Building your business through social media marketing

What is social media marketing for businesses?

A powerful tool in any company’s arsenal, social media marketing, helps businesses connect with their target audience, enhance brand awareness, increase their reach, and promote their offerings in creative, compelling ways.

Here’s the thing: if you want to be seen and heard, the place to be is where everyone gathers. Today, that place is social media. It’s estimated that, as of 2022, 94% of Canadian adults online have an account on at least one social media platform. Facebook is the most frequently used social media platform, with 70% of Canadians using the platform daily. This is followed by TikTok (65%), YouTube (61%), Instagram (60%), X/Twitter (47%), and LinkedIn (23%).

TikTok has become one of the fastest-growing social media platforms worldwide, with the number of global monthly active users increasing by 45% (689 million to over 1 billion) from 2020 to 2021. This makes it an especially important platform to consider growing an audience on.

With people spending so much time online, whether shopping, learning, or being entertained, social media platforms have become critical to any business’s marketing strategy.

The benefits of social media for business

Investing in social media is a smart move for entrepreneurs looking to increase their visibility and gain traction in today's climate. Here’s how:

Building brand awareness and credibility

When done right, social media marketing can get your product or service in front of hundreds, thousands, or possibly millions of people. People who may not have known about you otherwise. That brand awareness can attract new customers, increase sales and establish your business as a worthy competitor in your field.

And then there’s the element of credibility. When you gain followers, secure positive comments and reviews, and have your content liked and shared, your credibility multiplies. You become trustworthy and reliable. And your impact grows from there.

Connecting with an audience and building community

Creating a strong and engaged community comes down to fostering relationships with your audience. It’s an essential prerequisite. Not only does connecting with a community increase your reach, but their feedback can offer valuable information with which to tweak your offerings and/or marketing strategy. What’s more, when you infuse your content with authenticity, you have a much greater chance of establishing a loyal and dedicated following.

Driving online or in-person traffic and sales

By promoting products and services via direct links and calls to action, businesses can efficiently engage with prospective customers and drive traffic to their website or e-commerce partners. Similarly, in-person traffic and sales can also increase thanks to an incentivized customer base who may prefer to shop in-store. 

Gaining additional audience data and market research

When you build relationships on social media, you’re privy to information about your customers that you may not have access to on other mediums. Think about it: through their activity, your target audience shares their honest opinions about their likes, dislikes and aspirations about the brands they follow, including your own. Being actively involved on social media can also help you gain insight into the latest trends and the market. This is data you can leverage for business planning and determining next the steps. 

Useful social media marketing tips

Tip 1: Publish engaging and diverse content

You may have a following, but that doesn’t mean they’ll stick around or buy your products, for that matter. You need to keep them engaged to establish a long-term relationship and encourage buy-in. Keeping your content diverse can help.

Now, when it comes to posting on social media, there are a bunch of different methods you can use. You've got options like:

• Images
• Videos
• Infographics
• Firsthand testimonials
• Live streaming content

Different types of posts can include:

• How-to pieces
• Polls
• Asking questions
• Special holiday posts
• New updates

You can also look to test out different types of content themes. Try educational posts one day, inspirational another and entertaining the next, to master the art of mixing it up.

Tip 2: Optimize your profile for each social media platform

Each platform has its own culture and expectations. Make sure your content fits in. On TikTok, humorous and engaging short-form videos do best. On Facebook, personal stories are the most popular. Instagram demands visually creative content, while YouTube is the place for engaging and informational videos. On X/Twitter, that may mean using punchy, short headlines.

If posting on LinkedIn, create professional and educational content. But remember, while adapting your content is good, your brand identity should be consistent no matter where you post.

Tip 3: Maintain an active and consistent presence

Your social media marketing strategy should be an active one. Post consistently. Make a point to engage with users, remaining active and open to questions. Initiate conversations, develop polls, host giveaways and live stream events.

