A beginner’s guide to social media marketing

By / 15/11/2023

Social media marketing has become one of the most effective ways to reach and engage with your target audience. That’s why, in our beginner’s guide to social media marketing, we will outline why having a strong online presence is essential for any business.

In fact, according to the research accumulated by Wordstream 91% of businesses use social media marketing, with the industry worth $72.2 billion in 2023. So it’s rather important.

But what exactly is social media marketing?

What is social media marketing?

It refers to using social media platforms to promote your products or services, build brand awareness, and drive traffic to your website.

With billions of people using social media every day, it’s a powerful tool that can help you connect with your customers and grow your business.

Table of Contents

Understanding the different social media marketing platforms

When it comes to social media marketing, there are numerous platforms to choose from. Each platform has its own unique features and audience demographics.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the most popular social media platforms and how they can be used for marketing:

Facebook / Meta

With over 2.8 billion monthly active users, Facebook, or Meta as it is now known, is the largest social media platform in the world. It offers a wide range of advertising options, including targeted ads, sponsored posts, and Facebook groups. Facebook is a great platform for businesses of all sizes and industries.

You can find our Facebook page here. Give us a follow to receive more helpful tips and tricks about social media marketing.

Instagram

Instagram is a visual platform that focuses on sharing photos and videos.

It has over 1 billion monthly active users and is particularly popular among younger audiences. Instagram offers various advertising options, such as photo ads, video ads, and sponsored stories.

It’s an excellent platform for businesses in the fashion, beauty, and lifestyle industries.

But Instagram can work effectively for any business with various video assets or lots of video content to share, such as plumbers, mechanics etc.

Twitter / X

Twitter is a fast-paced platform that allows users to share short messages called tweets. It has over 330 million monthly active users and is known for its real-time nature.

Twitter offers advertising options like promoted tweets and trends, making it ideal for businesses that want to engage with their audience in real-time.

You won’t get much traction if you don’t engage on Twitter though, so be ready to commit!

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a professional networking platform with over 774 million members.

It’s primarily used for business networking and recruitment but can also be a powerful tool for B2B marketing.

LinkedIn offers advertising options like sponsored content, video content, and dynamic ads.

This makes it perfect for businesses targeting professionals and decision-makers.

TikTok

TikTok is a rapidly growing platform for short-form video content, that has typically been suitable for targeting a younger audience.

However, the platform is expanding into something that closely resembles a search engine. This means many people use it to find recommendations and reviews.

Initial summary of the platforms

Each of these platforms has its own strengths. Whilst some may argue that it’s good to have a profile on each of these, that’s not necessarily the case.

What’s important is to focus on the platforms that best serve your particular target market.

For B2B, LinkedIn can be great. It focuses on professionals and decision-makers who want to ensure the validity of who they are buying from. Consistent posting about a brand can help to build the image of a professional organisation that gets the job done.

In contrast, if you’re looking to sell clothing, then you’ll want to generate an emotive reaction. This makes visual content critical. Platforms like TikTok and Instagram can be vital here, particularly when coupled with influencer marketing where you have a big name in your field to show off your product and positively review it.

If you are thinking locally, platforms like Facebook/Meta can be great. This is because they offer lots of local groups that you can post in to reach your potential customer base directly.

The best thing to do is research where your target market is operating before committing to a channel. Then jump in.

Commit to that channel for a reasonable period to time to allow your brand to be established.

