With over 80% of consumers reporting that social media—especially influencer content—significantly impacts buying decisions, marketers across industries are driving the evolution of social media marketing (SMM) from a stand-alone tool to a multipronged source of marketing intelligence on an increasingly important—and growing—audience.
Within 18 years, from 2004 (when MySpace became the first social media site to reach one million users) to 2022, the dramatic growth of interactive digital channels took social media to levels that challenge even the reach of television and radio.
By Q1 of 2022, there were 4.6 billion social media users globally—over 58% of the world’s population—an increase of over 10% in one year alone.
As the use of social media trends upward, marketers are perfecting strategies to capture the significant competitive advantage that engagement with this key audience can deliver even more rapidly and effectively than traditional marketing.
What Is Social Media Marketing (SMM)?
Social media marketing (SMM) (also known as digital marketing and e-marketing) is the use of social media—the platforms on which users build social networks and share information—to build a company’s brand, increase sales, and drive website traffic. In addition to providing companies with a way to engage with existing customers and reach new ones, social media marketing (SMM) has purpose-built data analytics that allow marketers to track the success of their efforts and identify even more ways to engage.
Why Is Social Media Marketing So Powerful?
The power of social media marketing (SMM) is driven by the unparalleled capacity of social media in three core marketing areas: connection, interaction, and customer data.
Connection: Not only does social media enable businesses to connect with customers in ways that were previously impossible, but there is also an extraordinary range of avenues to connect with target audiences—from content platforms (like YouTube) and social sites (like Facebook) to microblogging services (like Twitter).
Interaction: The dynamic nature of the interaction on social media—whether direct communication or passive “liking”—enables businesses to leverage free advertising opportunities from eWOM (electronic word-of-mouth) recommendations between existing and potential customers. Not only is the positive contagion effect from eWOM a valuable driver of consumer decisions, but the fact that these interactions happen on the social network makes them measurable. For example, businesses can measure their “social equity”—a term for the return on investment (ROI) from their social media marketing (SMM) campaigns.
Customer Data: A well-designed social media marketing (SMM) plan delivers another invaluable resource to boost marketing outcomes: customer data. Rather than being overwhelmed by the 3Vs of big data (volume, variety, and velocity), SMM tools have the capacity not only to extract customer data but also to turn this gold into actionable market analysis—or even to use the data to crowdsource new strategies.
How Social Media Marketing Works
As platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram took off, social media transformed not only the way we connect with one another but also the way businesses are able to influence consumer behavior—from promoting content that drives engagement to extracting geographic, demographic, and personal information that makes messaging resonate with users.
SMM Action Plan: The more targeted your social media marketing (SMM) strategy is, the more effective it will be. Hootsuite, a leading software provider in the social media management space, recommends the following action plan to build an SMM campaign that has an execution framework as well as performance metrics:
- Align SMM goals to clear business objectives
- Learn your target customer (age, location, income, job title, industry, interests)
- Conduct a competitive analysis of your competition (successes and failures)
- Audit your current SMM (successes and failures)
- Create a calendar for SMM content delivery
- Create best-in-class content
- Track performance and adjust SMM strategy as needed
Customer Relationship Management (CRM): Compared to traditional marketing, social media marketing has several distinct advantages, including the fact that SMM has two kinds of interaction that enable targeted customer relationship management (CRM) tools: both customer-to-customer and firm-to-customer. In other words, while traditional marketing tracks customer value primarily by capturing purchase activity, SMM can track customer value both directly (through purchases) and indirectly (through product referrals).
Shareable Content: Businesses can also convert the amplified interconnectedness of SMM into the creation of “sticky” content, the marketing term for attractive content that engages customers at first glance, gets them to purchase products, and then makes them want to share the content. This kind of word-of-mouth advertising not only reaches an otherwise inaccessible audience but also carries the implicit endorsement of someone the recipient knows and trusts—which makes the creation of shareable content one of the most important ways that social media marketing drives growth.
Earned Media: Social media marketing (SMM) is also the most efficient way for a business to reap the benefits of another kind of earned media (a term for brand exposure from any method other than paid advertising): customer-created product reviews and recommendations.
Viral Marketing: Another SMM strategy that relies on the audience to generate the message is viral marketing, a sales technique that attempts to trigger the rapid spread of word-of-mouth product information. Once a marketing message is shared with the general public far beyond the original target audience, it is considered viral—a very simple and inexpensive way to promote sales.
Customer Segmentation: Because customer segmentation is much more refined on social media marketing (SMM) than on traditional marketing channels, companies can ensure they focus their marketing resources on their exact target audiences.
Tracking Metrics
According to Sprout Social, the most important social media marketing (SMM) metrics to track are focused on the customer: engagement (likes, comments, shares, clicks); impressions (how many times a post shows up); reach/virality (how many unique views an SMM post has); share of voice (how far a brand reaches in the online sphere); referrals (how a user lands on a site); and conversions (when a user makes a purchase on a site). However, another very important metric is focused on the business: response rate/time (how often and how fast the business responds to customer messages).
When a business is trying to determine which metrics to track in the sea of data that social media generates, the rule is always to align each business goal to a relevant metric. If your business goal is to grow conversions from an SMM campaign by 15% within three months, then use a social media analytics tool that measures the effectiveness of your campaign against that specific target.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Social Media Marketing
Tailored social media marketing (SMM) campaigns that instantly reach a range of target audiences are clearly advantageous to any business.
