Discover how social media marketing can help you generate leads, boost conversions, and increase brand awareness.
When it comes to social media, marketers’ top goals are advertising their products/services and increasing their brand awareness according to research done by Hubspot.
However, many brands struggle with creating engaging content and reaching their target audience. With social media playing such an important role at the top of the funnel, let’s dive into all things social media marketing – what it is, its benefits, and how to actually build a social media marketing strategy that’ll work for your specific business.
Social media marketing is all about meeting your target audience and customers where they are and as they socially interact with each other and your brand.
While social media marketing as a whole is incredibly valuable and beneficial to your business growth (as you’ll see in the following section), your strategy will differ based on which social networks your audience spends their time on.
Before we dig deeper into social media marketing, let’s segment the strategy by platform.
Social Media Marketing Platforms
- Users: 1.9 billion daily active users worldwide
- Audience: An even spread of Generation X and Millennials
- Industry impact: B2C
- Best for: Brand awareness; advertising
Facebook is the largest social media platform and the most established. Since its launch in 2004, it has become an invaluable tool for B2C businesses, offering advanced advertising tools as well as organic opportunities.
TikTok
- Users: 1 billion active monthly global users
- Audience: Primarily Gen Z followed by Millennials
- Industry impact: B2B and B2C
- Best for: Short-form, creative video content; user-generated content; brand awareness
When you think of short-form video, you probably think of TikTok. The platform rose in popularity in 2020 and shows no signs of slowing down. It’s one of the best platforms for community building, with marketers ranking it in second place behind YouTube.
- Users: 1 billion monthly active users
- Audience: Primarily Millennials
- Industry impact: B2C
- Best for: High-quality images and videos; user-generated content; advertising
Although Instagram launched only 12 years ago, the platform has taken the world by storm. When it comes to sharing visually compelling content, Instagram is where brands go. Another thing that sets the platform apart is its advanced ecommerce tools.
Today, users can discover brands, browse their products and/or service, and complete a purchase without ever leaving the app – making Instagram a hard platform to beat.
- Users: 211 million daily active users worldwide
- Audience: Primarily Millennials
- Industry impact: B2B and B2C
- Best for: Public relations; customer service; community building
While Instagram focuses on visuals, Twitter focuses on words. Since the early days of 140-character Tweets, the platform has now expanded to include an audio tool called Twitter Spaces, a community-building tool called Twitter Communities, and Twitter Moments to share interesting content with your followers.
- Users: 774 million active users worldwide
- Audience: Baby boomers, Generation X, and Millennials
- Industry impact: B2B
- Best for: B2B relationships, business development, and social selling
LinkedIn is Facebook’s professional cousin. It’s perhaps the only platform where its audience is clearly defined: Working professionals looking to network and seek out new opportunities.
That makes it the ideal platform for B2B companies looking to identify key decision-makers and build an industry-specific community.
YouTube
- Users: Over 315 million daily active users worldwide
- Audience: Primarily Millennials but has a strong audience across gender and age demographics
- Industry impact: B2C and B2B
- Best for: Brand awareness; long-form entertainment, and how-to videos
According to HootSuite, YouTube is the second most visited website in the world. In addition, marketers name it the best platform to build community.
In addition to being an incredibly popular platform, its users also tend to stay longer on it because it features mostly long-form content – making it an ideal platform to share educational content.
Snapchat
- Users: 306 million daily active users worldwide
- Audience: Primarily Generation Z
- Industry impact: B2C
- Best for: Brand awareness; advertising
When Snapchat came out in 2011, leading the charge in ephemeral content. It introduced content that you could share with your friends and that would expire after 24 hours.
The platform peaked in 2015 and has held strong since then. Many thought the brand would disappear once Instagram introduced Stories, the same feature with a different name. However, Snapchat continues to be popular among young adults.
- Users: 444 million monthly active users worldwide
- Audience: Primarily Millennials with a solid audience in Gen Z, Gen X and Baby Boomers
- Industry impact: B2C
- Best for: Visual advertising; inspiration
Think of Pinterest like a visual storyboard that allows users to get inspiration for everything from fashion to home decor.
85% of Pinners say Pinterest is where they go to start a new project. In addition, 80% of weekly Pinners say they’ve discovered a new brand or product on the platform. So, not only is it a great discovery tool but it’s also a way for brands to build their narrative through visual stories.
Clubhouse
- Users: 10 million weekly active users worldwide
- Audience: Primarily Millennials
- Industry impact: B2B and B2C
- Best for: Visual advertising; inspiration
Clubhouse made a strong impression as soon as it entered the social media world in 2020. The audio-only platform allows people to start interesting conversations with followers as well as strangers and build community.
The platform also gained some buzz for its invitation-only set up when it was in beta testing. Today, the platform is open to everyone globally and on both IOS and Android devices. Another big selling point to this platform is that it works well for both B2B and B2C businesses and leverages audio, which has made a huge comeback in recent years.