Choosing the right platform for your business

There are further factors to consider when deciding which channel to commit to. Here are a few factors to consider:

  1. Target audience: Identify your target audience and research which platforms they are most active on. For example, if your target audience is primarily young adults, platforms like Instagram and TikTok may be more effective.
    • If you are a global company, you will want to consider the prominent social channels in each country you operate in. I worked for a company that did regular business in Japan. We did research and found LINE is the most used social media marketing platform there. So we found a way to make that work!
  2. Social media goals: Define clear and measurable goals for your social media marketing efforts. Goals can include, but are not limited to increasing website traffic, lead generation, or brand engagement.
  3. Platform features: Consider the features and capabilities of each platform and how well they align with your social media goals. Some platforms are better suited for visual content, while others are more text-focused.
  4. Industry: Research how other businesses in your industry are using social media platforms.
    • Look for successful examples and learn from their strategies. As discussed above, it’s also important to consider which countries you are marketing into, and where the customer base is operating.
  5. Budget: Consider your budget for social media marketing. Some platforms offer more affordable advertising options, while others may require a larger investment.
    • Make sure your goals, audience and budget are aligned. Don’t commit to a channel just because it’s cheap if your audience aren’t there!

By considering these factors, you can choose the social media platform that best fits your business and target audience.

Exploring paid social media campaigns

When it comes to social media marketing, you have the option to run paid campaigns on the platforms that you’ve chosen to invest time in. Paid social media campaigns involve investing money to reach a larger audience and increase your visibility.

Here are a few reasons why you might consider running paid campaigns:

  1. Increased reach: Paid campaigns allow you to extend your reach beyond your existing followers, helping you reach a wider audience.
  2. Targeted advertising: Social media platforms offer advanced targeting options that allow you to reach specific demographics, interests, and behaviours. This means you can ensure your ads are seen by the right people.
  3. Improved engagement: Paid campaigns can help boost your engagement by getting your content in front of more people. This can lead to more likes, comments, shares, and ultimately, more brand exposure.
  4. Measurable results: Social media platforms provide detailed analytics and reporting features, allowing you to track the performance of your paid campaigns. This helps you understand what’s working and make data-driven decisions.

While paid social media campaigns can be effective, it’s important to set clear goals. Define your target audience and carefully plan your budget to ensure the best return on investment.

Planning your social media marketing campaign

Once you’ve decided which platform(s) you want to market on, it’s important to plan how you will use the platform.

Here are some key steps to consider when planning your social media marketing campaign:

Define your goals

In this beginner’s guide to social media marketing, we’ve tried to outline the key steps for any novice.

And one of the key steps when starting out is identifying your goals for social media marketing.

Do you want to increase brand awareness? Drive website traffic? Generate leads? Or simply boost sales?

Having clear goals will help you stay focused and measure the success of your campaign. Just make sure your goals are SMART – specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-relevant.

For example, if your boss has asked you to bring in 50 new sales a week from social media marketing and you think this is unachievable, then the channel will be perceived to have failed through no fault of yours or the channel’s.

In situations like this, you are better setting a realistic target and trying to build up from there. So if this is you, talk to your boss about making your goal more realistic.

It’s also worth noting that your goals can change. You could set a goal of “Getting 3 sales per week from LinkedIn”, for example. Depending on how you progress with this, you may wish to adapt the goal.

On this point, I would recommend having regular reviews to see whether you are meeting your goals. Also review which content is best serving you in meeting these goals.

This will allow you to consistently garner insights from the data you are presented with. You can then adapt your social media plan to include more of the successful content types.

As you refine your approach, hopefully you will move closer to your goals as you provide your audience with the type of marketing content that they engage most effectively with.

Remember though, this is a process that requires constant evaluation and refining. Don’t just do it and leave it. That’s a sure fire way to not get results.

Know your audience

Understanding your target audience is essential for effective social media marketing.

Conduct market research to identify their demographics, interests, and pain points. This will help you create content that resonates with your audience and drives engagement.

For example, if you’re a big brand selling golf clubs it’s important to think of what solution your golf clubs offer players.

Is it better control? Better distance off the tee? Are you solving a slice in your customer’s swing?

To go further with this analogy, you would ask who’s buying these golf clubs? Golf clubs, and indeed golf memberships, are expensive.

This means the demographic buying golf equipment tends to have a fair amount of disposable income, meaning they are likely professionals. Historically it’s been a male dominated sport, although the female game is continuing to grow. This is particularly true at a local level.