Don’t ignore negative feedback. Though it may be difficult, try to respond to each one, whether publicly or through direct messaging. Any business can ignore criticism. It’s the ones who face it, who address it head-on (and who try to make it right), that gain trust among their customer base.

Tip 4: Use analytics to measure strategy

We’ll discuss this more below, but one of the best ways to gauge whether your social media marketing strategy is working is to employ analytics and data tracking. Each platform has its own analytics feature, but you can invest in a social media analytics tool that tracks every platform in one place.

Tip 5: Try paid advertising

Paid social ads can prove well worth your marketing dollars. Paid advertising allows you to get your ads in front of users who’ve demonstrated an interest in the type of products and services that your business sells. Thanks to the targeted approach, paid ads can help you expand your reach in ways that free, organic advertising may not. Don’t forget, that most platforms offer intuitive and cost-effective targeting features so that you can reach your audience—and your goals— efficiently and effectively.

Popular social media platforms for businesses

So many choices and so many opportunities to be seen, connect and grow your brand. Of course, you don’t need to be everywhere. Some would argue, in fact, that if time and resources were limited, it’s better to focus on the platforms you can actively keep up with.

Choose the platform(s) most popular with your target audience and industry. Remember, each social platform is designed with a specific mandate and boasts unique features and demographics. Understanding the characteristics of each platform can help you strategize your approach and whether to opt out.

Facebook

With 3 billion monthly active users as of 2023, Facebook is the largest social media platform in the world. Of note, it’s one of the least popular platforms among Gen Z and Millennials. If your target audience skews a bit older, Facebook is an ideal place to boost brand awareness, generate leads and increase sales. You can also create targeted ads. Just remember: the competition for eyeballs is fierce.

TikTok

Facebook still wins the popularity contest, but Gen Z is helping TikTok gain influence, helping it become the second most daily used app. The newer platform focuses on short-form videos and tends to attract younger individuals. If that’s your target audience, you may want TikTok in your social media mix.

YouTube

Over 2.4 billion people are active monthly users on YouTube. The platform’s popularity has grown, especially among Gen Z users, with the largest age group 25 to 34. Also considered the second largest search engine after Google, YouTube is an ideal place to showcase video content should the demographic make sense to your objectives.

Instagram

Instagram has seen steady growth over the past few years. Its largest age group is 18 to 24, with the platform highly attractive among Gen Z and Millennials. Whether through Stories, Reels, live streams, or shops, your marketing strategy can garner true bang for its buck.

X/Twitter

X, formerly Twitter, is an ideal platform to connect with your audience, so long as you keep it brief. With a max of 280 characters, each message can include text, images, GIFs, videos and links. X offers valuable customer service opportunities for a business to respond in real time to questions and comments and can help with brand building and industry and competitor research. Since it rebranded as X, the platform witnessed a decline in users (monthly active users are 368 million), with its largest age group being 25 to 34-year-olds.

LinkedIn

A business networking platform, its main demographic is professionals of all stripes. Many use it to promote job opportunities, connect to prospective employees and gain industry knowledge. Some use it to establish themselves as thought leaders in their space through the blogging feature. Businesses can heighten their credibility through business pages. You can also use the platform to generate leads through paid ads.

Benefits of scheduling social media content

The value of social media marketing is clear, so long as you maintain consistent activity. Many facing this challenge don’t want to lose their hard-earned momentum.

Content scheduling is an organizational tool that keeps your brand top-of-mind and active across every channel to which you’re committed without stopping or slowing down. The benefits are many.

Save time

Posting content takes time, especially when done right. Content scheduling requires an hour or so to manage all the posts you intend to publish for the entire week or even a month if you prefer. In one sitting you can arrange the graphics, images, links etc. And voila, you’re done! You can now re-focus on the other to-dos on your list.

