame rather than the one post a day routine for LinkedIn and Facebook.

You can also track the analytics to your tweet with tools like Bitly. It also tells you about the demography and geography of the people who have viewed, liked, and shared your tweet. So, if you are working around a product or service that solves customer’s challenges, Twitter is the best place to track these pain points.

There are many online social listing tools available that help automate your search filters, alerts, and automate responses. Having great analytics and social listing tools in place will help you immensely in your social media marketing strategy.

#4. LinkedIn

There is no denying that LinkedIn is the largest professional network across the globe. The platform has around 300 million active monthly users! Therefore, LinkedIn provides a great opportunity for B2B companies. Brands can use this platform to connect with potential clients, buyers, and sellers. With easy access to information like education, work profiles, hobbies, skills, etc. it becomes easy to provide valuable insight.

LinkedIn also offers great opportunities for recruiting, finding influencers, or even running market research. You should consider writing and publishing content that will be helpful to your professional audience. In addition to this, you also consider the peak usage times so that your audience can come across your content in their feeds. Studies have shown that the peak times are between 7 to 8 am, around 12 noon, and between 5 to 6 pm. So, you should consider scheduling your posts between these hours to gain maximum engagement.

#5. Quora

Quora is so much more than just a Q and A forum. It is a great platform for personal branding and establishing thought leadership. Answering questions that your industry asks is a great way to educate your prospects, attract audiences from the top of the funnel, and promote your value proposition. In fact, your profile on Quora showcases your credentials like your website URL, company name, your designation, etc. So, the more you engage, the more view time your credentials get, thereby creating a recurring reputation.

When you develop such a reputation, it compels people to look-up the credentials that you have provided on your profile. This drives traffic to your website or the link to the landing page you shared in your profile. It also additionally encourages people to follow you and the topics or niches that you are writing about or have expertise on.

#6. YouTube

It is no secret that YouTube serves as the second largest search engine across the globe after Google. YouTube, let’s people upload videos and highly engaging content on any topic imaginable. YouTube is, therefore, a great place to get noticed for your brand. Studies have found that 4 out of 5 customers prefer watching a video about a product rather than read about it.

Videos additionally carry an aspect of personal interaction. They help give a name and voice to the brand. However, the key here is to build viewers for your videos. The YouTube algorithm considers the overall performance of your channel while determining ranks. These include the number of followers, the number of videos they watch, the duration of the video they watch, and the interaction or engagement it sparks.

In addition to these, YouTube also considers how audiences respond to individual videos. So, you must promote your videos to gain higher views. The more the views, the higher the ranking. You can design videos that bring across news, information, or updates pertaining to your industry, tips, and tricks to use a product or tool, etc. after monitoring what your audience responds to the most.

Finally, YouTube also considers the relevance of your individual videos. The algorithms match the keywords in the title and description of the search queries, which are typed by users. Therefore, pay attention to the keywords you use and the description you add to your videos.

#7. Pinterest

Pinterest has more than 250 million active users, and so has a huge impact on retail. A recent survey stated that 72% of the users feel that the pins they find on Pinterest influence them to make a purchase without even realizing it. The platform, therefore, offers a great opportunity for brands to showcase their designs and creative visuals of the products they sell, or even the food they serve, infographics based on market research or other graphical representations that demonstrate their brand value.

Pinterest also lets you promote video ads. In fact, studies have shown that these video ads offer brands 4 X brand visibility than non-video ads. Additionally, promoted pins also allow you to share your content that, in turn, attracts more attention and engagement. So, create pins with high-quality images that will attract users.

The platform also offers one-tap pins that bring users onto the page of the content origin. So, design your pages to engage users who will click on your one-tap pins.

#8. Snapchat

If your brand caters to or wishes to engage with millennials, then Snapchat offers you great opportunities. According to a study, around 90% of the users on the platform are below the age of 25.

Let’s first understand how the platform works. Users send across ‘snaps’ or images and short videos to their friends and followers that run for a duration of about 10 seconds and disappear after 24 hours. Though it may seem quite challenging for brands to use this platform, there are many businesses that have seen great success with a promotion like flash sales, giveaway, new launches, etc. Snap Ads allow you to create videos that appear between stories on the platform. Snapchat states that the rate of engagement from these ads is 5X higher than CTR or click-through-rates for ads on other similar platforms.

In addition to Snap ads, creating sponsored lenses and geofilters help you promote your business in a fun way. You can create and share engaging images that audiences would love to share with their networks and create awareness for your brand.

Wrapping it up

Social media today offers your brand an opportunity to demonstrate what it represents to the audiences. Along with promoting your brand, you should also consider using it as a platform to start conversations with prospects and collaborators. Customers turn to social media to connect not only with friends but also to learn more about the brands they love. They value relationships with the brands they buy from, and social media is a great place to cherish, nurture, and grow these relations. So, start creating your online presence with this social media marketing guide.

Have you strategized social media marketing yet? Let us know in the comments below!