So your social media marketing should focus on a platform that reaches these people, and then generate content that resonates with them.

For example, TaylorMade Golf, a big golfing brand, released a golf driver called the Stealth 2. It’s a carbon fibre driver aimed at adding distance off the tee.

Their social media marketing on channels such as Instagram focused on big names such as Rory McIlroy hitting this driver. They showed him doing so with ease, whilst getting distance.

This creates an emotive reaction in the viewer, who wants to achieve similar results when they get on the golf course.

Whilst we can’t all have the budget to get Rory McIlroy to help us with our marketing, we can create marketing content that generates this same emotive reaction.

Conversely, in B2B social media marketing, generating emotion may not be critical. It may be that your consumers are buying a high ticket item from you.

In this instance, you want to assure them. You want to prove that there are plenty of other businesses, just like them, that have purchased this item and had success with it.

This may involve creating case study videos or content with your current customers. You can then use that content on your social media channels to assure future customers that they are buying something reliable, even if it costs plenty of money. 

Choosing content types

Decide on the types of content you’ll create and share on social media. This can include blog posts, videos, infographics, quizzes, and more. Consider your audience’s preferences, as discussed above, and the platform you’ll be using.

But also consider your goals, and whether these goals match the content you are producing.

For example, and to continue to TaylorMade analogy from above, you may struggle if you are consistently producing video content for your audience and then judging your content on whether it leads to direct purchases from your videos.

Video content can lead to sales, but the purpose of video content is higher up the marketing funnel.

This is where you are either creating brand or product awareness. Or your content is trying to push consumers through the consideration stage so your brand is in their mind when they are ready to buy.

This latter stage is about prepping consumers and ensuring they have the right information so that when they are ready to purchase, your brand and your product is front and centre in their mind.

So the video content you’re creating isn’t really about leads, it’s about creating a buzz.

It’s about ensuring everyone is aware of what your product does and why it may help the consumer with an issue they are having, when they come to buy i.e. fixing a slice in their drive on the course.

To round off the analogy, the social media marketing goal for TaylorMade could be “create brand awareness around the new TaylorMade Stealth Driver”.

They would create awareness by using video marketing.

Their content would often use influencer marketing, relying on pros such as Rory McIlroy to promote the product in the videos.

And then they would judge the success of this by the interactions on their video’s content i.e. how many likes, shares, comments etc.

The final point to consider is your brand tone and voice. If you wish to create a brand that is humorous, then video content may be more suitable than written content, as the tone sometimes gets lost.

Similarly, an infographic or carousel may help you quickly get the benefits of your product across, or help you deal with the pain points that your customers feel.

Ensure you stay consistent with your brand tone and voice though. A lack of consistency can lead to consumers becoming confused about what it is you stand for or sell.

Lastly, there are some important stats on video marketing. The Social Shepherd summarises many of the key facts around video marketing in the 2020s. One key statistic they highlight is that 96% of people in the research study say they rely on video to learn more about products and services.

In short, whatever content type(s) you choose to focus on, video marketing is becoming more crucial by the day for brand building. So try to mix some into your social media marketing, where it makes sense.

Develop a content calendar

From personal experience, creating a content calendar is critical to social media marketing success. This can be as simple as an Excel spreadsheet with the days you wish to post, and the content to be posted.

You don’t need to get fancy. Just make sure you plan for a sensible amount of time, such as 3 months.

It will help you stay organised and consistent with your social media posts, as you plan your content in advance. This including the topics, formats, and posting schedule.

When doing this, always keep your goal in mind. And if you’re a new business, don’t be put off if you don’t immediately get thousands of followers and reactions. These things take time, effort and consistency.

It’s also important to be realistic about what you can achieve.

If you are a freelancer doing this alongside another job, whilst supporting your family, then you may only be able to create one post per week.