Stay organized

It’s hard to keep track of the content you’ve published across all your accounts—and the content you’re still planning to get out. Social media management tools offer a variety of organizational features. From automation options and notifications to viewing analytics of multiple platforms on one dashboard, with content scheduling, coordinating multiple tasks is made easier.

Embrace downtime

Every business will experience slower periods when there’s less to promote and less to talk about. But if you only focus on your social media marketing when things are busy, consistency is lost. By forcing you to produce material in advance of downtimes, content scheduling helps you add value consistently and strategically.

Popular social media content scheduling tools

There are many scheduling tools out there which can help you stay organized. Here are 10 of the most popular according to Hootsuite. Be sure to find the tool that works best for you.

1. Hootsuite
2. Later
3. Sprout Social
4. Canva
5. HubSpot
6. Buffer
7. Meta Business Suite
8. Tweetdeck
9. Tailwind
10. RSS Autopublisher

Social media analytics

Social media analytics allows a business to gather and analyze data and reports based on metrics from their social media accounts. The insight that you garner from analytics can help validate or improve your online marketing efforts and marketing strategy more generally.

Some of the advantages of using analytics include:

• Gaining a profound understanding of your target audience, their likes, dislikes and where they like to hang out online.
• Determine the type of content with the greatest reach and that leads to the most conversions.
• Identify which platforms are the most resonant, with the most traffic.
• Discern what is and isn’t working among the variety of content you publish.
• Establish a comprehensive social media strategy towards successful outcomes.

Popular analytics tools

With many analytics tools to choose from, the more popular ones include:

Google Analytics: one of the best free tools for learning about your website visitors, Google Analytics attaches tracking tags to your marketing campaigns to help monitor them. The key benefit of Google Analytics is the insight it offers into how much traffic and leads flow to your website from your social media channels.

Instagram Insights: a built-in feature of the app, Instagram Insights allows Business Account users to view analytics related to their profile and posts. You can then identify audience likes and which posts they engage with most. The insight helps improve your strategy on the platform.

Hootsuite Analytics: the paid tool pulls data from every social channel into one place with easy-to-understand reports. User-friendly, the tool is especially geared at business owners who run their own social media campaigns or those on small teams.

Sprout Social: similar to Hootsuite, Sprout is a full-featured analytics dashboard which offers detailed information on your paid and organic posts. It also helps you determine the best times to publish content, taking into account audience data. Though pricier than Hootsuite, Sprout is geared at marketing teams at larger organizations.

Social media key performance indicators (KPIs)

You work so hard developing a social media strategy for your business. Wouldn’t it be nice to know if it’s working? That’s where social media KPIs (key performance indicators) come in. By setting specific targets, you can track and measure your performance and success.

Important KPIs include:

• Impressions: the number of times your post was visible in someone’s feed.
• Followers: the number of followers your platform has at a set time period.
• Potential reach: the number of people who could see a post during a reporting period.
• Engagement: measures the quality of the interactions with your followers. It looks at how well you’re connecting with them through likes, shares, comments etc.
• Clicks: measures how many times someone clicked the links embedded in your posts, helping determine reach and engagement.
• Revenue: how much you’ve made through your social media activity, whether from direct sales or website clicks which are converted into purchases.
• Website traffic: measures how many visitors come to your website from your social media platforms.
• Customer satisfaction: tracks what users think about your brand, whether through reviews, comments, testimonials etc.

Your business needs social media marketing

Every entrepreneur can benefit from social media marketing. Whether to drive traffic, boost sales, generate leads, increase brand awareness, or build relationships, your online activity should be an integral part of your business strategy.

Sure, it requires an investment in time, effort, and possibly money. But the payoffs can prove worthwhile. For optimum results, it’s important to post consistently, use diverse content and connect with your audience.

Make your life easier with scheduling and organization tools. And to ensure you’re on the right path, invest in analytics tools to track and measure your online performance through targeted KPIs. It’s one thing to have a social media presence—it’s quite another for that presence to drive your business goals and growth in significant ways.