Social Media Marketing: Definitive Guide & Free Templates [2023]

Social media marketing is a must for businesses of all sizes. Your prospects and consumers use social media regularly. You need to interact with them through their favorite social media platforms if you want to engage them. 

What’s more, social media marketing is not only essential to drive more leads and sales; it will also help you to get brand advocates, drive website traffic, and boost your brand awareness. 

If you’re struggling with your social media efforts, do not panic! 

This guide covers from the basics to the most advanced strategies regarding social media marketing. I’ll tell you all you need to know to succeed in 2023. 

Let’s jump right in!

Chapter 1

Social Media Marketing Fundamentals

In this chapter, I’ll focus on social media marketing fundamentals. Thus, I’ll explain to you all those basic concepts you must understand to get general knowledge regarding social media marketing.

To begin with, I’ll tell you what social media is, who uses it, and what does it work for. And then, I’ll move on to explain what social media marketing is and why it is important nowadays.

To conclude this first chapter, I’ll provide some social media marketing statistics you cannot miss. And afterward, I’ll show you how to do social media marketing.

Social Media

Social media was originally created to interact with family and friends. Yet, businesses soon perceived the advantages of using social media to promote their brand and products and engage with their audience. 

Social media is an indispensable tool for enterprises these days. Brands use social media platforms to interact with their customers, advertise their products, be up to date, and offer support.

What is social media?

Social media refers to web-based communication technology that people use to interact with each other, share information, thoughts, and ideas. People share several content types, such as videos, photos, and documents.

Social media includes a series of websites and apps like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, Reddit, etc. People engage with social media through devices like computers, tablets, and smartphones.

what is social media

Moreover, social media not only refers to the use of social networks, but it also includes activities such as blogging, social gaming, video sharing, photo sharing, business networks, etc. 

Besides, social media is detrimental to collect information about your target audience. Thanks to social media, you’ll be able to improve how your target audience perceives you since you can address them appropriately through segmentation. This way, you’ll boost customer loyalty. 

Who uses social media?

According to Hootsuite, more than half of the world’s population uses social media. Indeed, numbers are growing faster. However, the use of social media varies depending on location, gender, and age.

What’s more, according to GlobalWebIndex, the average person uses around nine different platforms. Yet, Facebook is still the most widely used social media network. Whatsapp, YouTube, and Instagram are among the favorites too.

People spend more and more time on social media. Interacting with family and friends is still the main reason why people use social media. But, many also use it to be up to date, socialize and entertain themselves. 

Besides, it seems that many young consumers use social media networks to make purchasing decisions (GlobalWebIndex). It is for this reason that brands must use social media platforms to promote themselves and their products. 

who uses social media

Gen Z and millennials are the ones who use social media the most. Social media usage by older people has increased recently. Not surprisingly, many users check their social media accounts daily. Indeed, it is believed that the average user spends around 2 hours and a half on social media each day.

What is social media good for?

There are one thousand reasons why social media is good for businesses. Among others, because social media will help you to boost your brand visibility and awareness, increase your website’s traffic and sales, collect customer feedback, and track your competitors.

Social media is also critical to establish yourself as a brand leader and learn about your target market’s latest trends. You can also benefit from social media if you decide to partner with influencers. The latter will no doubt help you to reach a large audience.

You can also use social media networks to promote your content so that it becomes viral. Not to mention that social media is helpful for your customers as you can be available for them whenever they need you.

Apart from monitoring your competitors and what they do on social media, it would be wise to practice social listening to check what your audience thinks about your brand. 

How to Start Social Media Marketing (4 ESSENTIAL Tips for Beginners)
by Neil Patel

Thanks to social media ads, you’ll be able to target your audience based on their interests. You can even benefit from retargeting too. Social media is detrimental because you can use it to communicate with your customers and prospects wherever they are.

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing implies creating content that’s engaging for your audience. Depending on the platform, one type of content will dominate. Anyway, social media marketing is essential to foster your relationship with your customers and prospects. 

social media marketing

It’s critical to be where your customers are and where they might be in the future. So, you must select your social media networks carefully. There are lots of tools that come and go. Ensure you have an account on those where your audience is and become an active user. 

What is social media marketing?

Social media marketing consists of the use of social media networks and websites to promote your brand, its products, and services. The content you create must be tailored to each specific platform to drive user engagement and generate sales.

Social media marketing involves activities like posting videos, images, and text. You can also make use of paid social media advertising. Each platform is different. Thus, you must ensure that the content you use matches your audience preferences and platform specifications.

Still, social media marketing not only requires posting content regularly; it also involves interacting with your audience through likes, shares, and comments. You must set your goals and build a strategy if you want to succeed in your marketing campaigns. 

Social media marketing is decisive to reach new audiences, but it’s also necessary to engage with your existing customers. It is because of social media marketing that your content can go viral. Yet, for this, you’ll need to get brand advocates. 

Tip: 

Many platforms now offer the chance to go live. You should no doubt produce live content as it allows you to look more human and close to your audience. It enables them to participate in the event. 

Social media marketing is trackable. You can analyze whether your marketing efforts were fruitful or not. There are many social media networks out there, but you should focus on the ones your target audience is interested in the most. 

Why is social media marketing important?

Social media marketing is crucial to reach your target audience effectively. Social media marketing matters since it can help you to attract the right customers. And it’ll assist you to showcase your products and services online.

It is because of the help of social media that you’ll be able to tell your brand story and connect with your audience. People will get to know you better. Besides, social media marketing is cost-effective in comparison with other channels.

As I mentioned earlier, social media can help you learn about your competitors and your customers’ habits. This way, you’ll be able to create long-lasting relationships with your audience. 

why is social media marketing important

Social media is a powerful medium to spread the word about your business. That’s why many marketers, entrepreneurs, and bloggers use it. Still, social media marketing is beneficial for any enterprise, no matter its size.

What’s more, social media marketing is decisive in improving your brand loyalty and strengthening customer satisfaction. You’ll also benefit from community authority if you post valuable content that educates your audience. 

Another reason why social media marketing is essential is that it’s perfect for showing authenticity. Be kind and friendly as you let them know about your brand’s personality. 

Social Media Marketing Statistics

Here is a list of the most relevant social media marketing statistics for 2023:

  • There are 3.5 billion social media users worldwide (Oberlo).
  • 50% of the world’s population uses social media (Statista).
  • 90% of marketers maintain that their social media marketing efforts have increased their exposure (Ignite Visibility).
  • The average person spends around 2 hours and a half on social media on a regular basis (GlobalWebIndex).
  • According to a recent survey, 60% of social media users say that they’ve watched at least one video on social media in the past month (GlobalWebIndex).
  • Social media is the most important marketing channel for 50% of Gen Z and 42% of Millennials (Adobe).
  • More than 70% of YouTube watch time happens on mobile devices (YouTube).
  • 79% of Facebook users only access the platform on mobile (Hootsuite).
  • 54% of social media users use the platform to research products they intend to buy (GlobalWebIndex).
  • 27% of internet users claim they find new products thanks to social media paid ads (Hootsuite).
  • 71% of consumers are likely to recommend a brand as long as they’ve had an excellent social media service experience with it (Ambassador). 
  • 90% of Instagram users follow a business on the Instagram platform (Instagram).
  • According to a recent survey, 89% of marketers use Instagram for influencer marketing (Mediakix).
  • 95% of B2B content marketers use LinkedIn for organic content (Content Marketing Institute). 
  • 53% of consumers admit they’re likely to buy from brands that are transparent on social media (Sproutsocial).

You must know how to do social media marketing to get better results. You need a plan or a strategy that helps you work on your goals, engage with your target audience, and maximize your results.

How to do social media marketing?

To begin with, you’ll need to establish relevant social media marketing goals and research your audience. Your goals and audience might vary from one social media network to another.

Besides, you must do your best to build a quality following. You need followers that engage with your brand and are interested in what you have to say. Not surprisingly, you’ll need to create engaging content and interact with your audience too.

This means that posting frequently is not enough; you’ll also need to share user-generated content, answer their comments, comment on their posts, and whatever it takes to keep the conversation going.

Important note:

Do your best to create content that your audience loves. Choose your content themes wisely and build a calendar to ensure you don’t repeat the same topics all the time. You should combine entertainment content with news, updates, and UGC.

You may want to automate your posts, and that’s fine as long as you devote some time to interact with your audience every day. Do not forget to be consistent with your posting and use analytics to improve your performance. 

Understanding how to do social media marketing takes a little bit of time. Yet, these proven strategies I’ve just mentioned above will help you to make it more effective.  Make sure you have a budget and leverage paid advertising to boost your social media marketing success. 

And that’s all for social media marketing fundamentals. Now that you know the basics, it’s time we move on to the next chapter, where I’ll focus on social media marketing platforms.

Chapter 2

Social Media Marketing Platforms

There are lots of social media marketing platforms available these days. Thus, you must be wondering which ones will work best for your business. You don’t need to use them all; some platforms are better for your business than others.

In this chapter, I’ll talk about the most important social media marketing platforms. That’s to say, I’ll comment on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Pinterest, and Reddit.

Facebook

Facebook has 2.5 billion monthly active users (Facebook). It is one of the biggest social media platforms. There are more than 7 million active advertisers on Facebook (Facebook). Not to mention that more than 65 million businesses use Facebook Business Pages (Buffer).  

Facebook marketing

Facebook is a must-have choice for brands of all sizes. You can use it to engage with your target audience, gather information, strengthen your customer service, and for advertising.

Most consumers expect brands to have a business account on Facebook. Many also expect brands to interact with them, such as answering their questions and solving their problems. 

facebook marketing
Source: Facebook

Besides, Facebook is relatively easy to use. Still, make sure all the content you post is optimized for mobile users, as 94% of Facebook users access it through their mobile devices (Buffer).

Facebook will help you to increase your email list and get new customers. Indeed, it allows you to create private groups where you can offer a customized experience. It’s got powerful analytics that you can use to enhance your results. 

Organic reach on Facebook can be limited. So, you should consider embarking yourself on a profitable Facebook ad strategy. Targeted advertising can help you approach a broad audience. 

But, if you don’t have the budget, do not worry because you can have a significant impact on your organic Facebook posts and stories as well. What’s more, Facebook Messenger will help you to communicate directly with your prospects and customers. 

Twitter

Twitter has 335 million monthly active users. It’s perfect for real-life updates and building industry authority. It’s an excellent choice for enterprises that publish content regularly. You can use it to share informative content through links and make yourself a brand reputation.

Twitter marketing

Twitter is a social media platform that people use to share their views about politics, sports, the latest news, entertainment, and more. Not surprisingly, most people use it to share information on the spot. 

It only allows you to use up to 280 characters. So, you must be succinct and go straight to the point. Twitter is often used as a customer service channel. Thus, you need to be prepared to deal with positive comments as well as complaints quickly. 

It’s easy to engage with followers and influencers on Twitter. So, do not hesitate to interact with them and share valuable content in all your Twitter posts. Twitter needs more participation than other social media networks, be ready to post at least a couple of times per day. 

twitter marketing
Source: Twitter

Besides, you should combine your official tweets with entertaining ones. I mean, you need to post a mixture of news, discounts, brand-building tweets, and more. Make sure you interact as much as possible.

As it happens with Facebook, posting is not enough. You must answer questions, solve doubts, and communicate if you pretend to increase your followers. On top of that, ensure you make the most out of Twitter hashtags and mentions so that you keep the conversation going.

There are lots of opportunities to join in conversations with industry leaders, influencers, and followers. You can also promote your tweets and your account on Twitter. It’s got advertising options to boost your number of followers and get more leads. 

YouTube

Youtube is a video-based platform, with over 2 billion monthly active users (Youtube). You can use it to promote your company culture and strengthen your brand awareness. Youtube is a great place for tutorials, demonstrations, and how-to videos. 

Youtube marketing

Youtube is one of the best sources of user-generated content. Unbelievable as it may seem,  users watch a billion hours of videos every day (Youtube). It is for this reason that you should create a Youtube channel for your brand. 