If you have a marketing team of 10 people with a solid budget, you should be aiming to post a lot more than that.

Always make sure the post is adding something to your brand though. Don’t just post for the sake of posting.

If you want some tips on the types of posts you can generate, go here.

Engage with your audience

Social media is all about building relationships and engaging with your audience.

When building your plan, it’s important to build in some time to respond to comments, ask questions, and join relevant conversations to show that you value your followers.

By following these steps, you can create a well-planned social media marketing campaign that aligns with your goals and effectively reaches your target audience.

Key considerations when building a social media marketing campaign

Whilst it’s important not to repeat too many key points, it is important to reiterate some of the key considerations for any business building a social media campaign. This will help you maximise your efforts and achieve the best results, whilst minimising wasted time. Let’s explore some important factors:

Consistency

Consistency is key when it comes to social media marketing.

Post regularly and maintain a consistent brand voice and visual identity across all platforms. This will help you build brand recognition and trust among your audience.

Keep elements such as brand colours, slogans, logos etc consistent when building social media marketing assets.

Quality over quantity

While it’s important to be consistent, don’t sacrifice quality for quantity.

Focus on creating valuable and engaging content that provides value to your audience. This will help you stand out from the competition and build a loyal following.

In this regard, it’s important to cover a range of topics in your social media posts.

I tend to focus on the 3 key pillars when aiming for quality:

  • Product or services posts – what is it you’re selling and why should your customer buy from you?
  • Pain point posts – consider what problem you are solving for your customer.
    • For Turner Marketing Services, it’s that my customers may not have time to do their social media marketing themselves. Or maybe they need some support with this because their team doesn’t have the requisite skillset. I’m solving that problem for them, and that would be the focus of my post.
  • How-to posts – when you go into business, it’s on the basis that you have a saleable skillset or product that fills the needs of your customer. But not every customer will have the budget for your products or services. Or maybe they don’t know whether you have the skillset to do the job. How-to posts fill this gap by providing do-it-yourself information.
    • You may think you don’t want to give your secrets away. And this is reasonable. But these people wouldn’t be customers anyway as they cannot yet afford your services.
    • However, there may come a time in the future when they can afford your services. And they’re likely to remember the expert who gave them all that helpful information when they started out. You become the go-to person.

To put the above into context, a mechanic may produce a how-to post on how to change spark plugs. This is a relatively easy job that shows they know what they’re doing. It also saves their potential customers some money if they want to do it themselves.

But for those that don’t feel comfortable changing them, it reiterates that you are a specialist in your field and that they can come to you to get the job done.

Two-way communication

Social media is a two-way street. Encourage your audience to engage with your content by asking questions, running polls, and responding to comments. This will help you build relationships and foster a sense of community.

One quick and simple tip that many companies don’t utilise is to ask a question at the end of their post. For example, if I write a post called “10 quick tips for writing great social media posts”, I could then encourage engagement by asking “What simple tricks would you add to this?”.

Just make sure you answer anyone that responds (or pay your agency or a social media marketer to do so).

Test and iterate

Don’t be afraid to experiment with different types of content, posting times, and advertising strategies.

Test what works and what doesn’t, and use the data to make informed decisions when moving forward.

Social media is constantly evolving, so it’s important to stay agile and adapt your strategy accordingly.

For example, if your company is B2B focused, it could be best to post 9-5, Monday to Friday (although not necessarily – test it!).

Alternatively, you may find posts get more engagement if they are timed around the commuting periods.

Similarly, a fashion brand may get more reaction at weekends when their potential customer base has more time to focus on researching items they want to buy for that next big party or summer holiday.

By considering these key factors, you can build a social media marketing campaign that effectively engages your audience and drives results for your business.

Tools for assisting social media marketing

When beginning a social media marketing campaign, it may be best to use a tool, whether paid for or free.

Most of the big social media platforms allow you to schedule your posts for a specific time and day.

