What is social media?
Social media refers to communities that exist on digital platforms (like Facebook or Instagram). These can be used to improve brand awareness and drive product consideration, or user actions (like leads or sales).
Social media audiences are made of consumers who have willingly given personal data so they can be part of the community. This makes social media one of the easiest advertising platforms to accurately target your audience.
What is social media management?
Social media management refers to a person, or organisation, who manages a paid media account. They do this by creating and improving social campaigns on one or more platforms. Many digital marketing agencies with social expertise offer this service, and create a thorough account strategy to get the best results.
What is social media used for?
Social media has lots of uses, depending on the platform being used. For example, LinkedIn is the social platform most used for B2B advertising, professional networking and recruitment. While platforms like Facebook and Instagram are used to advertise services or products, and share content among ‘friends’ or ‘followers’.
What is a social media marketing plan?
A social media marketing plan allows you to decide how you use social media networks to best support your business. The plan typically includes 7 pillars:
1. Who uses the channel in question, and what are they using it for?
2. Will using the channel help you to meet your objectives?
3. Does the channel fit with your brand?
4. What results would you like to achieve through this channel?
5. What kind of content works best on the channel?
6. What is the best tone and voice to use when posting on the channel?
7. How often should we post on this channel?
Once you answer these questions, you should understand each channel and how effective it is likely to be.
Are social media marketing campaigns effective?
Social media marketing allows you to target potential customers with more accuracy than most other forms of marketing.
The three social media giants, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, have a combined audience of 3.4 billion active users. These audiences are made up of people who have given data that you can use to target them.
Social media marketing advertising spend is therefore usually lower cost than other channels, and is often more impactful and effective.
Which social media platform is best for my business?
That depends on what your business wants to gain from social media marketing. If you’re a B2B organisation, you might be more likely to find your audience on LinkedIn or Twitter. If you’re a B2C organisation, you might think about using Facebook or Instagram instead. However, the social media platform that you use will depend on the objectives that you want to meet.
