Social media is the place where brands can share valuable information with customers, answer questions from followers, and drive traffic to their website. In the past, social media has been treated by companies as another opportunity to sell products—an approach that quickly got stale to audiences. Today, social media marketing isn’t about telling people to buy stuff; it’s about sparking a conversation, helping readers through problems, and building connections.
Defining Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is a strategy that relies on platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and X to promote a brand and its products or services. Brands create engaging content that their audiences want to interact with, attracting new customers and building loyalty among current ones. The content produced can range from customer testimonials to industry news to fun memes—things that connect with the audience rather than making them feel they’re just being sold to.
Why Is Social Media Marketing Important?
Here are a few main reasons:
- Lead Generation – Social media content that appeals to readers is likely to encourage them to share their contact information to learn more about your brand, scoring you more leads.
- Brand Awareness – Posting on a variety of platforms gives you greater online visibility, exposing your brand to a wider audience and making it more recognizable.
- Customer Loyalty – By addressing concerns and answering questions on one of the most common places people share them—social media—you build more positive interactions with your brand, strengthening customer loyalty.
- Market Research – Monitoring social media conversations gives you greater insight into customer needs, behaviors, and preferences, as well as what’s hot in your market/industry right now.
- SEO Ranking – A strong social media presence improves your company’s rankings in search engines, encouraging traffic to your website.
- Precise Audience Reach – If you try to reach everyone, you’ll reach no one. Platforms allow you to reach your specific target audience, so that the right content reaches the right people.
Key Components of Marketing on Social Media
There are a few important parts of social media marketing to keep in mind:
- Content Creation – This involves sharing a mixture of dynamic videos, engaging images, and action-driving copy across channels.
- Audience Engagement – It’s important to not just talk on social media, but listen. Engaging with the audience means responding to comments or direct messages (good and bad) and asking followers questions about their experiences.
- Platform Optimization – Some content works better on certain platforms. Optimal image size and caption length differ based on the channel, so content needs to be adjusted accordingly.
- Tracking Analytics – Impressions, engagement, and conversions are all trackable metrics for your social media. The more people see and respond to your post, the stronger your reach. It’s important to track the action they take upon seeing that post. Are they clicking the link to your website you added, for example?
- Paid Advertising – With paid ads through sites like Facebook, you put your brand in front of more people who fit your target demographic. You can target these ads based on location, age, and even interests.
Platforms to Post On
There are the four main platforms many brands use to reach their current and potential customers:
Designed for industry leaders, LinkedIn is the place to connect with motivated and like-minded professionals. Thought-provoking and informative content tends to perform the best on this platform, including industry news, unique perspectives about emerging topics in your sector, and promotion of webinars and networking events. Keep in mind that posts with images tend to perform twice as well on LinkedIn than text-only ones.
Facebook is meant for a broader demographic than LinkedIn, and effective content on this platform is designed to garner comments. Great options include customer testimonials, infographics, educational videos, and polls asking followers engaging questions. User-generated content like reviews and photos or videos of customers using your product/service shared by your followers and encouraged by your brand is also a must.
X (Formerly Twitter)
X moves at a more rapid pace than other platforms, so any industry news you share needs to be extra timely. Content here must be condensed to 280 characters unless you pay for the premium option, so keep everything short, sweet, and relevant. Sharing articles from credible news sources, responding to customer questions, linking to your recent blog posts, and spotlighting employees are all good ideas for this platform.
Instagram is the most photo- and video-heavy platform of the bunch. High-quality photos of products, behind-the-scenes looks into your company, employee spotlights, and other content that can be backed by great imagery should be the focus on Instagram, but don’t forget a brief and compelling caption that gives context!
Types of Content to Share
Variety is the spice of life—and of social media marketing. It’s essential to mix up the types of content you post to keep followers engaged and give them a well-rounded understanding of your brand. Here are a few ideas:
- Special Promos & Discounts – Share limited-time offers with your followers if they do something for your company, like follow your socials, submit contact info in a private form, or comment on a post.
- Testimonials & Success Stories – People are more likely to trust your brand if someone else has something positive to say about it. Share a quote from a satisfied customer or, better yet, interview them for a testimonial video.
- Industry News – What’s going on in your sector? What new technologies, challenges, or solutions are emerging, and why should people care? Be sure to include links and helpful summaries.
- Insights – More than a link to an article, insightful content is about sharing your brand’s unique experience and perspective regarding a specific topic. If you’re a commercial roofer, for example, you could write an article on LinkedIn about your thoughts on green roofing, positioning your brand as an industry thought leader with its own point of view.
- Statistics – Statistics about your product, company, or industry are great attention grabbers, especially if they alert the reader to a specific problem. These are even more effective when turned into a dynamic image or infographic that emphasizes the information.
- Community Involvement – People value brands when brands value people. If your company donates to charities, gets involved in community events, or follows sustainable practices, share these on your socials. Followers will see your brand as more compassionate and human, deepening their connection with you.
More Ideas!
- Employee Spotlights & Stories
- Company Histories
- Polls & Quizzes
- Live Videos (Q&As, Product/Service Demos)
- Tutorials & How-To Guides
- GIFs & Memes
- Checklists
- Challenges
- Company Values & Milestones
- Links to Blog Posts With Summaries of the Topic
Best Practices for Building Your Brand on Social Media
Define Your Goals & Audience
Consider what kind of people you’re targeting with your social media content based on demographics, location, buying habits, and other important factors. From there, set a clear goal for your content. How many followers do you want to gain in a month, for example? Make sure these goals are clearly defined (preferably with specific numbers and timeframes) and not too ambitious.
Include a Call to Action (CTA)
What do you want the reader to do when they see your content? This could be checking out your website, reading your latest blog post, filling out an online order form, and more. Make the CTA short and simple, like “Check out our blog” or “Learn more on our website.”
Keep a Consistent Schedule
Plan your content for holidays, company events, and seasonal demands. If you’re an HVAC company, focusing fall content on preparing equipment for winter is a good idea. Hitting the sweet spot of how many times to post weekly takes some finetuning, but generally, two or three times a week works for most companies. You don’t want to annoy followers with multiple posts a day, but you don’t want them to forget about you either.
Choose the Right Platform
A 500-word thought leadership article is great for LinkedIn, but not so much for Facebook. Audiences on each platform are looking for something just a little different from the other. More technical and professional content should be generally saved for LinkedIn, while memes and gifs would be good for X. Also keep in mind that image size and caption length maximums differ from platform to platform.
Monitor & Adjust
There are many social media tracking tools to choose from, making it easy to schedule, post, and monitor content in a centralized location. Don’t be afraid to try something new and see how it performs—trial and error are a natural part of any social media marketing strategy. If posts about your company’s history are getting far fewer likes and comments than polls and quizzes, focus more on the latter. Those tools we mentioned will show you how many likes, comments, impressions, and followers you gain over a certain period of time.
Get Social With Abstrakt
Managing a consistent calendar of social media content is a lot to ask of any small or medium-sized business. Luckily, Abstrakt offers social media marketing services that take a lot off your plate. We’ll design a monthly content calendar that includes eye-catching graphics and snappy copy—all based on your brand’s values, insights, and target audience. Connect with us today, and let’s create something amazing together!