Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms to connect with your audience to build your brand, increase sales, and drive website traffic. This involves publishing great content on your social media profiles, listening to and engaging your followers, analyzing your results, and running social media advertisements.

The major social media platforms (at the moment) are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, and Snapchat.

There are also a range of social media management tools that help businesses to get the most out of the social media platforms listed above.

The power of social media marketing comes from the unparalleled capacity of social media in three core marketing areas: connection, interaction, and customer data.

5 pillars of social media marketing

When developing marketing programs, one key area that marketers care about is how to deliver their messaging. Social media helps spread those messages to the right people at the right time, through both free and paid means. Social media also enables brands to learn more about their audience's personal, geographic and demographic information. This enables organizations to customize their messaging and content for the best engagement.

There are five pillars of social media marketing that will lead to a successful program.

1. Social strategy

With any marketing campaign or activity, an appropriate strategy should be laid out in advance. Organizations need to determine the goals of the program, the channels that will be used and what types of content will be shared. Here are some examples:

Determine goals: Using social media for marketing should align closely with business and other marketing program goals. Some goals that businesses can use to measure success include increasing brand awareness, driving website traffic and leads, and increasing revenue.

Select social media platforms: There are many social platforms available, but it doesn't make sense for businesses to use them all. Organizations need to know their audience and choose the platform(s) that best fit their demographic.

Content mix: Each social platform has a unique flavor for distributing content -- including video, imagery, links and direct messaging. So brands need to identify which content their marketing persona is most likely to engage with.

2. Planning and publishing

After establishing a strategy, it is time to begin publishing. This can be as simple as posting a new blog post, sharing information about an upcoming event or posting a new product video. But being consistent is the key to an effective SMM program. To build an audience, organizations should post frequently to their page. Posting relevant content consistently will keep the audience coming back for more.

Content that organizations post to social media should align with other marketing promotions. Tools such as Hootsuite, HubSpot and Sprout Social enable marketers to schedule their posts at the appropriate time.

3. Listening and engagement

Businesses that create activity on social platforms can see growth in interaction and conversations about the brand and products. Users will comment on and share posts, tag the company in their own posts, and even begin communicating through the instant messaging functionalities. These types of interactions are ideal because there are notifications in place to alert social media managers. This enables them to practice good customer service, which in turns boosts the customer experience.

People on social media may also discuss a brand, product or service without tagging or speaking directly to a company. There are several social media listening tools available to stay plugged into the conversation.

4. Analytics and reporting

As more content is published and the audience expands, it is a good idea to continuously measure performance. The success of any marketing program is dependent on its data and analytics outputs. A marketing team can use this information to make more informed decisions on future campaigns and take advantage of what works.

Each social platform has its own analytics data, but there are other tools that can collect data from many channels into one location. This enables marketers to evaluate the overall success and failures of their marketing campaigns.

5. Advertising

Much of social media marketing is free -- with the exception of resource time and specialized tools. Building an audience and publishing content on free social media sites is a great way to achieve marketing goals, but as the program grows, so does the budget.

Paid marketing features can be very valuable to organizations. They can target their advertisements at audiences based on many factors, including demographic information, retargeting and behaviors.

There are tools to help manage social media marketing at volume, but using the native ads functionality to begin is enough to promote posts, capture leads and ensure messages get in front of the right audience

Benefits of social media marketing

With such widespread usage and versatility, social media is one of the most effective free channels for marketing your business today. Here are some of the specific benefits of social media marketing:

Humanize your business: Social media enables you to turn your business into an active participant in your market. Your profile, posts, and interactions with users form an approachable persona that your audience can familiarize and connect with, and come to trust.

Drive traffic: Between the link in your profile, blog post links in your posts, and your ads, social media is a top channel for increasing traffic to your website where you can convert visitors into customers.

Generate leads and customers: You can also generate leads and conversions directly on these platforms, through features like Instagram/Facebook shops, direct messaging, call to action buttons on profiles, and appointment booking capabilities.

Increase brand awareness: The visual nature of social media platforms allows you to build your visual identity across vast audiences and improve brand awareness. And better brand awareness means better results with all your other campaigns.

Build relationships: These platforms open up both direct and indirect lines of communication with your followers through which you can network, gather feedback, hold discussions, and connect directly with individuals. The bigger and more engaged your audience is on social media networks, the easier it will be for you to achieve your marketing goals.

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