There you could upload videos for your website subscribers. Besides, you can use Youtube Ads to boost your reach on the platform. People no longer use Youtube only for entertainment. Now, they also use it to learn about topics they are interested in.

youtube marketing
Source: Youtube

Thus, this empowers you to create high-quality content to educate your audience. You can use this channel to connect with your target audience differently. An image is worth a thousand words, right? Well, a video is even better.

If you want to succeed with your Youtube videos, make sure they are optimized for SEO. I mean, optimize your video title and description. This way, you’ll increase your website’s traffic and conversions. 

If you come up with useful and instructive content, you’ll have more chances that your video appears on Google search results. Video content is extremely powerful and can help you go viral. So, do not underestimate its power! 

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a professional social media network with more than 706 million users (LinkedIn). Industry experts use LinkedIn to share content, build their brand awareness, and engage with others.

LinkedIn marketing

LinkedIn is a valuable tool for reaching B2B prospects too. If your company happens to be hiring, LinkedIn is a great place to find potential applicants. Many brands also use LinkedIn to share information regarding company updates and behind-the-scenes data regarding their employees. 

It’ll help you to show what is like to work for your company. As it happens with the other social media networks I mentioned above, LinkedIn offers advertising opportunities. You can boost your content with LinkedIn Ads. Yet, LinkedIn Messaging is vital to maintain professional conversations. 

linkedin marketing
Source: LinkedIn

People do not use LinkedIn for entertainment or shopping. They use it to share content, learn more about their industry, and discover new opportunities. Make sure you’ve got a LinkedIn business page to expand your brand awareness and recruit talent. 

LinkedIn is perfect for promoting your brand’s expertise, technical knowledge, and skills, no matter your brand’s size. Most B2B brands are on LinkedIn. Yet, entrepreneurs, freelancers, and startups can also benefit from using this social network. 

Instagram

Instagram is a video and photo-sharing social media platform with over a billion monthly active users (Instagram). You can use it to build your brand awareness and engage with your audience.

Instagram marketing

No matter whether you’re a B2C or B2B enterprise, Instagram is a must-have app. B2C brands can use it to share photos of their products and collect UGC. At the same time, B2B brands can benefit from sharing their company, office, and employees’ pics. 

On top of that, it is because of Instagram hashtags that you would be able to increase your brand’s discoverability. Stories and Instagram Live videos are critical to expanding your social media presence. Not long ago, Instagram launched IGTV for long-format videos.

You must create an Instagram Business Profile so that you can have access to Instagram analytics. Besides, Instagram is fantastic for lead generation. Most people check it on their mobile. Make sure all your photos and videos are mobile optimized.

instagram marketing
Source: Instagram

It allows users to buy products from their Instagram account. It’s got a checkout feature. So, it’s perfect for eCommerce brands. Instagram is more popular than Facebook for younger generations.

It would be wise to do some market research. It’ll help you create better posts, stories, and videos to appeal to your target audience. Your posting schedule must be as consistent as possible. There are tools available which can help you to automate your content. Make sure what you post is engaging, and do your best to use relevant hashtags. 

The latter is extremely important on Instagram. You need to choose hashtags you can compete for to increase the number of followers and beat your competitors.

Snapchat

Snapchat is a social media app with 255 million monthly active users (Buffer). Most brands use it for real-time updates and promoting events. It allows you to post photos and videos that only last for 24 hours. 

Snapchat marketing

You can use Snapchat for a product launch or promote a conference or a brand event. Most of Snapchat’s users are young. It’s got a stories feature as it happens with Instagram. People use Snapchat to chat with their friends, build relations, play, and learn.

You can use its digital ads to boost your brand awareness, drive conversions, and generate leads. You can create mobile advertising campaigns pretty fast. Snapchat helps you to monitor your performance so that you can check whether you achieved your goals.

Most of Snapchat’s content is temporary. It is because of this feature that Snapchat differs from other social media platforms. It’s more about making connections on the spot. So, what is shared, it’s rarely saved. 

snapchat marketing
Source: Snapchat

You can share photos, videos, and messages, also known as “Snaps.” Since Snapchat’s content is temporary,  it resembles face-to-face communication more than any other social media network. 

Snapchat is famous for features like its lenses and filters. If you decide to use Snapchat, you should try to be fun, creative, and experiment. Using a variety of content will make it more interesting for your audience. 

Tik Tok

Tik Tok is a music video social network, with over 698 million monthly active users (CNBC). You can use it to participate in viral trends or create your own. Tik Tok is also great to share behind the scenes content.

Tik Tok marketing

Tik Tok users love to share videos for a variety of purposes. It’s well-known for its viral dances, tutorials, and comedy sketches. You can record videos of up to 60 seconds. It allows you to edit them and add music and special effects. It’s got advertising opportunities too. 

You can record short videos of 15 seconds and combine them to make stories of up to 60 seconds. Still, there is an option to upload longer videos, but these cannot be recorded on Tik Tok.

Tik Tok was formerly known as musical.ly. But it later merged with another similar app, and both of them became Tik Tok. Apart from recording videos lip-synching, you can react to your friend’s videos, use filters, and special background effects. 

tik tok marketing

Tik Tok is famous for its challenges, such as the #comedychallenge, #idolchallenge, etc. Tik Tok users love memes too. As it happens with other social media platforms, you can follow famous “Musers” and enjoy their videos. 

Tik Tok’s audience is generally young; many are teens. If you decide to use this app to promote your brand, you should make sure your target audience is there. Besides, you must interact with other users and follow the app specifications.

Pinterest

Pinterest is a social media network with more than 400 million monthly active users (Pinterest). People use it to discover new trends and products as well as a source of inspiration. So, you can use it to share content about your products. 

Pinterest marketing

Pinterest allows you to upload photos with short descriptions. And, it’s got a built-in shopping feature. Thus, it’s ideal for promoting your products and driving traffic to your website. 

Pinterest is a must-have tool for businesses that target women and millennials since this is Pinterest’s primary largest public. You’ll need to be consistent and creative to increase your followers on Pinterest.

Pinterest is more suitable for some businesses than others. Photography websites, travel websites, home decor websites, fashion websites, and cooking recipes websites are examples of enterprises that can benefit from using Pinterest. 

pinterest marketing
Source: Pinterest

Still, any brand can take advantage of using it as long as they produce content that’s appealing and easily shared. This image-centered social media platform is empowered with buyable pins, which can help you sell your products directly from Pinterest. 

You can use Pinterest to showcase your products and foster your brand identity, thanks to unique pinboards. However, these must be eye-catching, or else they won’t have the effect you expect. 

Reddit

Reddit is a social media network, with over 430 million monthly active users (Reddit). Most brands use Reddit for content and audience research. Yet, it is primarily used to interact with niche audiences. 

Reddit marketing

Reddit is a platform in which users interact based on shared interests. You are allowed to share content, links, images and ask questions. There exist subreddits for nearly any topic. You can create one yourself if you want to post content that doesn’t fit in any existing subreddit. 

Reddit users can upvote and downvote your content. People generally discuss the content that is posted on this platform. Submitting content and participating in discussions is a must. To succeed, you need to become an active user.

However, you must be careful not to openly promote your brand and products on Reddit as you can be removed from a group if you post content for commercial purposes. If you do it well, your posts can drive a lot of traffic. Though that’s not the aim of using Reddit, but to collect data about your audience and interact with them.  

reddit marketing
Source: Reddit

What I like the most about Reddit is that you can use it for market research. It allows you to collect feedback for free. The content you post on this platform must be unique and interesting since Reddit’s audience is a tech-savvy community. 

And that’s all for social media marketing platforms. I hope the above-mentioned will help you decide which social media platforms are best for your brand. In the next chapter, I’ll talk about how to create a social media marketing strategy, so you cannot miss it!

Chapter 3

Social Media Marketing Strategy

A social media marketing strategy refers to planning what you want to achieve on social media. It works as a guideline. It has to be as specific as possible. Not to mention that it’s crucial to check whether you achieved your goals.

Thus, if you want to boost your social media marketing results, you’ll need to develop a detailed social media marketing strategy.

In this chapter, I’ll help you with this task. I’ll begin by commenting on the importance of setting your social media goals. Then, I’ll focus on your target audience and choosing the right platform.

Afterward, I’ll talk about what’s a social media marketing proposal and a social media marketing plan. And to conclude, I’ll deal with what are social media marketing metrics and KPIs.

Setting your social media goals

Not surprisingly, you need to pick social media marketing goals that align with your overall business objectives. Your goals must be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. 

You must select them carefully since they are critical to determine your success and check your ROI. Your social media goals must be realistic, or else you run the risk of becoming frustrated. 

If you set reasonable and affordable goals, you’ll have more chances to succeed. Examples of common social media marketing goals include: boost your brand awareness, increase your engagement, generate more leads and sales, and grow your website traffic, among others. 

Important note:

Your social media goals need to complement your business goals. You shouldn’t create goals without thinking about the big picture. Your goals need to go hand in hand with your social media strategy. So, you must take enough time to decide on them. 

Social media marketing goals are unique to each business. You don’t necessarily have to succeed in all social media networks at the same time. So, make sure you have specific goals for each platform. 

Your social media marketing goals will guide your actions. Thus, they must lead to attainable business results. You should keep it simple. I mean, too many goals can distract you. Sometimes less is more!

Target audience

It comes as no surprise that you must do your best to understand your target audience. You might already have lots of followers. But, if they do not engage with you, they won’t make you succeed.

What you need is to target an audience that is interested in what you have to say. I mean, you need to reach people that interact with you. They are the ones who might convert into high-quality leads. 

target audience

Therefore, you need to create your audience/buyer personas. Before that, you must carry out audience research and collect information regarding your audience’s age, location, interests, income, job, etc. 

Learning about your audience is mandatory to create content they will like. So, you must know about your audience’s needs and interests. Making assumptions can end up being disastrous.

What you should do is to research your audience. Most social media platforms have analytics and insights that you can use to gather information. There exist tools that can help you with this task too.

There is no one-size-fits-all strategy here. Your audience will probably be different since each social media network appeals to different audience groups. So, you’ll have to research your audience in all those networks where you have an account and pretend to target audience groups.

You must be an active member of those social media networks where your audience is active. What’s more, to achieve your goals, you need to understand your audience. Thus, do not hesitate to create audience personas. They’ll help you generate valuable leads.

Choosing the right platform

Choosing the right social media platform is of utmost importance. There exist many social media networks, but you won’t have the time to be active in all of them. Indeed, it would be a waste of valuable time and resources.

You must select those platforms where your audience is active and create an account there. This way, you’ll be able to make the most out of your social media marketing efforts.

It would be wise to do audience research before picking your social media networks. On top of that, you must bear in mind the nature of your business. B2C enterprises generally use certain networks such as Facebook. Yet, B2B companies need to have an account on LinkedIn. 

choosing the right platform

Besides, you have to take into account your audience demographics. Younger people tend to be more active on Instagram, even they have an account on Facebook. Another example is that Pinterest has a larger female audience, or LinkedIn’s audience is formed mostly by professionals.

So, you must do your best to find those platforms that match your audience. But also, the platforms you choose must align with your goals. To narrow down your choices, you should select those networks with more monthly active users and those where audiences interact with brands. 

Go for channels your target audience is already using. You should also think about the type of content you usually create and whether it fits these platforms. Each social media network appeals to a specific type of user and has a particular type of content by which it is known. 

Thus, you must consider lots of aspects before selecting the right social media platforms for your business. Make sure your audience, goals, and content are suitable for the social media platform. 

Social media marketing proposal

A proposal is crucial to establish a relationship with your prospects. Make sure you understand your client’s goals and what you’re promising. You must explain to your future clients why they need your services and what you can do for them. They must know what it will cost them.

What is a social media marketing proposal?

A social media marketing proposal is a document that can help you convert a prospect into a customer. In this document, you present your social media marketing services to a client.

To begin with, you should outline your client’s goals and demonstrate your expertise in the field. I mean, you have to prove you’re the right person for the job. Besides, a social media marketing proposal takes a lot of research and planning.