But—like any social media content—SMM campaigns can leave a company open to attack. For example, a viral video claiming that a product causes illness or injury must be addressed immediately—whether the claim is true or false. Even if a company can set the record straight, false viral content can make consumers less likely to purchase in the future.
Top Social Media Marketing Terms And Definitions
Half of the global population now uses social media. Naturally, businesses marketing to them must follow suit. As a result, more than 90% of businesses today use social networking as an essential part of their marketing strategy.
Using the tools, services, and strategies of social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook have become standard practice for marketers. Whether it’s a seasoned marketer or a beginner, working in the field of marketing today requires thorough knowledge of social media. And it all begins with social media marketing terms and definitions.
We’ve put together a glossary of the most used social media marketing terminology to help you decode digital jargon. If you’re an aspiring marketer or looking to advance your career, you’re expected to be familiar with these top social media marketing terms.
- A/B Testing
A/B Testing or split testing is one of the basic social media tests to identify what marketing strategy works for your brand or service. The testing compares two variants on your social media posts to measure which one drives more conversions. For example, you can run A/B testing on Instagram content-type: photo content v/s video content to determine the best strategy to convert consumers into customers.
- Algorithm
An algorithm is a mathematical system used to solve problems and deliver results. In social media, an algorithm refers to a set of rules that help search engines rank, filter, and organize search results and advertisements. Marketers are constantly vying to beat social media algorithms to improve their rank in social media ads and content placement.
- Blog
A blog is a truncation of ‘weblog’ and refers to a discussion or informational website published on the web and updated frequently by an individual or enterprise. Blog entries or posts are often informal, diary-style text displayed in reverse chronological order. Digital marketers and business owners stay updated on the latest social media developments by reading social media blogs.
- Chatbot
A chatbot is a form of artificial intelligence (AI) that simulates human-like interactions with customers via text messages or text-to-speech in social messaging apps.
- Clickbait
Clickbait in social media marketing terms refers to misleading or manipulative content (article, image, or video) that entices users to click on it.
- Clickthrough Rate (CTR)
Click-Through Rate or CTR is a very popular social media marketing term that forms part of almost every activity on any social media platform. is a measure of the percentage of users that click on your post. It is calculated by dividing the number of link clicks by post impressions or the number of views. The higher the CTR score, the better for a business
- Conversion Rate
This is one of the important social media marketing terms. Conversion Rate in social media terminology refers to the percentage of users who follow through a social post or ad’s call to action. This can be a download, purchase, or some other desired action depending upon the marketer’s conversion goal. Conversion rate is one of the top indicators of a company’s marketing strategy performance.
- Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing means gathering a large group of social media users to generate ideas, services, or content for a brand or campaign.
- Dark Post
A dark post is a targeted social media ad that doesn’t show on the advertiser’s timeline. They only appear in the feeds of target users.
- Direct Message (DM)
A Direct Message is a private message between social media users that can only be seen by the sender and the recipient.
- Engagement Rate
Engagement rate is a metric that tells how much interaction a social media content earns from followers. It is calculated as the percentage of users who engaged with your post of the total number who viewed it. A good engagement rate (1-4%) indicates an effective social media marketing campaign.
- Ephemeral Content
Ephemeral content refers to social media content that disappears after a specific period of time.
- Feed
A social media feed is among the generic social media marketing terms used to stream content you see from various social media accounts. It is a wall-like layout that displays all your brand’s content from different social media platforms.
- Follower
In social media marketing terms, a follower is a user who has subscribed to view your posts. The number of followers of an organization or brand is a key metric of how the audience on social media is engaging with the brand.
- Handle
A unique public username used on social media accounts is referred to as ‘handle’; like in Twitter, a handle refers to the username followed by an @ symbol.
- Hashtag
A hashtag (#) is a word or phrase preceded by a ‘#’ sign used to connect posts on social media to other posts on the same subject or a trending topic. Hashtags are a way to make it easier for users to search for posts related to specific topics.
- Impressions
Impressions are the number of times your content has been shown on the feeds of social media users. A viewer doesn’t need to engage with a post in order for it to be counted as an impression.
- Key Performance Indicator (KPI)
A numeric unit used to measure the progress of your social marketing strategies and campaign goals. KPIs are frequently used to track progress in brand awareness, lead generation, sales conversions, etc.
- Live streaming
Social media live streaming is a way of using eye-catching content to reach your audience on channels like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter in real-time. Live streaming helps boost your brand’s positioning in the news feed algorithms of channels.
- Meme
In the social media context, a meme is a text, video, or image that is spread through social media platforms, especially for humorous purposes. Memes go viral, and users get in by creating their own variations and sharing them.
Sometimes, brands capitalize on the latest memes to engage and connect with younger audiences, but you need more than a healthy sense of humor to pull off meme marketing.
- Native Advertising
Native advertising on social media is the technique of showing paid content to users in such a way that it looks organic. Examples of native ads are promoted Facebook posts, which appear similar to regular posts in users’ feeds.
- Pay per Click (PPC)
PPC is a social media marketing term referring to a form of paid advertising where advertisers pay a fee each time a user clicks on the ad.
- Share
Share refers to how many times a piece of content has been reposted on social media. There is a clickable ‘share’ feature on social media platforms that allows you to repost other users’ content to your own timeline or newsfeed.
