Are you reading this on a social media platform? Are you a small business owner or a marketer for a small business? If the answer is yes, our social media marketing plan has worked.  

Unlike any other marketing medium, social media provides multiple opportunities to connect and build relationships with niche audiences. 

Whether we recognize it or not, social media has become a massive part of our personal and professional lives. It’s how we stay in touch with friends and family, build professional networks, share our passions, and discover new brands and products.

As of April 2022 

• Facebook had 2.936 billion monthly active users with 999.8 million users on Facebook Messenger
• Twitter had 465.1 million users 
• LinkedIn had 828.1 million users
• And there were 1.452 billion users on Instagram.

What a gift! So many people to discover, buy in and share on your brand. No wonder social media marketing is increasingly the choice of marketers to reach customers and gain new ones for any type of business, big or small.

What exactly is Social Media Marketing (SMM)?

SMM is the activities or processes for selling or promoting a brand, product, or service using social media channels. These processes which form a social media marketing strategy include:

• Understanding your target audience 
• Creating and posting content on social media platforms 
• Engaging with followers
• Running social media advertisements and
• Analyzing your results.

Why is SMM important for business growth?

Social media allows businesses to engage with customers and build relationships with them. It’s the perfect place to humanize your brand and show off the people behind your company. It gives a voice to brands, helps you reach new audiences, and drives sales.

Social media platforms provide brands with a virtual social place where people go to learn about them, make purchases, and connect. It offers countless opportunities to direct a potential customer to a website or make a purchase, even faster than email, the once preferred online communication method. 

Social media is a low-cost, highly effective way for businesses of any size to reach potential customers. Do many avenues for social media marketing are free. You can use it to grow your following rapidly, generate leads and make sales without spending a dime on advertising if you do it right.

Once you know how to use a social media platform and understand social media marketing fundamentals, taking your brand or product to market will be a breeze. 

Do you like a podcast? In our episode on where to start with B2B marketing online, we share simple and cost-effective ways to market and grow your small to medium business:

Nine steps for creating an SMM strategy from scratch

Want to use social media to build your business but are not sure how to get started? You’re not alone! And we’re here to help. Here are nine easy steps for creating an SMM strategy from scratch that will help you drive actual results.

1. Select SMM goals that align with business goals. This will help you stay on track and make sure you’re making the most of your time and effort on social.

Read this for more detail:

2. Do a social media audit. Look at the social channels you’ve used in the past, including personal ones, and see which ones are worth reviving and which ones might be best left by the wayside.

3. Discover all you can about your audience. The more you know about who’s likely to use your product or service, the better able you’ll be to target them on social.

You can go deeper on this here: Learn how to track, measure and analyze your social media analytics.

4. Get to know your competition. You can learn a lot from what they’ve done right (and wrong) on social—plus, it’s always good to have an idea of what they have in store next.

5. Set up accounts and improve profiles. If you don’t have accounts on major platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, get to it! Make sure branding is uniform across all your platforms.

6. Find inspiration. Generate ideas for your posts and campaigns by looking at what others are doing in your industry or looking at the best posts of all time in your industry on each social network (e.g., the most retweeted tweets ever).

7. Create a social media content calendar. Keep a dedicated calendar based on the insights gathered during steps 1-6 and any other pertinent information (e.g., product launches, seasonal promotions, etc.).

8. Create exciting and compelling content. Engage your target audience with relevant content that has them taking notice and action! (purchase, subscribe, share, etc.).

9. Track performance. Record and adjust your strategy accordingly (based on what’s working and not working).

10. Bonus tip! Invest in promo vids. A product video informs your target audience about your best-selling items or services. Videos are the best way to demonstrate your product in action and highlight key qualities while increasing consumer trust in your brand.

Boom, there you have it! SMM should now be a lot clearer to you. You’re now ready to begin strategizing a next-level social media campaign that will yield actual results for your company or brand.

Build your campaigns with confidence

Metigy helps SMEs grow their business by taking the stress out of social media marketing decisions. Try us out today.