You need to know your clients to help them. Other aspects you must include in your proposal are the timing and budget. Before writing a proposal, you must understand your client’s needs and goals. 

Tip:

Your social media marketing proposal must include what differentiates you from your competitors. If you want to convince your prospects you’re the right choice, you’ll have to prove how valuable you are, for instance, with previous success.

Once you’ve gathered enough information about your prospects, you’ll be ready to write a social media marketing proposal. Make sure you present a solution to their problem in a language that they can understand. Be prepared to answer any questions they may have. 

How to write a winning social media proposal

Now you know what a social media proposal is, it’s time you learn how to write a winning one! Here are the elements any social media proposal must include:

Executive summary.
executive summary.how to

As the name suggests, this is an overview of your social media proposal. You must write this part properly since it is here where you must convince your prospects to keep on reading. 

You should include data regarding expected outcomes, budget, and project requirements. Make sure your language is clear and check that there are no mistakes. You can even ask someone to read your proposal to ensure all you say is clear.

Introduction.
introduction..how to

You must introduce your brand to your prospects. Thus, you’ll need to write a brief outline. You can include your mission statement and some relevant experience. Do not forget to add your contact information.

Client’s needs and goals.
clients needs and goals.how to

You must describe your client’s needs and goals. Try to use simple language and be as specific as possible. This will help you to stay away from the ambiguity that may lead to misunderstandings. 

Regarding your client’s social media goals, make sure they are specific for each platform and have metrics to evaluate whether you achieve them or not within a particular timeframe. Make sure your client’s goals are realistic. 

Scope of work.
scope of work.how to

In this section, it’s where you explain what you are going to do to solve your client’s problem. You should add data about posting schedule, content creation, monitoring, engagement, social selling, lead generation, etc.

These tactics must align with your client’s social media objectives, whatever they are. You should also talk about the benefits of your strategy and what clients can expect from you. 

Do not forget to include a timeline in this part of the social media proposal. It’ll help your prospects to understand what they can expect from you and how long it will take to achieve it. 

Case studies and testimonials. 
case studies and testimonials. how to

You must showcase some of your past achievements to convince your prospects you’re the right candidate to help them succeed in social media. You can include some quotes with your client’s recommendations or add a case study highlighting its positive results. 

Keep this part relevant to your prospects. What I mean is that you should include testimonials or case studies with similar problems or goals. 

Budget.
budget.how to

You must include the pricing since it is one of the first things many prospects check. You can call this part investment instead of pricing since it is more appealing. In this section, you need to explain how your prospects’ money will be spent.

Evaluation. 
evaluation.how to

Not surprisingly, you must point out how your plan will be evaluated. Explain if you’ll provide regular updates. Talk about which KPIs and analytics you’ll use to measure your plan’s success. 

Terms and conditions.
terms and conditions.how to

This is the legal part of your proposal. You should clarify who is responsible for what. Besides, you need to talk about how you work and what the contract terms would be in case you reach an agreement.

This section should cover data regarding fees, billing practices, how you work, and termination. This will protect your agency in case something doesn’t go as expected. It’ll also help your clients not to have wrong expectations.

Next steps.
next steps.how to

In this last section of your social media proposal, it’s where you tell your prospects about what happens next. Some brands include expiration date and copyright notice. Explain if you’ll be open to revisions or if you’ll follow up by a particular date. 

Social media marketing plan

What is a social media marketing plan?

A social media marketing plan consists of a document that summarizes your company’s global marketing efforts. It outlines how your brand will put into action your social media marketing strategy.

In other words, a social media marketing plan refers to everything you plan to do to achieve your goals on social media. It describes the actions you plan to take, and it serves to check whether you fail or succeed.

The more specific your plan is, the better. It would be wise not to pretend to achieve unattainable goals. A social media plan works as a guide. You must include an overview of your goals and the actions you pretend to follow to reach those goals. 

social media marketing plan

Having a social media marketing plan is of utmost importance. If you want your social media audience to turn into customers, you’ll need a well established social media presence.

A social media marketing plan can help you to generate more leads, traffic, and engagement. Not to mention that having a social media marketing plan is crucial to increase your brand awareness and cut down your marketing costs. 

You’ll also benefit from a better online search ranking. Being on social media without a plan won’t do the trick. There are many brands out there with a social media strategy.

If you do not want to be left behind, you need to plan what you’re going to do in advance. A social media plan is vital to start growing your business. Let’s have a look at what you need to do to create a killer social media plan!

How to create a social media marketing plan

Now that you know what a social media marketing plan is and why you need one, it’s time we provide you a step-by-step summary of how to design yours. Here are the steps to follow:

  1. Determine your objectives
    determine your objectives.how to

    You must come up with social media goals that align with your overall marketing objectives. Your social media goals are mandatory to create your strategy, what to post, and what metrics to track.

    You may have different goals for different networks. For example, you may want to use LinkedIn to boost your website traffic and Instagram to increase your brand awareness. Your social media goals need to be S.M.A.R.T.

    Social media goals must be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. Together with your goals, you’ll have to pick your metrics since the former determines the latter.

    Tip:

    Make sure your metrics are not vanity ones, such as the number of followers. Pick metrics like click-through rate, conversions, or engagement.

  2. Choose your social networks
    choose your social networks.how to

    Each social network is unique. They all have their own specifications and requirements. Not to mention that each social network has its own style and audience. There are loads of social media networks out there. Which ones should you choose?

    You don’t need to have an account on them all, just on the ones your audience uses. To select your social media networks, you should consider each network’s audience, the resources you have to create content, and the time you can spend on each of them.

  3. Optimize your profiles
    optimize your profiles.how to

    It comes as no surprise that you must optimize your social media profiles. Your profiles must align with your strategy. Once you’ve decided what networks to use, make sure you fill in all the fields.

    Your bio, profile info, profile photos, and cover photos must be up-to-date. If you do not complete your social media profiles, you’ll run the risk of not being taken seriously. Ensure both your profile visuals and text are optimized.

    Your use of visuals should be consistent. It’ll help your audience to recognize you. Thus, it matters for brand awareness. You should check image sizes as they differ from one platform to another.

    As regards the text, you must avoid using buzzwords. Besides, you should try to use keywords your audience will use to look for your brand. Make sure you complete all the fields.

  4. Boost your following with contests and sweepstakes
    boost your following with contests and sweepstakeshow to

    Promotions are essential to boost your social media following. Sweepstakes are perfect for lead generation. Hashtag or photo contests can take a lot of attention too. You can even make use of referral promotion. Make sure you provide an incentive to call others’ attention.

  5. Find your voice and tone
    find your voice and tonehow to

    You must find the right tone and voice for your content. Bear in mind your brand personality and the type of relationship you want to have with your audience. You should also consider how you want to be seen by your audience.

    Your brand’s voice and tone must be unique. Try to find adjectives that describe your brand personality and differentiate you from your competitors.

  6. Design a social media content calendar
    design a social media content calendar.how to

    If you want to get the maximum impact with your content, you need to create a content calendar. It’ll help you to set your posting schedule. Your posts must be published at optimal times. They also need to be mixed and relevant.

    What I mean is that if there is a special holiday, you may want to create posts about it, one for each network where you have an account. Besides, you shouldn’t post promotional content non-stop. You need to mix it with educational, informative, and entertaining content.

  7. Look for influencers
    look for influencers.how to

    Influencers can help you boost your brand awareness, engagement, and trust, among other things. So, it would be wise to partner with an influencer. Apart from looking at their number of followers, you should consider other aspects.

    You should check whether their followers participate and, above all, if you’re interested in their audience. Partnering with influencers can make it or break it. You must check whether their collaboration is positive. Do not forget to allow them to be creative.

  8. Create a content strategy
    create a content strategy.how to

    You can not post the same content over and over again. You need a content strategy. What’s more, you should not publish promotional content exclusively. What you need to do is to mix curated content with the content you create.

    Curated content can be content you post from influencers and industry experts. Remember to mention them in your posts. As to the content you create, ensure it matches your audience’s interests, and solves their pain points.

  9. Implement a posting strategy
    implement a posting strategy.how to

    To put your social media marketing strategy into action, you’ll need to decide on aspects like what to post, when to do it, and how often. You should also determine how many times you want to post per day.

    There is no right answer to this. There is no one-size-fits-all strategy that works for all brands, nor is there a tactic that works for all networks. You need to experiment. You could base your decisions on research, but once you’ve been posting for a while, it’s better to A/B test.

  10. Track your performance
    track your performance.how to

    You must measure and track your performance and analyze your results. It’ll help you to find out whether your strategy worked or not. You can use social media networks analytics and/or a social media analytics tool.

  11. Automate and engage
    automate and engage.how to

    Automation is vital to save time and energy. You can automate all your posts in advance and organize them for all your social media networks. This is crucial to ensure there is consistency among platforms.

    Yet, automation is not enough. You also need to listen to what your audience has to say about your brand and answer their comments, share UGC, and more. Interacting with your audience is critical to keep them loyal and satisfied.

What is a social media marketing plan template?

A social media marketing template is a guide that helps you develop your content strategy and get better business results. It’ll guide you through the process of setting your goals, selecting your social media networks, analyzing your main competitors, tracking your performance, checking what’s working, etc.

Besides, a social media strategy template helps you organize your social media marketing strategy to drive real results. You’ll probably have to manage several social media platforms. Thanks to the template, you’ll know what, when, and how to make the most out of your posts. 

You can make use of the template below to design and implement your social media strategy:

  1. Set your social media goals and select your KPIs.

In this section, you need to establish your goals and decide which KPIs you want to optimize. Make sure your goals are S.M.A.R.T, and your KPIs are trackable. Think about what you want to achieve, as it’ll give you a purpose to work and do your best.

  1. Choose your social networks.

There are so many networks, even if you wanted, it would be impossible to manage them all effectively. In this part, you must decide which networks you want to use. Consider those networks where you already have traffic and engagement. And list them in this section.

  1. Carry out competitive research.

List your main competitors in this part and match them with the networks where they’re most active in. Have a look at your competitors’ websites and check whether they have links to social networks. Analyze them, check their engagement, and make a list.

  1. Develop an engagement strategy.

This section is where you decide what to share, when, and where. You need to think about how you want to use social media to reach your audience and boost your results. Bear in mind what type of content you want to share and whether it’s appropriate for the platforms you want to be active in. 

Your content has to be valuable, and you must be consistent with your posting schedule. On top of that, you need to decide how much time you will spend interacting with your audience. Posting content is not enough; you must communicate with your audience. 

Ensure you practice social listening and respond quickly to your audience’s comments, questions, and complaints. You can use social media for customer service, retention and to boost your sales. 

  1. Determine your promotion tactics.

If you want to improve your reach faster, you’ll need to consider spending some of your budget on promotion. You can make use of retargeting, paid boosts, account takeovers, and more. 

  1. Use tools.

There are tools that can help you optimize your social media and make the most out of your efforts. It’s up to you whether to use them or not, but they will undoubtedly make a tremendous difference. Examples of tools you can use are Buzzsumo and Hootsuite, among others.

Social media marketing metrics and KPIs

KPIs are measurable values that are key to determine your effectiveness as regards achieving your social media goals. Metrics track the status of a social media business process. 

social media marketing metrics and kpis

Each KPI is also a metric, yet not all metrics are KPIs. KPIs are tracked over time, and they measure your success. Metrics aren’t indicators of how your business is performing; they’re just a number.

Anyway, let’s have a look at some social media KPIs you must track and monitor:

  1. Engagement.

Engagement measures the number of clicks, comments, shares, likes, brand mentions, profile visits, and active followers you receive over a specific period of time. These KPIs can vary depending on the social media platform.

  1. Reach.

Reach refers to how many people see your posts on social media. It can be misleading at times. It isn’t as accurate as engagement. To measure your reach, you can use KPIs like the number of followers, impressions, traffic, and audience growth rate.

  1. Leads.

Having likes and followers is great. But you need to know how many of your followers are interested in your company or in making a purchase. It is useless to have many followers who do not interact with your brand, nor do they intend to buy in the future. 