However, if you are managing multiple posts across multiple platforms, and you have the budget to spare, it may be best to invest in a tool to support this work.

Various tools can streamline your social media marketing efforts. I will focus on the social media management tools and the content creation tools in this section.

Social media management tools help you schedule and manage posts across multiple platforms.

10 most popular social media management tools

These are 10 of the most popular:

  • Hootsuite: Hootsuite is a popular and comprehensive social media management platform that allows you to manage multiple social media accounts from one dashboard. It offers features such as scheduling posts, social listening, analytics, and team collaboration.
  • Buffer: Buffer is a user-friendly tool that simplifies social media scheduling and publishing. It offers a straightforward interface, content calendar, and integration with major social media platforms.
  • Sprout Social: Sprout Social is a robust tool with features like scheduling, social listening, engagement, and advanced analytics. It provides valuable insights into audience demographics and behavior.
  • Later: Later focuses on visual content and is particularly popular for Instagram scheduling. It offers a media library, content calendar, and analytics for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.
  • SocialBee: SocialBee is an all-in-one social media management tool that offers post scheduling, content categories, RSS feed integrations, and evergreen content recycling.
  • Agorapulse: Agorapulse is a comprehensive social media management and CRM tool. It includes scheduling, social inbox, monitoring, and reporting features.
  • SocialPilot: SocialPilot is a cost-effective tool that offers post scheduling, content curation, and team collaboration. It supports multiple social media platforms.
  • MeetEdgar: MeetEdgar is designed for content recycling and automation. It categorizes and schedules your content for future resharing.
  • Sendible: Sendible is a social media management tool with a strong focus on agency use. It offers white-label reports, scheduling, and social listening.
  • CoSchedule: CoSchedule is a tool that combines social media management with content marketing. It offers a content calendar, social scheduling, and collaboration features.
  • Falcon.io: Falcon.io is an all-in-one social media management platform that includes publishing, engagement, listening, and analytics.

When choosing a social media management tool, consider factors such as the number of social media accounts you need to manage, the features that align with your needs, user-friendliness, and budget constraints.

I recommend trying a few of these, many of which offer a free trial, to see what works best for you.

Each of these tools has its unique strengths, so selecting the right one will depend on your specific requirements and preferences.

10 most popular social media marketing content creation tools

In terms of 10 of the most popular content creation tools, here are some I recommend:

  • Canva: Canva is a popular and user-friendly graphic design platform that offers a wide range of templates for social media posts, infographics, presentations, and more. It provides an extensive library of images, fonts, and elements to create stunning visuals.
  • Adobe Creative Cloud: Adobe Creative Cloud offers a suite of powerful tools, including Photoshop for image editing, Illustrator for vector graphics, and Premiere Pro for video editing. These tools are widely used by professionals for creating high-quality content.
  • Visme: Visme is a versatile visual content creation tool that allows you to design infographics, presentations, social media graphics, and more. It offers pre-designed templates and easy drag-and-drop functionality.
  • Piktochart: Piktochart is an excellent tool for creating infographics, presentations, and reports. It provides customizable templates and an extensive library of icons and images.
  • Animoto: Animoto is a user-friendly video creation platform that allows you to make professional-looking videos with ease. It offers templates and stock footage to simplify the video-making process.
  • Lumen5: Lumen5 is an AI-powered video creation tool that transforms text into engaging video content. It’s ideal for repurposing blog posts and articles into shareable videos.
  • Powtoon: Powtoon is a fun and creative tool for creating animated videos and presentations. It offers a range of templates and animation effects.
  • Crello: Crello is a graphic design tool that offers thousands of templates for social media graphics, posters, banners, and animations.
  • PicMonkey: PicMonkey is a user-friendly photo editing and graphic design tool that allows you to enhance images and create stunning visuals.
  • Easil: Easil is a design tool that provides customizable templates for social media graphics, presentations, and print materials.

