Can Social Media Marketing Really Help Your Business? 10 Apps to Study:

“Can social media marketing really help my business?” if you’ve heard or asked that question before you’ve probably wanted to know if social media marketing is worth it. Our digital marketing agency deals with all kinds of questions regarding this topic such as “which social media marketing is best?” and our favourite: ”social media marketing or digital marketing?”. Thankfully, this blog has all the answers to these questions and more, with some great examples!

Social Media Marketing or Digital Marketing?

Like a pair of twins, these 2 different marketing components can sometimes look identical. The difference between digital marketing and social media marketing mainly comes down to platform.

Social media marketing is actually a component of digital marketing (if that wasn’t already obvious) it just happens to be one of the largest pieces, next to search engine marketing. Digital marketing isn’t a new concept, if you wanted to get technical TV, radio, and even electronic billboards could be considered ‘digital’ marketing. Our marketing agency believes in this ‘non-line’ approach to digital marketing because it’s easy to get stuck only focusing on the internet. Think about it, even something as simple as a fast-food menu has gone digital!

Digital marketing is really about utilizing a mix of different channels to achieve any of the following goals:

• Adding value via inbound marketing that will cause customers to seek your assistance
• Developing relationships with your audience
• Promoting your product, service, and brand
• Building awareness
• Growing sales
• Increasing profits
• Etc.

Social media marketing can act as a boost for any of these goals, but most notably social media marketing is best for developing relationships with your audience. Posting on your social channels is great, it’s even better when you can utilize social media to start a conversation with your customers. When it comes down to customizing your digital marketing strategy, the level of customer access social media marketing can get you compared to other digital avenues is worth considering.

“It’s really important that companies have the right organizational structure to support social media,” – Josh Krakauer

Which Social Media is Best?

The answer ultimately depends on your business model. Some companies find success focusing solely on Facebook, whereas others may notice that their posts do the best on LinkedIn. Our clients are varied and we track social media performance on each platform to determine which social media channel is best to advertise on.

If you need an idea of where to start your social media marketing campaign, here’s a very broad generalization of each social media platform. Refine your focus accordingly:

1. Instagram: dominated by the under 40 audiences, lifestyle, e-commerce, and photography businesses thrive on this platform. Visual content works best here such as selfie-style videos, stunning photography, unique designs, and cohesive themes. Equally popular with men and women, the opportunities presented here can’t be ignored. Instagram is taking cues from Asian social media platforms that have had success with “social commerce” by shifting their focus towards their shop tab which shares some similarities with Facebook Marketplace. Keep in mind selling on social media is all about community and trust, it’s important to build and maintain these relationships if you choose to go this route.

2. Facebook: Instagram’s parent company with an increasingly older demographic. Users above the age of 30 are the best audience to target here. Data has shown the older a person is, the higher the likelihood they will frequent the site. Activity is also spread pretty evenly amongst males and females. Social media marketing on Facebook works best for companies looking for an easy way to create an online community to share engaging content that invokes an immediate or emotional response. Just be aware of the aging user base.

3. LinkedIn: social media marketing on LinkedIn has a very high potential to succeed simply due to the business-oriented nature of the site itself. Our B2B clients are excellent examples of this theory. The key is to avoid the aggressive advertising and sales pitch approach. Start connecting with as many people as possible if you can, preferably connections that align with your target audience. Networking is a numbers game, and the best way to get your content noticed is by posting it on as many user’s feeds as possible. Prioritize LinkedIn if your social media marketing goal is to build relationships with professionals that can help connect you with prospects, strategic partners, referral partners, and other businesses who will be more likely to share and engage with your content.

4. YouTube: often disregarded as a social media platform due to its main use as the world’s second most popular search engine (next to its parent company Google), and most popular video search engine. Prioritizing YouTube for social media marketing will work best if your audience consumes online video content as a means of entertainment or education. Product tutorials, tips, and other informative videos relating to your business or industry can be a great way to engage users and spread awareness.

5. Twitter: our Toronto marketing agency hasn’t found much success on Twitter for our particular client base, although active users on this platform are known to be very loyal. 40% of users visit the social media app multiple times per day. Content that works best here is typically a well-timed ‘tweet’ on a trending topic (bonus points if you are particularly witty). However, videos and images will stand out better on user feeds. Due to the heavily male-dominated site demographics (over 60% male), businesses will find the most social media marketing success here if their audience tends to be men between the ages of 25 and 60. Experimentation is recommended as there are many different content styles available, including polls.