Measuring your lead generation from social media is critical to ensure your efforts are worthy. If you do not generate leads, you might be posting inappropriate content, or you may not be on the right social media platform. 

  1. Conversions.

You need to know how many of your fans or followers convert into customers or take whatever desired action you may want them to follow. Many of your followers may be current customers. Still, you need to know how many of the new ones convert. 

KPIs to take into account to measure your conversions are, obviously, conversion rate, click-through rate, bounce rate, cost-per-click, cost per thousand impressions, and social media conversion rate.  

Analytics and tools for social media marketing

Social media analytics tools will help you determine which of your strategies are working and which ones are not. Thus, they’ll help you to better manage your time and budget. 

analytics and tools for social media marketing

Analytics are crucial to share information through reports with your team, shareholders, and your boss. Below you’ll find some of the best social media free and paid analytics tools:

  1. Google Analytics.

Google Analytics is one of the best tools to track social media campaigns. You can use it to check how much traffic and leads you get from social media networks. You’ll probably already have an account to monitor your website visitors.

This tool is not only a social analytics tool. You can also use it to get reports to assess how much traffic comes from each network and calculate your social media campaigns’ ROI.

Besides, you can use Google Analytics together with UTM parameters to track specific campaigns. They’ll help you analyze how much traffic and conversions your social media channels and specific campaigns generate. 

  1. Facebook Analytics.

Facebook Analytics is vital to collect information regarding how many people engage with your Facebook page and track your Facebook Ads performance. Facebook analytics consists of three tools: Facebook Audience Insights, Facebook Page Insights, and Facebook Ad Center. 

  1. Instagram Insights.

Instagram Insights is vital to track the performance of your Instagram posts and stories. It’s only available for Business and Creator Instagram accounts. You can collect data about your audience, your account’s activity, and individual posts and stories. 

  1. Twitter Analytics.

Twitter Analytics will help you to track and measure the performance of your organic and paid posts. As it happens with Facebook Analytics, Twitter Analytics has three sections: the Tweet Activity Dashboard, the Campaign Dashboard, and the Account home. 

  1. Snapchat Insights.

Snapchat Insights is available to Snap Stars and those with lots of followers. You can use this tool to learn more about your audience. It’ll help you track metrics such as views, reach, and audience. 

  1. Pinterest Analytics.

Pinterest Analytics is crucial to track metrics about paid and organic Pins. It’s got two different sections: Audience Insights and Pinterest Analytics. It also provides you with specific stats like closeups and saves. 

  1. LinkedIn Analytics.

LinkedIn Analytics is essential to learn about your visitors and check the effectiveness of your posts, your page, and your recruiting efforts. You can track data about visitors, followers, and updates. 

  1. Sprout Social.

Sprout Social is an all-in-one social media management tool. It allows you to manage multiple networks at once from its dashboard. It’s got easy to understand and reliable reports. Besides, it has social listening and influencer identification features, and it offers customer relationship management (CRM) too. 

sprout social
Source: Sprout Social
  1. Hubspot.

Hubspot is a social media analytics tool that offers reports that compare your performance on various social media channels. It’s got a CRM feature that allows you to publish directly. Not to mention its graphs and visuals, which breaks down the numbers by specific social media network features. 

  1. Hootsuite. 

Hootsuite is a social media analytics tool that provides you with performance data for every social platform where you have an account. You’ll see metrics from your social media posts, profiles, and team performance. Apart from analyzing your performance on each network, you’ll get customizable reports that you can export to share with others. 

  1. Buzzsumo.

Buzzsumo is a tool that helps you to analyze the engagement of your social media content. So, it tells you how many shares your content receives on several social media channels. You can also use it to monitor relevant keywords. This tool is key to check which of your posts receives more engagement. 

  1. Keyhole.

Keyhole is an analytics tool that covers influencer marketing, brand monitoring, campaign monitoring, event monitoring, and market research. Besides, it’s got super powerful features like real-time hashtag analytics regarding your performance on Twitter and Instagram. It helps you to promote your posts during peak times, which is perfect for discoverability. 

  1. Talkwalker.

Talkwalker is a social media analytics tool that provides information about conversations from more than 150 million sources. It analyzes potential reach, engagement, sentiment, comments, and emotions. It’s got filters based on the type of content, demographics, region, device, and more. 

  1. Brandwatch.

Lastly, Brandwatch is an analytics tool that tracks data from social networks, blogs, forums, and review sites. It’s a powerful tool that provides information regarding competitor comparison, influencers, reputation, trends, and your own social conversations and keywords. 


And that’s all for social media marketing strategy. Now you know how important it is to set your goals and choose the right platforms. You’ve also learned about marketing metrics and KPIs and how to create a social media proposal and a social media marketing plan. 

In the next chapter, I’ll talk about social media marketing jobs. Keep on reading to ensure you know all you need to make informed decisions!

Chapter 4

Social Media Marketing Jobs

In this chapter, I’ll talk about the importance of social media marketing jobs. I’ll explain to you what’s a social media manager and a community manager. 

And then, I’ll focus on how you can write a good social media marketing resume and how to start a social media marketing agency. Ready?

Social media manager

What is a social media manager?

A social media manager is a person who represents a company across social media channels on behalf of a brand. A social media manager is in charge of monitoring, executing, and measuring the social media presence of a brand, its products, and services.

Social media managers create content, respond to comments, and organize social media campaigns. A social media manager is “the voice of the company.”  Social media managers are responsible for creating brand promotions and managing information and marketing campaigns across social media channels. 

On top of that, a social media manager monitors social media analytics. They have to respond to comments following brand guidelines. More often than not, they have to report their findings to a social media director or head of content.

social media manager

Social media managers need to coordinate their initiatives with existing campaigns. They’re also expected to keep up with the latest industry news and trends. Social media managers aim at developing brand awareness and online reputation. 

Here are some of the most important duties social media managers have:

  • Manage social media advertising campaigns.
  • Integrate social media channels strategies with content marketing, SEO, and digital marketing.
  • Design and implement a social media calendar.
  • Leverage social media tools.
  • Create a social media plan.
  • Set a posting schedule to promote content through social media.
  • Generate and publish relevant and high-quality content. 

Community manager

What is a community manager?

A community manager is an expert on social networks that acts as the bridge between a brand and its audience. Thus, a community manager is a brand ambassador. He/she is in charge of engaging with both potential clients and existing ones.

Community managers are responsible for content distribution, community support, and audience engagement. They also need to monitor feedback and measure sentiment around your brand. 

A community manager is in charge of the management and development of your brand’s online community. They manage the reputation and communications of your brand online. 

Many are the ones who confuse the responsibilities of a community manager with those of a social media manager. Although there might be some areas where they overlap, these two are different roles with clear differences. 

community manager

A social media manager handles a content calendar, creates posts, and focuses on analytics. Yet, a community manager concentrates on setting community guidelines and encourages the conversation about your brand. Community managers’ goal is to make your customers talk to one another.

On top of that, a social media manager segments your brand’s audience. But, it is the community manager who guides their social media actions and communications. Social media managers create a strategy. However, community managers put it into practice. 

Anyway, a community manager needs to be good at communication skills. They also need to have empathy and great judgment to deal with negative comments and complaints. Not to mention that they need to be organized and monitor what’s happening on several social media platforms. 

Here are the responsibilities a community manager has:

  • Monitor and evaluate social media networks regularly.
  • Manage a crisis on social media networks.
  • Create content to attract a wider audience.
  • Respond to comments from your digital community.
  • Watch out for what’s being said about your brand. 
  • Design an action plan for your brand’s digital marketing. 

How to write a good social media marketing resume?

If you want to get hired for a social media marketing job, you need to write an outstanding resume. The truth is that those in charge of hiring will probably be busy. So, your resume must immediately call their attention.

Hiring managers receive loads of resumes. If you want to be given the chance to have an interview, you must show them you deserve it and draw their attention towards your impressive resume!

Before you start writing it, make sure you are familiar with all the information resumes must include. Take your time to find out key details and plan what details you want to include beforehand. 

Important note:

Your resume must be tailored to the job you’re applying for. I mean, do not use the same resume for different job positions and brands. Customize it, and you’ll succeed!

Tips for creating a killer social media resume:

Ensure your resume is eye-catching.

ensure your resume is eye catching.how to

If you want your resume to stand out from the crowd, it has to be noticeable. For example, instead of having a boring black and white resume, you can be more creative with a subtle use of colors. The main text has to be black, though.  

Besides, you can use different fonts and a two-column design to make the most out of the space you have. Not to mention that you’ll improve readability. Thus, your resume will look striking, and at the same time, it’ll be more professional. 

Include stats and figures.

include stats and figures.how to

Not surprisingly, it would be wise to use some stats and figures to prove your performance with evidence. So, you should have a look at your previous work and highlight your success with real evidence. It’ll help you to convince the hiring managers of your skills. 

Highlight your communication and copywriting skills.

highlight your communication and copywriting skills

Your social media resume must point out your communication skills. These days, it is critical to have excellent communication skills since brands use social media for branding and customer service.

So, you must mention your outstanding skills in communicating through several social media platforms. Copywriting skills are mandatory too. Perfect grammar and spelling will ensure you look professional. And, you’ll avoid uncomfortable misunderstandings.

Add links to your previous social media work success.

add links to your previous social media work success

You can claim you’re an excellent social media manager or community manager. Yet, there isn’t space to prove it in your resume. So, you can make hiring managers’ life easier by providing relevant links to your social media previous successes.

For instance, you can include links to your online portfolio, LinkedIn profile, articles you’ve written, and blog posts. Try to showcase your past successes since these generate trust, and evince you can do it again!

Make the most out of the skills section.

make the most out of the skills section.how to

It comes as no surprise that the skills you list in this section must be relevant for the social media marketing job you’re applying for. What I mean is that you shouldn’t waste space mentioning general skills.

But, what you should do is to include those that can make you stand out. So, ensure you mention your proficiency in specific channels and techniques that are critical for the job you’re applying for.

Add if there are specific tools and software platforms you use to implement your techniques, such as SEO tools, Adwords, or Photoshop, among others. This section is of utmost importance. Do your best to stand out from your competitors here!

Show off your skills with social media tools.

show off your skills with social media tools

There are many tools available these days. You must know how to use them to improve your social media marketing campaigns and management. Besides, tools can also help you with analytics and content marketing schedules. 

You need to make clear in your resume that you are familiar with the most widely used ones like Hootsuite, Buffer, Buzzsumo, Canva, etc. This way, hiring managers will know you can use them to speed up your results.

Incorporate a summary sentence.

incorporate a summary sentence.how to

You may want to add a sentence at the top of your resume to briefly explain who you are and why you want the job in question. You can place this summary sentence under the contact information.

It’ll help you to stand out from other candidates. Not to mention that it’s vital when you are not allowed to include a cover letter together with your resume. 

Keep your resume to one page.

keep your resume to one page

This one is obvious. Hiring marketers are busy people. So, it is more than advisable that you keep your resume simple. The good, if brief, is twice as good. 

To reduce your resume’s space, you can use columns, include only your latest and most relevant job history, and reduce the font size (be careful with this one, not too much that people cannot see it properly).

Write a cover letter.

write a cover letter

If you are allowed, you must write a cover letter. It will help hiring marketers to get to know you better. You must customize it to the job you’re applying for. Make sure you mention why you’re interested in this particular job and add two to three abilities that make you the perfect candidate for the job.

Social media marketing agency

What is a social media marketing agency?

A social media marketing agency helps businesses develop innovative ways to make the most out of social media channels. A social media marketing agency not only publishes posts on your social networks.

They first need to run an audit of your social media presence, and then they develop a strategy. This will help them to align your social media goals with your metrics so that you can succeed in social media. 

Besides, a social media marketing agency creates content related to your existing blog posts and videos. They can help you to advertise them through several promotional methods. 

social media marketing agency

On top of that, a social media marketing agency must base their decisions on analytics and reports. It’ll help the agency to monitor your brand’s progress. They also take care of your account’s growth. 

Among their responsibilities, it is worth mentioning that a social media marketing agency manages a brand’s social media presence on their behalf. They publish posts, engage with followers, respond to comments, and collaborate with the customer service team. 

