What Is Social Media Marketing and How Can It Help Your Business Grow

There are several types of online marketing. Social media marketing is one of the most effective Internet marketing tools. Social media refers to websites or applications that permit the sharing of content online in an atmosphere designed for social networking. Popular social media platforms include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Pinterest, YouTube, and TikTok. An estimated 2.96 billion people worldwide currently use some form of social media, making it a hotbed for Internet marketing (Statista).

Effective Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is beneficial to any size of business because of the number of people visiting social media daily. Businesses without a presence on the most popular social media platforms are missing the opportunity to connect with potential customers and create more brand awareness. Below is an example of social media presence and branding of Primal.

The first step for any business is to create a presence on each of the most popular social media platforms. Knowing the demographic for each social media site can help businesses target which ones are ideal for their target audience. For example, the most frequent group of users on Facebook are males and females aged 25 to 34 years (Statista). If your business is targeting that age demographic, then a presence on Facebook is a must.

Other social media audiences by age include (Pew Research):

• YouTube – 94 percent of users are aged 18 to 24
• Instagram – 75 percent of users are aged 18 to 24
• LinkedIn – 44 percent of users are aged 25 to 29, with 37 percent of users aged 30 to 49
• Twitter – 44 percent of users are aged 18 to 24
• Snapchat – 73 percent of users are aged 18 to 24

Building a brand with Social Media Marketing

Before you can build your brand on social media, you must first build a social media audience. A strong social profile is crucial to growing your online audience, so make sure all social media pages feature a strong profile. A strong profile includes branded cover photos and profile photos, an in-depth “About” section that includes a website address, physical location and contact information for your business. We have been working on building our brand across several social media platforms, including Facebook.

Once you have created a strong profile, it’s time to grow your brand on social media:

1. Create and share quality content.

Make a few posts on your social media accounts before you share out links to them on your company website. Other examples of quality content include the sharing of blogs and articles relevant to your products or services.

2. Add links to your website and email.

To get the word out about your social media accounts, provide links to them prominently on your website, and also in your email signature.

3. Cross-promote.

Have lots of followers on one platform but not another? Crosspost on all platforms to let followers know you also have social media accounts on other platforms and invite them to follow/like you there.

4. Create display ads.

Most social media platforms allow users to pay to boost popular posts to increase their visibility or to buy ads that will target a specific demographic.

5. Like and follow.

Use your official business social media accounts to like and follow other pages and groups on social media. Target groups and pages that would appeal to your customer base.

Communicating a Brand

It is important to communicate often with your social media audience to keep them engaged and interested in your brand. Participating in groups and pages with your official business accounts, as well as engaging clients in a thoughtful manner across all social media platforms, will help to establish you as a trusted brand.

When posting:

• Images and videos increase post engagement
• Post regularly
• Brevity is best
• Modify the message to fit the social media platform
• Avoid business “jargon”
• Tag other accounts and pertinent products to draw more attention to your posts
• Use hashtags to draw attention to your post/create branded hashtags for use across all platforms

Building a brand can be time-consuming. Businesses in need of expert assistance growing their social brand can reach out to our leading social media marketing agency in Malaysia.