Social Media Marketing 101

Social media marketing is the practice of leveraging social media platforms to share content, build networks, and engage users with the goal of growing a brand or business. As the social landscape expands, this is an increasingly broad term with a vast range of practical applications.

Generally, we find that social media marketing strategy breaks down into three phases: show, grow, and flow.

Show: Gaining visibility and awareness in the social space is an important first step toward driving bottom-line results for your brand. Building out your profiles, and establishing a consistent voice and cadence, will help get your company seen on social networks.

Grow: With baseline awareness measures in place, you can start to focus on growing your social media presence. Start using hashtags and joining relevant conversations. Increase your activity. Activate employees to speak on behalf of the brand.

Flow: Finally, you’ll want to develop a sustainable ongoing model to keep awareness, engagement, and conversions flowing continually. Test new social media marketing ideas while striking the right balance of paid and organic. Measure and optimize to maintain forward momentum.

Before we get into the benefits and actionable aspects of developing a strategy around social media marketing, let’s first take a high-level look at the state of social and why it shouldn’t be on the back burner.