A social media marketing agency makes sure that your increase in social media popularity turns into profits. They’ll help you to get a positive ROI. Anyone can get more followers. Yet, if your followers are not engaged, they won’t help you to succeed! A social media marketing agency’s primary role is to ensure you achieve your goals. 

How to start a social media marketing agency

Given the fact that enterprises are spending a bigger part of their budgets on social media and digital advertising, many are the ones who want to take advantage of it. In the past, it was way more challenging to start a marketing agency.

These days, it just takes a few steps, money, and a bit of patience. You’ll also need to carry out some research and become familiar with what you’re planning to embark yourself on. In this section, I’ll explain how you can set up your own social media marketing agency.

Here are the steps to follow:

Acquire the necessary skills.
acquire the necessary skills.how to

To begin with, you can’t sell yourself as a social media marketing expert unless you become one. So, before even thinking about starting your own social media marketing agency, you must get working experience.

It will probably take you some years to understand the nitty-gritty. Yet, it’ll save you loads of nightmares later on if you know what’s going on and you get the skills to succeed. For instance, you may need to learn about tracking systems, how to design ads, build landing pages, etc. 

Having experience will help you to deliver high-quality results. It’ll also help you to decide what type of social media marketing agency you want to become. You don’t necessarily have to offer a bunch of services. You can specialize. It wouldn’t be wise to advertise yourself as an expert on something you don’t have a clue how to manage!

Determine your niche.
determine your niche.how to

Choosing your niche is critical to success. You shouldn’t promote your services to a broad audience, at least at the beginning. Instead, you should carefully select the kind of audience you want to target.

This will help you decide what platforms you want to use and what industries you plan to work with. You shouldn’t start with many platforms all at once. They all have different requirements, audiences, types of content, etc.

It’s advisable you start with just one or two platforms and then expand into others. The same is true for industries. Types of content, ads, and marketing campaigns differ from one sector to another. Focus on the one you’re familiar with at first. You can always extend your scope later. 

Develop a business plan.
develop a business plan.how to

The first step is to decide what type of business you want to run. What I mean is that you must analyze whether you want to initiate a limited liability company, a partnership, or a sole proprietorship. 

Afterward, you must pick a name for your business. Make sure it is unique and it is available as a domain name for your website. Otherwise, you’ll have to change it. You need to go over legal aspects too. 

It would be wise to have a separate bank account. Ensure you are familiar with all you need to know about registrations, legal complications, and taxes. Anyway, another aspect to consider as regards your business plan is getting the right tools.

You’ll probably need scheduling tools and image tools. Analyze which ones you want to use for your business. In the beginning, it’s enough with tools to create graphics and banners together with tools to schedule your posts in advance. As time goes by, you’ll need to use advanced tools too. 

Design your portfolio.
design your portfolio.how to

You must decide what products or services you are going to provide to your clients. You also need to consider how much it will cost you. There are lots of facets you need to bear in mind, like quality, originality, how to generate leads, etc. 

Once you finish developing your products and services, you’ll have to create your business portfolio. You should include some reviews, testimonials, and case studies. It’ll help you to call the attention of potential clients. You must be honest. And, it’s advisable to keep it simple. You’ll be able to improve it as time goes by.

Set your prices.
set your prices.how to

There are several pricing options you can choose from:

  • Hourly.

This model gives an honest return on your investment as you will bill clients based on the hours you spend on their projects. Yet, you’ll need detailed records of your work time to prove how much time you spent. 

  • Packages.

In this model, you have to reach a deal with the client and agree on the pricing for a specific amount of time. If you meet their expectations, your clients won’t have any problem paying you a monthly fee. 

There are other pricing models based on commissions and the percentage of spend. Still, for those social media marketing agencies that are just starting, the two models above mentioned are preferable. 

Create your team.
create your team.how to

In the beginning, it might be difficult for you to hire a full team of experts. It will depend on your financial resources. However, you’ll need some help if you want to expand your business. You can not do everything yourself. 

Get clients.
get clients.how to

Likewise, getting clients might be challenging initially. It is unlikely that clients will come to you if you’re a new agency; you’ll need to reach them. This will change with time. Yet, if you’ve worked for an agency before you decided to set up yours, you’ll probably know some people in the industry.

This is critical to generate trust. They can even recommend you. So, do not hesitate to let your contacts know you’re starting a new business. Not surprisingly, you should use online platforms to look for clients too. They’re one of your best options to source them. 

Monitor your progress.
monitor your progress.how to

Once you have your niche, a team, and some clients, it would be wise you monitor your progress. I’ll help you to check whether you’re growing smoothly and if you’re reaching your objectives as a social media marketing agency.

Analyzing whether you progress consistently is vital to your success. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses will help you to improve. And, with time, you’ll be able to get more credibility and loyal clients. 


And that’s all for now. In this chapter, you’ve learned about social media marketing jobs, how to write a social media marketing resume, and how to start a social media marketing agency. 

Let’s move on to the next chapter, where I’ll talk about social media influencers!

Chapter 5

Social Media Influencers

In this chapter, I’ll focus on social media influencers. I’ll talk about what a social media influencer is and how to become one. Then, I’ll explain social media influencer marketing. Thus, I’ll tell you what it is and how you can find influencers.

What is a social media influencer?

A social media influencer is someone who has a loyal audience they’ve earned by sharing content and connecting with them. A social media influencer can influence purchasing decisions. Social media influencers’ followers belong to a specific niche, and they can vary a lot as regards size.

What’s more, social media influencers are people who have built a reputation due to their expertise in a particular field. They post regularly on their favorite social media channels. Influencers can generate a lot of engagement and attention. 

what is a social media influencer

Social media influencers can create trends and convince their followers to buy the products they promote. Influencers are content creators. They share content that inspires, informs, and entertains others. 

Besides, social media influencers can generate social conversations and drive engagement. So, brands can significantly benefit from collaborating with them. There are several social media influencer types. 

You can classify them by follower numbers, by the level of influence, and by the content they produce. As regards follower numbers, you can have mega-influencers, macro-influencers, micro-influencers, and nano-influencers. 

By types of content, there are YouTubers, bloggers, podcasters, and those who only share social posts. And by level of influence, you can classify them depending on whether they are celebrities, industry experts, or industry leaders. 

Each influencer category has its own advantages and drawbacks for businesses. You’ll have to select them according to your particular goals and depending on your social media marketing campaigns. It also depends on the channel they post and whether you’re interested in their target audience. 

How to become a social media influencer?

To become a social media influencer, you need to be willing to put in the work. You don’t wake up one morning and become a social media influencer; it takes time and effort. You’ll have to develop a content strategy and find your target audience.

Even though anyone can be an influencer, some people are more prone to it due to their personality. Influencers must post content regularly, even if they do not feel like it. Besides, you need to find something you’re passionate about. 

how to become a social media influencer

If you do it right, you can make a living from influencer marketing. However, not everybody succeeds. Working as a social media influencer is becoming an attractive job to many since they believe it’s a piece of cake.

Yet, real influencers take their job seriously and have to create relevant content non-stop. Otherwise, their audience would stop being interested in what they share. If you’re wondering how to become an influencer yourself, follow the tips below!

Here are the steps to follow:

Find your niche.

find your niche.how to

You must select a niche that aligns with your image. You won’t probably be an expert on all topics. If you want your content to succeed, it’ll have to be high-quality. Thus, you should evaluate your strengths and weaknesses; and then choose a niche where you can showcase your expertise.

Important note:

You don’t need to limit yourself to just one niche; you can combine a couple if you wish. Yet, it is advisable not to target too broad. If you decide to use more than one niche, they have to be somehow related, like fashion and beauty. 

Make sure you have a unique voice and post content about your chosen interest area. It has to be something you’re passionate about and that you enjoy creating content. It’ll help you to naturally attract others as you’ll be sharing your views on something you like. 

Determine which social media channels you’ll use.

determine which social media channels youll use

Once you’ve selected your niche, you’ll be ready to decide what platforms you want to use. As an influencer, you’ll need to be active online. However, this doesn’t mean you have to use all channels available.

On the contrary, you should only use channels you’re familiar with, channels you know how to use, and, most importantly, channels your target audience uses. Depending on your niche, some platforms would be more appropriate than others.

If you decide to use more than one social media platform to promote your content, make sure you tailor your posts to each platform. Remember that each social media network has its own rules and specifications. 

Optimize your social media profiles.

optimize your social media profiles.how to

As soon as you know what niche you want to target and what platforms you want to use, you’ll have to either create new social media profiles or optimize your existing ones. Your profile is extremely important, as it is the first thing your audience sees.

Before someone makes up their mind to decide whether they want to follow you or not, they usually have a look at your profile. It is for this reason that your profile photo and information need to be appealing.

Complete all the fields and ensure your pic is high quality and that people can see your face. Many people will recognize you due to your profile picture. So, you must select a great photo. Your information must be attractive to your audience. 

Understand your audience.

understand your audience.how to

Before you start creating content, you need to understand your audience. Influencers have a strong connection with their audience. Your target audience needs to have the same interests.

Thus, you will need to do some research. You can start by having a look at the analytics of the social media networks you use. You’ll get powerful insights regarding demographic data like gender, location, interests, online behavior, etc.

You could also have a look at what they comment on to find out about their preferences and pain points. There are forums such as Quora or Reddit that can be useful too. Even the comments in your blog, if you happen to have one, can help you to engage with your target audience. 

Develop a content strategy.

develop a content strategy.how to

Creating a content strategy is detrimental to social media influencers. You need to choose a content medium that you like and that allows you to stand out. The quality of what you post matters too.

There’s no need to acquire professional equipment. Yet, you should do your best to create relevant content. It’s advisable to experiment at the beginning and see what works best for your audience. 

Besides, you shouldn’t post self-promotional content non-stop. What you must do is combine educational, entertaining, and promotional content. Most influencers also share content from industry leaders as it keeps their audience engaged. 

Post relevant content.

post relevant content.how to

As I highlighted in the previous section, you must post relevant content. If you want your followers to listen to you, you must post content that is useful for them. Otherwise, you won’t be able to impress them and guide them towards where you want. 

You can mix content types that your audience likes. Some influencers prefer to share content about their chosen field of interest only. However, others combine it with posts about their personal lives.

Whatever content strategy you choose, it would be wise not to narrow it too much. This way, you’ll leave the door open for future partnerships. For instance, if you share reviews from time to time within your posts, someone may ask you to do a paid review in the future.  

Be consistent.

be consistent

It comes as no surprise that you’ll need to decide on the frequency of your posts. You must share content regularly. There are channels where you’ll get increased visibility if you do so. Thus, you need to post consistently. 

Depending on the social media network you decide to use, you will need to post content more than once per day, once every day, several times a week, etc. Each platform has its peak days and daily times. Yet, you should adapt to your audience and when they’re active on the platforms you use.  

Interact with your audience.

interact with your audience.how to

You must show your audience how much you value them. Whenever they leave you a comment or ask you a question, you must respond. If you have too many followers, try to reply to as many as possible.

You can even like their comments and ask them questions as regards your niche. If you regularly engage with your audience, it’ll positively affect your visibility since certain platforms favor content that people engage with. 

Track your performance.

track your performance.how to influencer

Tracking your performance is of utmost importance. It’ll help you to find out what types of content work best. Besides, if you track your performance, you’ll be able to collect feedback to make any necessary changes.

Influencers must know whether the content they share on social media succeeds. The only way to know that is by measuring your success. Pick metrics that match your goals and check your results. 

Social media influencer marketing

Social media influencer marketing has dramatically increased over the last years. Not long ago, only celebrities and well-known bloggers were influencers. Yet, these days anyone can end up being a social media influencer. 

Not to mention that nowadays, it is far more complicated to target online users with digital ads. However, influencers can persuade them to take the desired action since followers already trust them.

Social media influencer marketing can help you grow, increase your sales, boost your website traffic, etc. If you find a suitable partnership, you’ll benefit from more exposure within an audience you’re interested in. Influencer marketing will help you to call the attention of your ideal audience. 