With the rise of AI, there are an increasing number of tools that help with video creation, picture generation, carousel creation, and much more.

Whilst these tools are progressing by the day, it’s still important to ensure that a human being is reviewing what they produce to ensure that the message and branding is in line with that of your business.

As we discussed earlier, video creation is becoming increasingly important too. WordStream offer an article on the top 12 video creation tools for beginners, which I recommend reviewing.

Personally I use Adobe Premiere Pro and Apple iMovie, but I suggest testing a few tools and seeing what works best for you.

Alternatively, outsource your video creation to an agency or freelancer, if you have the budget. Just remember, it’s better to be creating video that isn’t quite perfect, than not creating anything at all.

Often all it takes is a modern phone and a bit of tinkering to come up with some killer content.

Setting up your social media business pages

Once you’ve chosen the right social media platforms for your business, it’s time to set up your business pages. Here are some steps to get started:

  1. Choose a username: Select a username that reflects your business name and is easy to remember. Consistency across platforms is important, so try to use the same username whenever possible.
  2. Complete your profile: Fill out all the necessary information in your profile, including your business name, description, website URL, and contact details. This will make it easier for your audience to learn more about your business and get in touch with you.
  3. Upload a profile picture and cover photo: Choose high-quality images for your profile picture and cover photo. These visuals should represent your brand and grab the attention of your audience.
  4. Customise your page: Take advantage of the customisation options offered by each platform. This may include adding a call-to-action button, creating custom tabs, or showcasing your products or services.
  5. Link your website: Make sure to include a link to your website on your social media pages. This will drive traffic to your site and help convert your social media followers into customers.

By following these steps, you can set up professional and engaging social media business pages that effectively represent your brand.

Setting up pages and profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok

To create a LinkedIn page:

LinkedIn

  • Log in to your personal LinkedIn account.
  • Click on the “Work” icon at the top right corner, then select “Create a Company Page.”
  • Choose the appropriate page type (e.g., Small Business, Medium to Large Business, Showcase Page).
  • Fill in all required details, including company name, description, logo, and website URL.

Facebook / Meta

To create a Facebook page:

  • Log in to your personal Facebook account.
  • Click on the “+” icon at the top right corner, then select “Page.”
  • Choose a page type (e.g., Business or Brand, Community or Public Figure).
  • Enter your page name and category, then click “Continue.”

Twitter / X

To create a Twitter profile:

Instagram

To create an Instagram business profile:

TikTok

To create a TikTok business account:

  • Download the TikTok app and sign up with your email or phone number.
  • Go to “Settings” and click “Switch to Pro Account.”
  • Choose a category that best represents your business and complete the profile setup.

Optimising your social media profiles for success

To maximise the impact of your social media marketing efforts, it’s important to optimise your profiles for success. Here are some tips to help you get started:

  1. Use keywords: Incorporate relevant keywords in your profile description and posts to improve your visibility in search results. This will make it easier for your target audience to find you. For Turner Marketing Services, for example, one of my keywords would be social media marketing.
  2. Include links: Link to your website, blog, and other relevant online resources in your profile. This will drive traffic and encourage your audience to explore more about your business.
  3. Use visuals: Visual content is more engaging and memorable. Use high-quality images, videos, and graphics to capture the attention of your audience and showcase your brand.
  4. Consistent branding: Maintain consistent branding across all your social media profiles. Use the same logo, colours, fonts, and brand voice to create a cohesive and recognisable brand identity.
  5. Call-to-action (CTA) buttons: Take advantage of the call-to-action buttons offered by social media platforms. Use these buttons to drive specific actions, such as “Shop Now,” “Learn More,” or “Sign Up.”

By optimising your social media profiles, you can increase your visibility, attract more followers, and ultimately, drive more traffic and conversions for your business.

A beginner’s guide to social media marketing – 9 tips to creating engaging content for social media marketing

Whilst we talked earlier about picking the right type of content, as well as discussing some tools to help you do this, it’s best to summarise how to go about creating engaging content.

