Social media marketing is one of the most popular marketing tools being used by businesses today. For those of you that are not already familiar with social media marketing, it involves the use of different social media platforms to promote a business, product, or service.

Some examples of free social media channels that may be used by businesses include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Pinterest, SnapChat, YouTube, and LinkedIn.

Social media marketing is popular with businesses for a number of reasons. These include that it is: 

• Accessible to all types of businesses, as anybody is able to create a profile and start posting online instantly
• Free to post on most social media channels, making it an enticing prospect for small business owners who do not have the budget for more costly marketing (e.g. TV or print advertising)
• Easy to get started, with no experience needed!

All of these are things that make social media marketing attractive to small business owners. Other benefits include that it plays an important role in increasing brand awareness, driving traffic to your website, and increasing engagement with your target audience. 

Also, in an increasingly digital world, it has become almost essential for businesses to have a social media presence. Around 4.48 billion people use social media worldwide, with the average user engaging with 6.6 different social media platforms. What this means is that if you’re not on social media, you could be missing out on a lot of potential customers! 

So, you’re probably wondering: how can I get started with social media marketing? The answer is that it’s actually very easy! Here are our top six tips for developing your first social media marketing strategy. 

1.   Decide what social media platforms you will be using. This will largely be determined by the types of content that you are wanting to post.

For example, if you are wanting to post primarily longer form video content, YouTube would be a good choice, whereas if you are wanting to post shorter videos, TikTok or Instagram might be a better choice. Likewise, if you are wanting to post only photos, Instagram or Pinterest would both be good choices.

The platform you choose will also be influenced by the demographic you are wanting to reach, as you will want to choose one that is popular within your target audience. 

For example, Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat are some of the most popular social media sites being used by teenagers and young people. By comparison, Facebook tends to be more popular amongst older demographics.

2.   Decide what types of social media marketing strategies you want to use. For example, do you want to build your social media campaigns around: 

• Content marketing or content creation (where you create content to share with your target audience, such as photos and videos)
• Hashtagging (where you use relevant hashtags to maximise your reach and engagement)
• User-generated content (which involves sharing or re-posting content from your customers)
• Community engagement (where you use social media to interact with your target audience)
• Promotions, giveaways, and contests
• Paid marketing campaigns (where you pay for your ads to be displayed to users that fall within your target demographic)
• Influencer marketing (where you partner with popular influencers or celebrities in your niche, and offer them free products or to promote your business to their following) 

The type of social media marketing approach that you choose will depend on several factors, including the type of product or service you are promoting, demographic you are targeting, and your overall business goals. 

3.   Decide what your posting schedule will look like. For one thing, you’ll want to ensure that you are posting at times when your target audience is most active. Generally speaking, between 3pm and 9pm is a good time to post. Weekends are also good times to post.

You will also want to ensure that you are posting regularly. This is one of the best ways to ensure that your posts are continuously popping up in people’s newsfeeds. It is best to post daily if possible. If not, you should aim to post at least a few times per week. This increases your chances of reaching new followers, whilst also keeping your existing ones engaged and interested. 

4.   See what your competitors are doing. Look at the social media profiles of other brands and businesses that are offering similar products or services, and take note of things like: 

• How they are using different platforms, and adapting their content to suit different social networking sites
• What they are doing well, and what is attracting the most engagement
• Things that they are doing that you like, and which you would like to incorporate into your own strategy

5.   Start posting content! Some platforms have in-built content creation tools that take the hard work out of content creation – for example, TikTok, which allows you to import images and video from your phone and use the app’s interface to collate this into a short clip. YouTube also has an in-built video editor that will allow you to upload and edit your videos all on the one site.

Other platforms allow you to add text, images, and video straight from your phone without any editing needed – for example, Instagram and Twitter.

With that being said, there are several softwares out there (such as Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop) that can help you to create higher-quality content for these platforms. There are also softwares like Canva, which make content creation easy for beginners who have no previous graphic design experience.

6.   Keep monitoring your page to see how you’re doing. There are a number of different tools out there that can help you to audit your current social media activity, which will show you what you’re doing well and what you can improve on. 

HootSuite is one example of a platform that can be used to track your metrics and analytics, and see how your posts are performing on different social media networks.

If you are new to social media marketing, it can be worth working with an agency or expert who is experienced in social media. Partnering with a professional will allow you to create an effective social media marketing plan right off the bat. This will ensure that you are creating high-quality content, which will give you the best possible chance of reaching your target audience, maximising your engagement rates, driving traffic to your website, and turning leads into conversions. 

Social media marketing is just one of the types of marketing we can help with at Tomedia. You can find out more about our social media marketing services here. You can also find out more about some of our other marketing services here.