What is influencer marketing?

Influencer marketing is a form of collaboration that happens when a brand takes advantage of an influencer’s reach to support a product, service, campaign, or the brand itself.

In most cases, influencer marketing aims at increasing brand awareness and drive sales. Influencer marketing is based on the high level of trust that influencers have previously built with their followers.

what is influencer marketing

Influencers somehow work as social proof. They make recommendations to their audience, and a percentage of the latter takes the desired action. It is for this reason that influencer marketing is highly valuable for brands. Influencer marketing is constantly changing. Thus, you must be up to date with the latest trends. 

Many marketers already spend a part of their budget on influencer marketing. There are lots of influencers out there. You just need to find one whose audience you’re interested in. An influencer will help you to catch the attention of your ideal audience.

Anyway, influencer marketing makes use of recommendations and social media mentions to promote your brand online. Instagram is one of the most popular channels for influencer marketing. Still, there are other platforms where you can find influencers, such as Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter. 

How to find social media influencers?

Knowing how to find the right influencers is crucial to pull off an effective marketing campaign. Indeed, influencers won’t only help you reach your ideal target audience; they’re also vital to boost your website traffic, build brand awareness, and increase sales. 

Here you’ll find some tips as to how to find the right social media influencers:

Determine your goals.
determine your goals.how to

Before you start looking for influencers, you must set your campaign goals. It’ll help you to evaluate what you want to happen as a result of your marketing efforts. Depending on the social media marketing campaign, your objectives can be varied. 

For example, increase your engagement, lead generation, sales, customer loyalty, link building, etc. By setting your objectives, you’ll be able to search for influencers that can help you to achieve your goals. And most importantly, to assess whether they helped you or not once the campaign is over. 

Conduct hashtag research.
conduct hashtag research.how to

A great way to discover social media influencers is to search your brand hashtag on social networks. Who knows, there might be influencers that are already posting content about your brand. 

On top of that, you can look for relevant keywords and niche hashtags in social media search bars. It’ll help you to unearth relevant influencers that post content related to your industry.

Use a research tool.
use a research tool

There are many tools available to select influencers, such as BuzzSumo, Keyhole, and Pixlee, among others. These tools can make a tremendous difference since they not only help you to identify relevant influencers, but they also monitor the conversation around your brand. 

Look for influencers related to your industry.
look for influencers related to your industry.how to

It comes as no surprise that industry influencers that regularly post content about your niche are essential to your social media marketing campaign success. You can find them in industry forums or if you set an alert on Google about industry-related keywords. 

Take the influencer’s relevance, reach, and resonance into account.
take the influencers relevance reach and resonance into account.how to

You mustn’t select influencers based on their number of followers alone. There are other features that may prove to be more valuable. You must do your best to choose influencers that are relevant to your industry and business. Their audience needs to fix within your target market. 

Besides, you must consider influencers’ resonance. This means that you need to pay attention to how engaged their followers are. Having too many followers that do not interact with them won’t make you succeed.

Many brands partner with micro-influencers and nano-influencers as their audiences are more dedicated and engaged. Thus, the chances of success are higher. 

Partner with influencers that share content consistently.
partner with influencers that share content consistently.how to

You must choose an influencer that shares content consistently. But, above all, it has to be someone whose values and tone align with your brand. If there’s consistency as regards your influencer’s values and yours, followers won’t notice any gap.

On the contrary, if you happen to find someone whose tone and feel is like yours, you would benefit from the partnership. You can even share your influencer’s content on your account without making it look artificial. 

Select influencers according to your budget.
select influencers according to your budget.how to

Influencers with a higher reach will ask for a higher payment. However, nano-influencers and micro-influencers can be more flexible. You must take your budget into account before you speak to influencers. 

Create a personal message to reach out to your influencers.
create a personal message to reach out to your influencers.how to

Before you contact influencers, you should follow them, comment on their posts, and somehow interact and show interest. Once you’re ready to establish the first contact, you should create a personalized message.

Under any circumstances, should you send the same generic message to several influencers. You wouldn’t call their attention. You must explain why you would like to work with them and how they’ll benefit from the partnership apart from the paycheck. 

Track your results.
track your results.how to

Monitoring your performance is crucial. You should check whether you achieved your goals and the campaign was a success or if it could be improved. This will help you to improve your performance in future partnerships.

So, track influencer marketing KPIs and learn from the experience. If you failed to achieve all your goals, do not get depressed. You can always use what you learned for the next social media marketing campaign. 

And that’s all for social media influencers. Now you know what they are and how to become one.  We’ve also talked about social media influencer marketing and how to find influencers.

 In the next chapter, I’ll focus on social media advertising, carry on reading to discover the latest trends, tips, and benefits.

Chapter 6

Social Media Advertising

Social media advertising is decisive to reach new audience groups. Each social media platform works differently. Likewise, social media ad characteristics differ among social media channels. Wondering how to start a social media ads campaign?

In this chapter, I’ll explain what social media advertising is. And then, I’ll cover its main benefits, and I’ll provide you some tips. 

Afterward, I’ll focus on Facebook Advertising, Twitter Advertising, YouTube Advertising, LinkedIn Advertising, Instagram Advertising, and Tik Tok Advertising. Ready?

What is social media advertising?

Social media advertising is a form of digital advertising that can either be organic or paid. It consists of placing ads on social networks to increase your brand awareness and get a specific response. Social media advertising uses audience segmentation and user information to reach your target audience.

Thanks to paid social media advertising, you’ll be able to reach audience groups that you’re not able to with organic efforts. Both forms of advertising can be beneficial for your business.

Yet, some brands prefer either one or the other. Anyway, you must customize your social media ads. They have to follow each network’s specifications. And, you should create different ads for different audience groups. 

what is social media advertising
Source: Twitter

Social media advertising can help you boost your sales and conversions at a reasonable cost. Organic ads require the expense that comes from labor. Paid ads are extremely cost-effective too.

On top of that, social media advertising will help you to get your message noticed. Nowadays, it is more and more complicated to call your audience’s attention. Yet, social media platforms receive a lot of attention from the average person.

Many people spend a significant amount of their free time on social media. What better place to target your audience than where they are? 

Social media channels enable brands to target only those who might be interested, thanks to demographic, psychographic, behavioral, and geographic segmentation. 

Benefits of social media advertising

The benefits of social media advertising cannot be underestimated. It can have a great impact on your overall marketing efforts. Not to mention that it’s proved to be highly effective. 

Doubting about the advantages of social media advertising? Have a look at the benefits listed below, and you’ll change your mind!

Improve your brand awareness.

It comes as no surprise that thanks to social media ads, you’ll be able to enhance your brand awareness. Social media networks are key to promote your products but also your brand to new audiences. 

improve your brand awareness

It is because of social media advertising that brands can get traffic from people that aren’t their customers. Not to mention that those who know you can recommend you to their family and friends. Thus, increasing your loyalty as well as your social presence. 

Help you reach a wider audience.

It is thanks to segmentation that social media platforms allow you to target particular audience groups. You can reach them based on their interests, age, gender, location, online behavior, connections, etc.

If you target your audience according to their characteristics, you’ll have more chances of persuading them to take the desired action. As your way to approach them will be more personal, it is easier that they become loyal followers, prospects, or customers. 

Increase your content visibility.

Social media advertising helps you to boost your content visibility. You can use paid ads to drive more traffic to your social media pages where you’ve posted content related to your latest blog posts or YouTube videos, among others. 

It’s a great way to enhance your brand credibility and drive traffic to your website. B2B brands can significantly benefit from this. B2C brands can also take advantage if they want to increase their content visibility. 

Cut down marketing costs.

Social media advertising is tremendously cost-effective. This is due to the fact that instead of targeting the general public, you’ll only target those who are interested in your products or services. 

cut down marketing costs

Not surprisingly, this increases your clicks and conversions. I’ll be more likely that those who click on your ads are interested in what you have to say. It is for this reason that social media advertising reduces your overall marketing expenses. 

Boost your website traffic.

Social media advertising can help you to increase your inbound traffic. Since you’ll be targeting specific audience groups you’re interested in, the traffic that comes from social media campaigns will be high quality. 

You can even know where it exactly comes from if you use UTM parameters. Not to mention that as social media ads are very varied, knowing where your traffic comes from is critical to repeat your successes. 

Enhance your credibility.

You can easily improve your brand’s credibility with the help of social media influencers. They can help you get loyal customers and improve your reliability. Yet, not only influencers matter for your brand’s credibility.

You can also end up as an industry leader if you post valuable content. Social media advertising is vital to promote your existing and new content. So, there is no doubt that social media ads are essential for your credibility, loyalty, and brand awareness. 

Grow your conversion rates.

Since social media ads increase your content visibility and your website traffic, it will also have a great impact on your conversion rates. Indeed, those who visit your website will be quality prospects. So, chances are they convert. 

grow your conversion rates

Social media ads will help you to reach a wider audience, but also a more relevant one. Social media ads attract people with a high chance of converting into customers. So, social media ads can help you increase your conversions and sales. 

Provide customer feedback.

Social media advertising will empower you with customer insights. This matters since you can use this data to running your future social media ad campaigns. On top of that, customer feedback is of utmost importance for content creation and to ensure you’re targeting the right audience. 

You can use these insights to produce advertising campaigns with a higher impact. If your campaigns are more effective, they’ll drive better results. 

Now you know the main benefits of social media advertising, let me share some useful tips!

Social Media Advertising Tips

Social media ads have become pivotal nowadays. No matter whether you run a large enterprise or a small company, if you want to have an opportunity to connect with your audience, you must have a social media marketing strategy.

Since most brands use social media to promote their products and services, you must find a way to stand out. Not surprisingly, this is quite hard with the help of organic posts alone.

Exploring the Social Media Advertising Platforms
by HubSpot

However, if you combine your organic posts with paid advertising, you’ll undoubtedly increase your brand awareness. Besides, social ads are vital to boost engagement, conversions, and sales. If you want your marketing efforts to be more effective, you cannot miss the advice below.

Here are some must-have tips you need to look at:

Set your goals.

To begin with, you must know what goals you’re trying to achieve. It’ll help you to create a strategy and choose the right social media platform for your ads. If you do not know what your goals are, you won’t be able to evaluate whether the advertising campaign was a success or not.

Improve your quality score.

The quality score is a metric that assesses your keywords and PPC ads’ relevance. You can improve it by increasing your posts’ engagement rates. The higher your quality score is, the lower the cost of your engagement. If you promote your best content, you’ll increase your engagement. 

improve your quality score.

Research your target audience. 

Knowing who you’re trying to reach will boost your targeting options. Instead of wasting your money targeting the general public, you can create audience personas and target your audience based on their interests, behavior, location, gender, etc. 

Use organic strategies to check what resonates with your audience.

In all likelihood, you’re already posting organic content for free. You can use it to test several content types and check what works best for your audience. Track all your posts’ clicks, likes, shares, and comments and come to a conclusion. It’ll help you to promote similar best performing content on your social media ads. 

Understand each platform ad’s specifications.

Not surprisingly, you must know how ads work on each social media platform. Not to mention that each network offers several ad types. Thus, if you want to make the most out of your budget, you need to select the right ad format. 

For instance, if you want to boost your brand awareness, you have to choose a campaign based on impressions. But, if you want to target a specific audience segment, you should focus on your ad interactions (clicks, comments, shares, etc.)

Boost your ad’s engagement with audience targeting.

Keyword targeting and audience targeting are mandatory to increase your ads’ engagement. Targeting the right audience is a must for success. Instead of trying to reach a general public, it’s better to target those you think may be interested in what you want to communicate.

boost your ads engagement with audience targeting

Design your ads with mobile in mind.

It comes as no surprise that since most social media time is spent on mobile devices, you should take them into account to design your social media ads. Thus, you must ensure your visuals look nice on mobile. You have to design your ads for small screens. And, make sure your blog and website are mobile-friendly too.

Test your ads to optimize your campaign’s performance.

Testing your ad’s performance is crucial to enhance your campaign’s performance. Social media ads provide you instant feedback. You can show several ads to different audience segments and use the winning one to target a wider audience, for example. 