Because, in simple terms, content is the heart and soul of social media marketing.

To capture the attention of your audience and keep them engaged, you need to create high-quality and engaging content. Here are some tips to help you create content that resonates with your audience:

  1. Know your audience: Understand the interests, needs, and pain points of your target audience. This will help you create content that is relevant and valuable to them.
    • As I’ve discussed throughout this post, always put their needs and their difficulties above talking about yourself.
    • If you know your audience, you can talk about what problems you are solving for them, whether they are practical problems, financial problems, emotional problems, health problems, skill deficiencies, etc etc.
  2. Mix up your content: Vary your content types to keep your audience engaged. This can include blog posts, videos, infographics, quizzes, contests, and more.
    • Just remember the statistics I mentioned earlier. More and more people are engaging with video, so try to include that in your content as a primary source of content.
    • When mixing up your content, remember to be interactive where possible: Ask questions, run polls, and respond to comments to encourage engagement.
  3. Tell stories: Use storytelling techniques to connect with your audience on a deeper level. Share customer success stories, behind-the-scenes glimpses, and personal anecdotes to humanise your brand.
    • But always, and I’m reiterating this again, always bring the story around to how you are helping your customer solve a problem they are having.
    • For example, a cake making business may tell a lovely story about why a particular cake was created, supported by beautiful imagery or video. The story may be that the cake was created with a theme for a wedding, and had been custom made as a result. Whilst this would no doubt be a lovely story, the key here is to create content that reiterates that you can create custom cakes for weddings, which will be solving an issue a bride and groom may be having.
  4. Use visuals: Visual content is more eye-catching and shareable. Incorporate high-quality images, videos, and graphics into your posts to make them more engaging.
    • Just make sure they focus on achieving the goal of the post. Don’t be eye catching for the sake of it.
    • Again, always try to put your customer at the centre of your visual. Whether that’s a carousel for a “how-to” post that helps them ease a pain point, or a video that explains how to ease the pain point.
  5. Encourage user-generated content: Encourage your audience to create and share content related to your brand. This can include testimonials, reviews, photos, and videos. User-generated content not only boosts engagement but also builds trust and credibility.
  6. Use hashtags (#): Include relevant hashtags to reach a broader audience and increase discoverability. A small amount of research around this topic will show you the key hashtags in your industry.
    • #SEO would be a hashtag that’s relevant for my business, across most social media channels, for example. Users would then be able to find other posts and other users talking about this topic by clicking on the hashtag.
    • Just don’t over stuff your post with hashtags. Each platform will have recommendations about the amount of hashtags for posts on their platforms. Find out what this number is and stick to it. For example:
      • LinkedIn and Instagram recommend 3-5 hashtags.
      • Facebook/Meta recommend 2-3 hashtags per post.
  7. Include a call-to-action (CTA): One of the most important aspects of any post is the call-to-action. A CTA encourages users to take action, such as liking, sharing, or visiting your website. The CTA will vary depending on what you want to achieve, and what your marketing goals are. Some tips for writing CTAs:
    • Keep them concise.
    • Be specific about what the customer is doing or getting.
    • Use active verbs, like “Get”, “Download”, “Learn” etc.
    • Try to put a time limit on the CTA, to encourage immediate action.
    • Examples that include these elements are:
      • “Download our brochure now”.
      • “Purchase the TaylorMade Stealth Driver now”.
      • “Get 25% off our social media marketing services now”.
  8. Run contests and giveaways: Whilst this isn’t always appropriate, sometimes the right marketing strategy can include contests and giveaways. These generate excitement and engagement. Encourage your audience to participate by offering prizes or exclusive discounts. I’m a theatre lover and I consistently use an app called TodayTix. They regularly have offers and lottery draws on there for tickets, encouraging engagement in their app.
    • Just make sure that you can afford the contests and giveaways, and that they fit in with your overall marketing message and brand.
  9. Collaborate with influencers: Influencers have a loyal following and can help you reach a wider audience. Collaborate with influencers in your industry to promote your products or services and increase brand awareness.
    • Just bear in mind this can be expensive. You will likely have to pay a decent one off fee for the privilege of that influencer posting about your company and product. For example, on Instagram, many of the top influencers, who often have 1million followers or more, will be charging you thousands of pounds for a single post. 
    • This isn’t the case for more niche markets where influencers have substantially less followers. But even influencers with, say, 10,000 followers, could still charge upwards of £1,000 per post.