6. Pinterest: this social media platform is a large contributor to the product discovery process for many businesses. Unlike Twitter, the majority of users are women (nearly 80% female) with a heavy concentration of millennials. Posts for Pinterest should focus on numbers, lists, and quotes. Vertical images that include any of these 3 things will help to inspire ‘Pinners’ looking for creative ideas. If your social media marketing plan will appeal to adult women, creative types, and DIY enthusiasts, prioritizing this platform might be your best bet.

7. Snapchat: admittedly, this is not the best platform for social media marketing. The app’s main user base consists of people under 25 sharing images, videos, and texts that disappear within 24 hours or less. Therefore, entertainment is the main focus here. If you want to reach a young audience, this app is worth considering. Just be wary of your content strategy seeing as this platform is mostly a communication tool. If you have great story-driven video ideas that can educate or entertain as we mentioned for YouTube, give Snapchat a try. We recommend keeping things short and sweet.

8. TikTok: the musica.ly rebrand that went viral thanks to a series of well-timed business strategies. TikTok took the concept of audio-focused videos and turned it into something special. With over 800 million monthly users, this relatively new social media app has a promising future ahead. 50% of TikTok’s audience is under 35 with a majority between the ages of 16 and 25. It’s safe to say that social media marketing strategies will likely mature with the user base. Just like Snapchat, entertainment should be your main focus when dealing with a younger audience. Content that doesn’t have a direct connection with your products or services will perform the best here. Be prepared to play the long game if you choose to prioritize TikTok due to the younger audience.

9. Reddit: the only social media site where some users are convinced it’s not a social media site. This platform is heavily focused on organic content that performs better based on positive or negative engagement via ‘upvotes’ and ‘downvotes’. The value of this site lies within the community. Its unique concept of ‘subreddits’ devoted to specific or relevant topics acts as a great place to gather public opinions. Our marketing company recommends using Reddit mostly as a means to gather data relating to your business by studying subreddit posts and comments. Curating a subreddit community for your business will likely be more hassle than it’s worth. 

10. MySpace: this music and blog-focused site still boasts 7.5 million active users. However, this was mostly added in as a reminder that while some social media platforms may be popular today, they can always fall from grace as MySpace did. Don’t be afraid to change up your social media marketing strategy when you notice a shift in online behaviour. Putting all your eggs in 1 basket has the potential to fail dramatically if any of the previously mentioned apps fall into obscurity. It’s more important than ever to stay relevant in the information age.

Social media consultants like the ones at our digital marketing agency prefer to cast a wide net before narrowing their focus. Social media marketing companies recommend studying the competition online as an extra means of reference for performance data. Gaining a large following on social media takes time, especially as a business. “Paying to play” should be expected in most situations. If you want to succeed organically on social media it’s a good idea to allocate some funds for social media marketing boosts to get more eyes on your content later.

How Social Media Marketing Helps Businesses

Social media marketing can help with a lot of things, some are more obvious than others. As we previously mentioned, social platforms help to engage with your audience and can create a community for conversations. It also can help direct traffic to your site, build customer loyalty by providing customer service, and drive conversions. Here are a few not-so-obvious ways social media marketing helps businesses:

• Free A/B testing to perfect your messaging
• Establishing your company as a trusted source of information on a given topic
• Link building for SEO rankings on trending topics
• Keyword boosts for page and domain authority

Don’t forget lots of social media apps also provide your business with many opportunities to set up multiple calls to action on your business page. Our digital marketing company also likes to make use of the retarget ability many sites offer that utilize browser cookies to create an effective audience for our remarketing campaigns. After all, when was the last time you bought something on your first visit to a company page?

Why Social Media Marketing Is Important

Keeping your customers up-to-date on the latest products, upcoming events, and other big announcements is an easy way to get people excited about your business. Social media marketing is more than just using a trendy hashtag and promoting relevant content for your company. It can become a regularly scheduled posting machine that acts as an online billboard for your entire organization. 

Think of your social media platforms as different online windows into your business. If you post content that nobody cares about, then it isn’t eye-catching enough to get people to want to look inside. Your main goal is to get as much authoritative, creative, or original information as possible on display in the hopes that it gets shared.

Otherwise, you could just continue to hope that one day something you post goes viral. After all, that was what social media was known for in the early stages. Our social media consultants wish you luck on your social media marketing journey. Who knows, maybe your post will be the next viral topic of the week!

The Marketing Garage is an award-winning Toronto digital marketing agency  that has extensive experience in cultivating effective social media marketing strategies. We help businesses in many different sectors across North America fix their online marketing and branding. Our data-driven mix of SEO and digital marketing process is like no other.