Utilize social media remarketing.

Remarketing is pivotal to boost your engagement and conversion rates. You can use it to target people who have recently visited your website but left without converting. You can target your website visitors with social media ads based on their interactions on your website. 

Launch a campaign with multiple ads in a queue. 

To avoid ad fatigue, you must have several ads in a queue. This will help you to test which one works best for your audience. At the same time, running a campaign with various ads is vital to reduce ad fatigue. 

Pay for what matters in each social media marketing campaign. 

Depending on your social media marketing objectives, you should either pay for impressions or engagement. If you want your ad to reach a broad audience, then go for impressions. But, if you want to target high-quality prospects, then focus on engagement. 

Measure your performance.

Each social media platform has its own analytics. You can also use third-party tools if you wish. Still, what matters is that you measure your results to check whether your campaign was profitable or not. It’ll help you to inform your team and plan future campaigns. 

Facebook Advertising

In this section, I’ll explain how to advertise on Facebook. Facebook advertising can make a great difference in your marketing efforts. It is for this reason that you must learn about Facebook advertising types and strategies, among other things.

facebook advertising
Source: Facebook

Source: https://www.facebook.com/business/ads

To begin with, you should check Facebook’s advertising policies to ensure you know Facebook’s rules and specifications. They somehow work as guidance as to what ad content is allowed on Facebook.

Types of Facebook Ads

There are lots of Facebook ad types available. It’s up to you whether to use one or another. Yet, you should know them all and pick ads that align with your Facebook advertising campaign objectives and strategies. Let’s have a look at them!

  1. Image ads.

Image ads are relatively easy to create. Though they’re simple, they shouldn’t be boring. You must do your best and try to come up with creative image ads, or else they won’t catch the attention of your target audience. 

  1. Video ads.

Video ads can either appear in news feeds or stories. You can use them to show how to use your product or explain your offer. They’re more compelling than image-only ads. Still, if you want to succeed, you’ll have to ensure they’re striking enough. 

  1. Video poll ads.

Video poll ads are only available for mobiles. They are interactive, which generally makes them more effective than regular video ads. You can use them to increase your brand awareness and collect data from your audience.

  1. Slideshow ads.

Slideshow ads are somehow a different form to create short video ads. You just have to select a collection of still photos and add some text. As it happens with video ads, you must ensure your slideshow ads are eye-catching so that you can impact your target audience. 

  1. Collection ads.

Collection ads are only available for mobile devices. They allow you to show five of your products. What I like the most about this type of Facebook ads is that your customers can directly click and buy from them without leaving Facebook. 

  1. Instant experience ads. 

Likewise, instant experience ads are only available for mobiles. They also make online shopping easier since users won’t have to leave Facebook to make a purchase. They’re full-screen ads that load really quickly. 

instant experience ads
Source: Facebook
  1. Carousel ads.

Carousel ads allow you to use up to ten images or videos. Thus, you can use them to advertise various products or services. If you wish, you can even create large panorama images. So, the benefits of carousel ads are endless to highlight your products’ benefits.  

  1. Lead ads.

Lead ads are only available for mobile devices. You can use them to collect contact information, for email subscriptions, or to sign up for a trial. You should use them to target those who are interested in getting more information. 

  1. Dynamic ads.

Dynamic ads are a very effective marketing strategy. You can use them to promote products on social media to those prospects who are most likely to be interested in them. For example, when they visit your website products page but leave without making a purchase. 

  1. Stories ads.

Stories ads are proved to be highly effective among Facebook users. These full-screen vertical videos are key to increase your online sales. People love them. Thus, they are mandatory to expand your reach and awareness. 

  1. Messenger ads.

Messenger ads allow you to target a large audience since many people use Facebook messenger. They allow you to start a one-to-one messenger conversation with your audience. Make sure you’re available for them in case they want to reach you. 

How to advertise on Facebook 

To begin with, you must have a Facebook business page to create a Facebook advertising campaign. So, if you do not have one yet, it’s time you do so. It’ll allow you to access Facebook Ads Manager. 

The strategies below will help you to set your Facebook Ads Campaign:

Set your objectives.

Before you start creating your ad, you must think about what you want to achieve, thanks to Facebook advertising. This will help you to measure the success of your campaign. For instance, increase your website traffic, generate leads, boost engagement, etc.

On top of that, once you log into Facebook Ads Manager, you’ll have to choose a campaign objective that aligns with your business goals. The objective you select depends on your goals for a specific campaign. Choose it wisely since it’ll affect your ads payment.

Pick up a name for your campaign.

Not surprisingly, you must decide on a name for your Facebook advertising campaign. Afterward, you need to determine whether you want to set up an A/B test campaign. Your Facebook campaign’s name is critical to success. Take your time to pick it!

pick up a name for your campaign
Select your target audience.

Customizing your target audience is of vital importance for your Facebook Ads campaigns. Facebook allows you to customize your audience according to their gender, age, location, interests, behavior, language, and connections.

You can also include or exclude people that are connected to specific apps, pages, or events. To further customize your targeting, you’ll need to use Facebook’s custom audiences that allow you to retarget those who have already interacted with your business.

Boost loyalty with Facebook Custom Audiences.

This advanced feature enables you to connect with your existing contacts through Facebook Ads. Thus, it allows you to boost not only your customers’ loyalty but also their value. 

You can create Custom Audiences by uploading your contacts list, email list, website visitors list, app users list, etc. It’ll help you to improve the efficiency of your campaign.  You can either target or exclude lists or specific subsets based on your objectives.

Expand to Lookalike Audiences.

Once you have settled your Custom Audience strategy, you can expand it to Lookalike Audiences. You can use this feature to target people with specific profiles. It allows you to target people that look like your own targets. 

expand to lookalike audiences
Decide on your budget.

Once you’ve chosen your audience, you’ll have to decide on your budget. You can either go for a daily or lifetime budget. The former refers to the average that you’ll spend per day. The latter is the maximum you want to spend during the whole campaign. 

If you select the lifetime option, you’ll be able to schedule your ads. This means that you can decide to display them when your target audience is most likely to be active on Facebook. 

Choose your ad placements.

You can choose where your ads will appear or select automatic placements. There might be campaigns where you’d like to decide yourself. You have several options based on device type, platform, placements, and specific mobile devices. 

For example, you can choose between Facebook, Instagram, or Messenger. You can also choose between Feed, Stories, in-stream, messages, and apps and sites external to Facebook. The options are quite varied. 

Use geo-targeting.

Geo-targeting is an advertising strategy that allows you to get your message in front of your ideal customers. This strategy targets your audience based on where they’re located. Thus, it helps you to target them at the right time and place. Chances are the people you reach are highly-engaged prospects.

use geo targeting
Make the most out of Facebook remarketing tactics.

Remarketing is a strategy that consists of targeting people who have already interacted with your brand but didn’t take the desired action. For instance, users who left your website without buying, sign up for a trial, but never tried your product, etc. 

You can use remarketing ads to convince them. You’ll remind them they were interested in your product or services, and they might complete the process. 

Include social proof in your ads.

Social proof will help you to persuade your audience to try your products or services. It is for this reason that you must incorporate social proof into your Facebook advertising strategy. It won’t only help you to get more leads; you’ll also boost your customer loyalty. 

Facebook ad specs

It comes as no surprise that you must know Facebook ad specs before you create your ad. Knowing these details, it’s of vital importance. Not to mention that guidelines and specifications differ from one platform to another. 

facebook ad specs
Source: Facebook

Here are Facebook ad specs:

  1. Image ads.

Headline: 25 characters.

Link description: 30 characters.

Body text: 125 characters.

Campaign objectives: all but for video views.

  1. Video ads.

Headline: 25 characters.

Link description: 30 characters.

Body text: 125 characters.

Campaign objectives: all but for catalog sales.

  1. Stories ads. 

Text: there is no set character count.

Campaign objectives: store traffic, messages, engagement, and catalog sales.

  1. Messenger ads.

Body text: 125 characters.

Campaign objectives: conversions, messages, catalog sales, app installs, and traffic. 

  1. Slideshow ads.

Headline: 25 characters.

Link description: 30 characters.

Body text: 125 characters. 

Campaign objectives: all.

  1. Carousel ads.

Headline: 25 characters.

Link description: 20 characters.

Body text: 125 characters.

Campaign objectives: all but for video views and engagement. 

  1. Collection ads.

Headline: 25 characters. 

Body text: 90 characters. 

Campaign objectives: conversions, store traffic, traffic, and catalog sales. 

  1. Instant experience ads.

Text: up to 500 words.

Campaign objectives: all but for catalog sales, messages, and lead generation. 

Twitter Advertising

In this section, I’ll focus on how to advertise on Twitter. Thus, I’ll talk about Twitter advertising types and formats. And then, I’ll share with you some Twitter advertising strategies.

Yet, before we start with the nitty-gritty, I would like to stress the importance of becoming familiar with Twitter advertising policies. You should check them before creating your Twitter advertising campaign. 

twitter advertising
Source: Twitter

Twitter advertising will help you to reach new users who might be interested in what you have to offer. You can either promote individual tweets or entire campaigns. Twitter ads are a must to generate new leads and boost traffic and brand awareness. 

Types of Twitter ads

There are several Twitter ad types you can use. Each of them serves a different purpose, which means you must consider your advertising objectives to select your Twitter ad. 

  1. Promoted Tweets.

As it happens with ordinary tweets, promoted tweets can be liked, retweeted, or commented on. You can pay to promote them to reach people who are not following your brand yet. They will always say promoted on the left-hand corner. These tweets can appear on user profiles, home timelines, and search results. 

  1. Promoted Accounts.

Twitter also allows you to promote your entire brand Twitter account. It will say promoted, and it’ll be displayed to users that might be interested despite not being your followers yet. It can appear in search results, follow suggestions, and in potential followers’ timelines. 

  1. Promoted Trends.

Promoted Trends appear at the top of the “Trends for you” section, and they’re labeled as promoted. Users can easily interact with promoted trends as they do with trending topics. There also exists a format called promoted Trend Spotlight that supports static images, videos, and GIFS.

promoted trends
Source: Twitter
  1. Promoted Moments.

Promoted Moments consists of a collection of similar tweets that you can use to tell a story. This means you can share Twitter story ads. Besides, you’re also allowed to sponsor Moments created by other brands. 

How to advertise on Twitter

If you want to expand your reach and grow your followers on Twitter, you must consider using Twitter Ads. They are detrimental to reach new audiences and generate leads. 

Twitter allows you to choose from a wide range of objectives and set your own audience targeting criteria for your Twitter advertising campaign. 

Here are some critical strategies you can use to make the most out of Twitter ads:

Create your Twitter ads account.

Not surprisingly, if you do not have one already, you must create a Twitter ads account. It matters since it’ll give you access to key features such as tracking your advertising campaigns and analyzing metrics. 

Select your advertising objective.

To begin with, you must decide what you want to achieve with your Twitter advertising campaign. This will determine your engagement types and what actions you’ll have to pay for. So, you should take your time to select it. 

There are lots of objectives to choose from. For instance, app installs, video views, followers, app re-engagement, in-stream video views, etc. 

select your advertising objective.
Source: Twitter
Set up your ad group and bidding.

You can either stick to one ad group or split up your Twitter advertising campaign to target different audience groups. You also need to decide how much you want to pay for each interaction or choose automatic bidding. Each ad group has its own budget, audiences, and start and end times.

Target your audience.

Then, you’ll have to select your target audience for each ad group. Your targeting options will help you to pick the right audience for your ad and maximize your efforts. You can customize your audience based on demographic data such as gender, age, location, language, and technology.

You can also target them based on the keywords they use. Not to mention that Twitter allows you to target your audience according to interests and followers. For example, you can target users with similar interests as those of your followers. 

Decide on your ad placement.

As it happens with Facebook, Twitter also allows you to choose where you want to display your ad. For example, you can choose to display it on search results, users’ timelines or profiles, and tweet detail pages. 

Twitter ad specs

  1. Promoted tweet.

Promoted text: 280 characters.

Promoted image: 280 characters.