By following these 9 tips, you can create content that captures the attention of your audience, drives engagement, and builds a loyal following.

Measuring and analysing your social media marketing efforts

Measuring and analysing your social media marketing efforts is crucial for understanding what’s working and what’s not. Here are some key metrics to track:

  1. Reach: Measure the number of people who have seen your content. This will help you understand the overall visibility of your posts.
    • Some posts will get higher reach because of the type of post. Others will get higher reach because of the time of day they are posted. And some will get higher reach becasue an influencer reposts your post.
    • Keep these factors in mind when analysing the reach statistic.
  2. Engagement: Track the number of likes, comments, shares, and clicks your posts receive. This will help you gauge how well your content is resonating with your audience.
    • Consider the factors from the Reach section when analysing the engagement of your posts. They are also relevant here.
  3. Click-through rate: Measure the percentage of people who click on the links in your posts. This will help you assess the effectiveness of your calls-to-action. If you aren’t getting a high click-through rate, then use the strategies outlined in the Tips section.
  4. Conversion rate: Track the number of people who take a desired action, such as making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter. This will help you measure the impact of your social media marketing on your bottom line.
    • Bear in mind that social media can be a top of the funnel channel for many businesses, with. afocus on raising brand awareness.
    • Social media works best as a bottom of the funnel channel for B2C businesses, where consumers are ready to purchase. Or when the product or service you’re selling is an easily affordable item.
  5. Referral traffic: Monitor the amount of traffic that your website receives from social media platforms. This will help you understand which platforms are driving the most traffic to your website and adjust your strategy accordingly.

By regularly monitoring and analysing these metrics, you can gain valuable insights into the effectiveness of your social media marketing efforts and make data-driven decisions to improve your results.

Just remember, social media metrics can differ massively depending on the industry and the business itself.

For some businesses who are selling low ticket items and whose marketing relies largely on emotion, such as the fashion industry or gaming, the conversion rates are likely to high.

In comparison, in a B2B situation where the product is costly, the buying cycle is long, and where customers need reassurance over a period of time that they are buying the right product or service, conversion rates can be lower as customers convert across other channels.

This doesn’t mean your business should avoid social media, it just means that your marketing, your social media goals and your content should aim at the top of the funnel. This means a focus on brand building and getting customers primed for conversions when they are ready.

A beginner’s guide to social media marketing, a conclusion

Hopefully, in this beginner’s guide to social media marketing, you’ve learned that this channel is a powerful tool for building a successful online presence.

By understanding the different social media platforms, choosing the right one for your business, running paid campaigns when necessary, and planning your campaign effectively, you can reach and engage with your target audience, drive traffic to your website, and ultimately grow your business.

Remember to optimise your social media profiles and create engaging content. Focus on the strategy guiding you and measure your results to continuously improve your social media marketing efforts.

So, what are you waiting for? Start building your online presence through social media marketing today!

And if you don’t want to do it all on your own, contact Turner Marketing Services to find out more about our social media services here.

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James Turner posing for a photo on his wedding day

James Turner

I am a digital marketing professional with a marketing degree from the University of Warwick and a Diploma in Digital Marketing from the Digital Marketing Institute. I have further marketing qualifications, having completed numerous Google and Hubspot courses focused on key digital marketing skills.

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