Social Media Marketing 101

By JULI LIN

Chances are, you’re a user of some form of social media, whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Snapchat - there are too many platforms to possibly name. Did you know that the average person has 8.5 social media accounts?

Social media is such an important part of today’s society, with a total of about 3.5 billion users around the world. On all these social media platforms, you’re bombarded with advertising, left and right. For brands, businesses and advertisers, it’s a great way to reach target audiences in large volumes. Because of how easy it is to access and because it's so easy to reach a large number of people at a time, social media marketing and advertising is a big part of what makes the (business) world go round.

Before we get started – just to make sure we’re all on the same page definitions-wise – social media marketing is the utilization of social media platforms by businesses in order to promote and advertise their products and services.

There are benefits aplenty to utilizing the power of social media and the Internet:

1. Increase brand awareness and exposure

Through your posts being shared, and each time your post gets liked or shared, you can reach a wider audience with just one click! This increases the number of potential customers you’ll get, and you can also build up your brand’s reputation, thus creating a stronger brand.

2. Cost-efficiency

Social media marketing is cost-effective. According to a study done by Content Factory, the average business spends $200-300 per day on social media marketing, and the industry average is 11.7% (of the total marketing budget).

3. More potential customer traffic to your pages and websites

Each post on social media and each word you use increases the likelihood of a potential customer finding your brand. Social media expands your market, allowing people unfamiliar with your business to stumble across your brand.

Related to this is search engine optimization. With every post that gets liked or shared, your search engine ranking goes up - this makes it easier for your brand to come up in search results when people type in certain words.

4. Direct customer engagement

Social media helps to make businesses and brands seem more personable, more personalized - your business also becomes a part of your audience’s daily life because you’re right there on their timeline or feed.

Bonus: adding personalized feel and direct engagement helps build customer satisfaction, brand loyalty and brand authority/credibility.

5. Direct customer engagement

This is a benefit in itself because you’re able to communicate directly with your customers in the comments section or in your direct messages - you can get immediate feedback and be able to address their questions/concerns!

6. Insights

Social media apps/platforms have features for insights which, well, give you insight on the social media performance of your brand. For example, if you’ve set your page to a ‘business’ page on Instagram, it does insights pretty well - this includes the number of profile visitors, engagement over time/days, number of accounts reached, the number of people who see your posts, and the number of interactions between you and the user (comments, shares, etc.). Super useful!