Social Media Marketing: Tips and Advice

With over 4 and a half billion people using social media worldwide it is quite simply an opportunity for advertising, building brand awareness and demonstrating your expertise that you cannot afford to miss.

Whatever your business your potential customers are there ready and waiting for you to showcase yourself and your products or services as well as get to know them, what they need and the questions they are asking.

What is Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing is the creation and publishing of content; written, pictorial and video on one or a variety of social media platforms. Many social media platforms provide opportunities for paid advertising all well as free, organic advertising that is a natural result of regular posting of quality content.

Among the most commonly used social media platforms are:

• Facebook is the biggest platform with nearly 2 billion daily users worldwide. Best for B2C marketing but some scope for B2B as well.
• Instagram with no option for text-only posts Instagram is a more visual experience. It also has a younger audience and is best for B2C marketing.
• Twitter with over 210 million daily users has a smaller audience as well as smaller posts with each ‘tweet’ having to come in at 140 characters or under. Huge variety of users of every age.
• TikTok is the new kid on the block that is all about video. With over a billion users after just two years, it is well worth jumping aboard the TikTok train. It’s users are predominantly younger but that is changing as the platform grows.
• LinkedIn was one of the first social media platforms and the only one that started as a purely professional networking site. It is perfect for B2B marketing and has around 775 million daily users around the world.

The aim of the content is to familiarise your audience with yourself, your business and your brand, to demonstrate your expertise in a relatable way, and to build relationships with both new and existing customers.

Organic vs. Paid Social Media Marketing: Which is Best?

This will depend on a few things namely:

• Your budget.
• Your aim/social media strategy.
• Your existing audience.
• How quickly you want results.

The key benefits and downsides of organic social media marketing and paid social media marketing are outlined below.

Organic Social Media Marketing

• Is free.
• Builds brand awareness.
• Is a slow burn – it takes time to get it right through experimentation and analysis.
• Key to building and maintaining relationships with customers both existing and new.
• Your existing customers, by engaging on your posts, also become your promoters.

Paid Social Media Marketing

• Is becoming more essential in combination with organic social media marketing due to waning organic reach across the board.
• Gets new eyes on your content – great for promoting a new product or service.
• Is a faster way to build an audience/promote your brand.
• Requires a budget.
• Precision targeting of your ideal potential customers.

As you see from these lists it is not so much that paid or organic social media marketing is better than the other but more that the best approach uses both, to get the best of both worlds and keeping costs manageable.

For more tips and strategies to boost your online presence, and learn about the other marketing strategies we offer at Approved Business head over to our home page.