Social media marketing (SMM) is a form of internet marketing that uses social media apps as a marketing tool.

These social media platforms enable brands to connect with their audience to: 

build a brand;

increase sales;

drive traffic to a website; and

build a community of followers to share and engage with content.  

Producing relevant content that users will share with their own networks helps brands increase their exposure. It also extends their reach toward fans, potential customers and even potential employees when used as a recruitment tool.

Social media marketing also enables organisations to get customer feedback while making the company seem more personable. Social media enables organizations to create relationships with their audience. It gives end users a platform to ask questions, voice complaints and generally be heard. It also gives brands the opportunity to respond, adapt and adjust business processes or products.

Some popular social media apps include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram and Snapchat. Each platform has elements that makes it attractive to use. And when a company uses several in combination to deliver a multichannel message, consumers can see those messages on their preferred channels. 

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 organisations to customize their messaging and content for the best engagement. 

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.

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.  

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. 

Each social platform has a unique flavour 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. 

To build an audience, organizations should post frequently to their page. Posting relevant content consistently will keep the audience coming back for more.

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.