Social Media Marketing includes everything a business does via social media channels. Just about everyone is familiar with social media, but marketers must approach social with an integrated and strategic approach. Social media marketing goes far beyond simply creating posts for social channels and responding to comments.

How to Start

To be effective, efforts must be coordinated and consistent rather than an afterthought. To help keep posts consistent, there are many online tools available to automate and schedule social media posts, although marketers only should use automation as a tool, not a “set it and forget it” solution. Users will figure it out quickly if there is no real person behind the posts.

Social media marketers should not be in a silo separate from other marketing functions. Social marketers need to work with the company’s wider marketing team to coordinate their message across all platforms, online and off, so that every part of the brand is telling the same story.

Analytics in Social media Marketing

A crucial part of social media marketing is analytics: Social media marketers must also be savvy at analyzing the performance of their posts, and creating strategies based on that data. Another reason for marketers to be consistently measuring and tracking their campaigns is that this data allows them to demonstrate a particular campaign’s return on investment and whether it provided any value to the company.

There are also several free options to spread your message that go beyond Instagram and Twitter. Some other options include Google My Business, eBay and Facebook Messenger and Marketplace.
In other words, social media marketing is a lot more complicated than managing your personal Facebook or Twitter profile. It requires a blend of creative thinking and objective, data-driven strategy, and maybe a great fit for professionals who enjoy blending these two disciplines.