What are the 5 Pillars of Social Media Marketing?

Social media is a platform that keeps people hooked on it no matter what age category they belong from. Out of 7.87 billion people in the world, 4.95 billion of the population use social networks. Social media is simply a tool – one that requires a strategy behind it to be used effectively. To make sure your business flourishes it is important to understand what social media marketing is.

Concurrently, social media marketing has emerged as a powerful tool for businesses to engage with their target audience and promote their products or services.

However, the effectiveness of social media marketing depends on the ability to navigate evolving algorithms, engage authentically, and stay attuned to the ever-changing trends of the digital landscape.

What Social Media Marketing is?

Social media marketing refers to the use of social media platforms to connect with your audience to build your brand, increase sales, and drive website traffic. This involves publishing great content on your social media profiles, listening to and engaging your followers, analysing your results, and running social media advertisements.

The effectiveness of social media platforms for social media marketing depends on various factors, including your target audience, industry, and marketing goals. Different platforms cater to different demographics and offer various features. Here are some popular social media platforms; facebook, instagram, twitter, linkedin, pinterest, youtube, snapchat; these social media platforms can help you boost your social media marketing.

Now we know what social media marketing is but do you know what are those top 5 pillars that make up social media marketing? Let’s dive into them.

5 essentials of social media marketing

1. Strategy

Strategy is the most important element of social media marketing. It is the base if you intend to create content on social media. If you don’t know on which points to focus, these are the following things that make up the social strategy : 

• What is your objective?
• Which social networking site would best assist you to reach your objective?
• What kind of material will draw in your target audience?

2. Planning and Publishing

It is a simple task to upload a picture or video on your social media account. But if it is from the point of view of advertising, there are few things that should be focused on before you upload posts. The key points that should be focused on are:

• How much use of social media does your target audience do?
• Examining the audience your post reached?
• Check whether your post is interesting.
• Carefully craft your social media post.

3. Listening and Engagement

The main motive of marketing is the audience and their responses on the things that are posted on your site. If you see that the number of followers on your page is increasing, that means your content is attracting the audience. They might start tagging you or interact with you.

Hence you should always keep the track on the comment and likes you are getting. In case they have any problem or query, try to solve them and appreciate the feedback and reviews.

4. Analytics and Reporting

Whichever your aim is; steady increase in traffic, sales, or engagement, keeping a daily track on your social media campaign performance is very important. To understand if your content is running smoothly, you should keep a daily track on these few things:

• The number of comments received in a month and working on the negative ones.
• Compare the number of followers with last month.
• How many users are following, commenting and liking the post.
• If the post has more viewers/reach than last month or not.
• How many users, using their company’s hashtag and company’s name.

5. Advertising

This is the most common but essential part of social media that is ads. If you want to invest in social media then you should invest in social ads and increase the awareness of your brand. The ads help in reaching the maximum number of users and help in attracting the targeted audience. Social media algorithms are so particular that they can narrow down the audience appropriate to your brand.

There are 4 major types of social advertising that are majorly used :

• Paid Social Ads: Running paid campaigns on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter with various formats like sponsored posts, display ads, videos, and carousels.
• Influencer Marketing: Collaborating with influential individuals on social media to promote products or services to their followers.
• Contests and Giveaways: Engaging users through social media contests or giveaways to boost brand visibility and encourage user participation.
• Social Advocacy Advertising: Encouraging users to become brand advocates by sharing positive experiences and content on social media.

Things that should not be done on social media marketing

• Execution without a strategy: Any idea that is to be executed should not be done without a proper strategy or planning. If the base of plan is firmly established the rest of work is done smoothly.
• Not aiming everyone: The main aim is to target the specific audience but you never know when the conversion takes place. During that time the audience that never was on your target list can be converted into a potential audience. So always consider everyone as your audience and represent accordingly.
• Usage of ineffective tags: Always keep a check on the trending hashtags. If the hashtags are used in an ineffective way, there are chances that your ad won’t be able to reach the maximum number of audiences that was aimed.
• Not being active on the comment section: Your comment section is the most important element when you post an ad. It is the common source for your audience to communicate with you. In the comment section they can ask you about their queries, seek information, give a suggestion, tag someone and various other things that can be useful to you. So never ignore your comment section.
• Ignoring the negative comments: Do not ignore the negative comments you get in the comment section. Those can be the most useful ones. Look at them from the point of view of improvement and make changes accordingly. There is a huge scope of increasing your audience if you make changes according to them.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the 5 pillars of social media marketing work in harmony to build a robust and effective online presence. A strategic foundation, meticulous planning, genuine engagement, data-driven insights, and targeted advertising together create a dynamic ecosystem that allows businesses coach to thrive in the ever-evolving landscape of social media.

There are several tools that manage social media from one platform and make the user work efficiently. From the hassle of scheduling the post to engagement with the audience, there are various social media tools that help to publish your work easily. Just remember every time you post something, focus on the strategy, audience and plan thoroughly with the perspective of a wider audience range.