Promoted GIF: 280 characters. 

Promoted poll: 280 characters.

Promoted account:  280 characters. 

  1. Video.

Promoted video: 280 characters.

Amplify pre-roll: max 2 minutes and 20 seconds. 

Amplify sponsorship: max 2 minutes and 20 seconds. 

  1. Card.

Website card: 280 characters.

Ad card: 280 characters.

Carousels: 280 characters. 

Direct message card: 256 characters. 

Conversation card: 280 characters. 

  1. Brand. 

Branded emojis: up to 5 # with emoji.

Brand reminders: 280 characters.

YouTube Advertising

In this section, I’ll tell you how to advertise on Youtube. I’ll start by explaining the types of Youtube ads available, and then I’ll provide some strategies to make the most out of your Youtube ads.
Source: Youtube

youtube advertising
Source: YouTube

But before that, I’d like to highlight the importance of becoming familiar with Youtube advertising policies. Knowing Youtube’s community guidelines will help you create better ads and ensure they won’t be removed from the platform.

Types of Youtube ads

Google offers several advertising options on Youtube. Whether to choose one or another depends on your campaign objectives and your budget. Your target audience plays a significant role here too. You must select Youtube ad types they fancy.

Let me walk you through Youtube ad types below:

  1. Skippable in-stream ads.

Skippable TrueView in-stream ads are those that pop up before someone watches the video they selected to watch on Youtube starts playing. Users can choose to skip them after the first 5 seconds. 

Yet, these videos last between 12 seconds to 6 minutes. You only pay when someone has watched the first 30 seconds, the whole video, or if they interact with your ad. You can customize them with CTAs and overlay text.

  1. Non-skippable in-stream ads.

Non-skippable TrueView in-stream ads don’t have a skip button. They last 15-20 seconds and are also played before videos or in the middle of videos that last for at least 10 minutes. Your non-skippable videos must be strong enough to hold your audience’s attention. These videos can help you boost your brand awareness. 

non skippable in stream ads
Source: Google

On top of that, bumper ads are a subtype of non-skippable in-stream ads. These ads can appear before, in the middle, or after the video users have chosen to view. Most of the time, these videos aim at improving reach and brand awareness.

  1. Video discovery ads.

TrueView video discovery ads appear on Youtube’s homepage, search result pages, and as related videos on Youtube’s watch pages. They include three lines of text along with a thumbnail. 

These ads show up after users perform a Youtube search. If users are interested, they can click on the ad, and they’ll be sent to your video page or Youtube channel. These videos appear in the right-hand video sidebar. 

  1. Non-video ads.

If you do not have the budget to run video ad campaigns, Youtube offers the option of displaying non-video ads. You can use display ads that include an image, text, and a CTA. These ones appear on the right-hand sidebar. The other option is in-video overlay ads that appear floating on top of videos.  

How to advertise on Youtube

Once you’ve chosen your ad type and uploaded your video, you’ll be ready to create your advertising campaign. Youtube advertising has lots of targeting possibilities. It is for this reason that you need to build a strategy. You also have at your disposal tracking capabilities to ensure you’re on the right path. 

how to advertise on youtube
Source: YouTube

Follow my proven Youtube ad tactics below:

Define your campaign goals.

First of all, you must set your campaign goals. These must align with your overall social media marketing objectives. Deciding your goals is mandatory to choose your metrics. Youtube allows you to track four main metrics: views, branding, conversions, and audience. They’ll help you to assess your Youtube advertising campaign’s success.

Create your campaign.

Once you’ve chosen your goals, you’ll be ready to start creating your campaign. You need to select your campaign type and enter a campaign name. You’ll also have to choose a video subtype such as bumper, skippable, outstream, etc. 

Determine your campaign parameters.

Not surprisingly, you should wisely select your bid strategy. That’s to say, whether you want to pay for impressions, clicks, or conversions. You’ll also have to decide on your budget and determine where your ads will show up, like discovery, all of Youtube, or Youtube display network. 

These and other parameters like your audience’s language and location will help you to display your ads to Youtube users that might be interested in watching them. Thus, your parameter choices do matter for your video ad’s success. 

determine your campaign parameters.
Source: Google
Choose your target audience.

The more you know your target audience, the better you’ll target them. So, if you haven’t created your buyer personas, it’s time you do so. Anyway, Youtube allows you to target your audience based on their demographics, interests, keywords, topics, and remarketing.

This will help you to target different groups of users and find out who is more engaged. Audience targeting is of utmost importance to boost your ROI. It would be wise to run several campaigns and target different audience groups rather than including all your audience in one campaign. 

Use CTAs.

You can include CTAs on your Youtube ads that link to a specific URL. This link can drive users to a product page, landing page, information page, career page, etc. You can also send Youtube users to a report or interview featuring your brand. It’s up to you how you use the links; what matters is that you should use them. 

Include captions.

Youtube’s automatic captioning is not highly reliable. Yet, the benefits of including video transcriptions are endless. Many users may use them to better understand what you say or because they do not want to use the volume because of where they are. So, you should provide high-quality video transcriptions generated by your brand. 

Youtube ad specs

You must check Youtube ad specs before creating your ad. It will help you to ensure your Youtube ad will reach your target audience. Here are some of the most important Youtube ad specs you need to know:

  1. Video ad length guidelines.

Skippable ads: from 12 seconds to 3 minutes.

Non-skippable ads: 15-20 seconds.

Bumper ads: 6 seconds.

LinkedIn Advertising

In this section, I’ll deal with how you can advertise your brand and products/services on LinkedIn. I’ll comment on LinkedIn ad types, and I’ll tell you my proven strategies as to how to advertise on LinkedIn. 

As it happens with all the social media platforms I’ve mentioned before, you must familiarize yourself with LinkedIn’s advertising policies. They’ll help you to ensure your ad is appropriate for LinkedIn and its members.

LinkedIn ad types

There are lots of LinkedIn ad types and formats. LinkedIn offers you a wide variety to choose from. Indeed, you should select your LinkedIn ads based on your campaign objectives, whatever they are.

Here are LinkedIn’s ad types: 

  1. LinkedIn sponsored content ads.

Sponsored content ads are ads that look as if they were boosted posts from your company’s own feed. You can create a typical post with a headline, an image, and a link to sponsor with ads manager. There are several ad formats you can use: image, video, and carousel. Besides, you can run a native news feed ad or a lead generation campaign. 

  1. LinkedIn text ads.

Text ads are featured in the sidebar. They include a headline, blurb, and a small image. Not surprisingly, these ads are measured by pay-per-click or cost-per-impression. These ads are quite simple in comparison to others. They generally consist of a headline together with a company logo. 

  1. LinkedIn sponsored InMail.

Sponsored InMail ads consist of delivering targeted messages to LinkedIn members inboxes. Yet, keep in mind that LinkedIn members can opt-out of receiving InMail ads. You can use this type of LinkedIn ads to send personalized messages to your contacts list. 

How to Create LinkedIn Sponsored Content Ads: A Walkthrough
by Social Media Examiner
  1. LinkedIn programmatic display ads.

Programmatic display ads are vital for B2B advertisers. They allow you to target LinkedIn members based on intent or personas. Not to mention that these commonplace display ads allow you to get your brand in front of decision-makers. You can reach quality audiences. 

  1. LinkedIn dynamic ads.

Dynamic ads allow you to target your audience using your views, profile photo, and name. Thus, they are highly customized. You can use them to promote content, your company page, job postings, drive website traffic, etc. There are set templates and autotranslation options to make it easier for you.

How to advertise on LinkedIn

Advertising on LinkedIn needs to be carefully planned due to its type of audience. Most LinkedIn members are professionals, decision-makers, and senior-level influencers. Consequently, you must know how to reach them.

Below, you’ll find my proven strategies on how to advertise on LinkedIn and succeed:

Create your campaign.

Visit the LinkedIn Marketing Solutions platform and start creating your campaign. There, you’ll be able to create a LinkedIn Campaign Manager account and associate your LinkedIn Company Page. Afterward, select your Campaign Group. Finally, you’ll have to choose a campaign name, make sure it’s informative as it won’t be visible to other users. 

Set your campaign objective.

Choosing a campaign objective is crucial. It’ll help LinkedIn to customize your campaign creation. Not to mention that if you have an objective, you’ll have a better ROI. Besides, LinkedIn provides you reports based on your campaign objective. You can choose from awareness, consideration, and conversion objectives. 

set your campaign objective
Source: LinkedIn
Determine your audience.

You must set up your audience targeting parameters. This will help you to address only those users who might be interested in what you have to say. So, it’ll help you to cut down costs and put your efforts where needed. 

You can pick a location and a language. You can also use audience features like company, demographics, education, job experience, and interests. You can even use “or” to broaden your audience or “and” to narrow it. And it’s also possible to select audiences with similar attributes. 

Choose your ad format.

Deciding on what ad type to choose might be difficult at first. You must consider your priorities and your budget to make up your mind. Some ad types require you to add a link to your LinkedIn Company Page or Showcase Page. 

Select your ad placement.

You must also decide where you want your ad to be displayed. You can even block or exclude certain categories, apps, and sites if you wish. But, what matters is that you get as much exposure as possible. You should enable the LinkedIn Audience Network.

Decide on your budget and schedule.

LinkedIn allows you to choose between a daily budget and a total budget. You should go for the first one till you check your campaign works, or else you would spend lots of dollars for nothing. 

decide on your budget and schedule
Source: LinkedIn

As to the bid type, LinkedIn gives you the option to choose between cost-per-click, cost-per-impressions, and cost-per-send (emails). Besides, you’ll have to set a date for your campaign to start and another one to finish.

Track your performance.

LinkedIn gives you the option to set up conversion tracking. This matters since it’ll help you track and measure LinkedIn users’ actions when they click on your ads. You can either install an Insight Tag or use an event-specific pixel to track conversions. 

LinkedIn ad specs 

It’s of vital importance that you know LinkedIn ad specs. The ones I’m about to mention below are general ones, though you can go to LinkedIn to get more information if you need. Let’s have a look at some key details!

  1. Sponsored content.

Single image: 5MB or smaller.

Video ads: video length 3 seconds to 30 minutes.

Carousel ads: max 10 MB.

  1. Sponsored InMail: up to 1,500 characters of main text, and max three links.
  2. Text ads: an image of 2MG or smaller, and an ad description up to 75 characters.
  3. Follower ads: ad description up to 70 characters and ad headline up to 50. 
  4. Spotlight ads: ad description up to 70 characters and ad headline up to 50. 
  5. Job ads: ad headline up top 70 characters, and company name up to 25. 
  6. Content ads: company name up to 25 characters, and document name up to 50.

Instagram Advertising

It’s high time I’ll deal with Instagram advertising. In this section, I’ll comment on Instagram advertising types; and I’ll show you my proven Instagram advertising strategies. It’s worth mentioning that Instagram advertising policies are the same as Facebook’s. 

Instagram advertising will help you to target a larger and more engaged audience. You can use it to boost your brand exposure, website traffic, generate leads, etc. Instagram is a visual platform, so you must ensure your images and videos are eye-catching and draw users’ attention. 

instagram advertising
Source: Instagram

Let’s have a look at Instagram ad types and formats!

Types of Instagram ads

Instagram provides several ad formats to choose from. Each type has been designed to achieve different business goals. Not to mention that you’ve got various CTA options available. Let’s get into more detail!

  1. Stories ads.

Instagram Stories Ads are full-screen and appear between users’ stories. You can add video effects, face filters, text, stickers, and CTAs to make your ads more creative. The idea is to create a seamless experience for users. 

  1. Photo ads.

Photo ads are great to showcase your brand products/services. They appear when users scroll through their Feed. They’re the most standard ad format. If done well, these ads won’t look like ads, but as if they were organic posts from Instagram users. It gives you the chance to share content with people who might be interested in what you want to share. 

  1. Video ads.

Video ads can be up to one minute long. Yet, they should be shorter as they’re often more effective. Video ads give you the chance to share some branding information as well as details about your products or services. Keep in mind you must draw your audience’s attention in the first few seconds. 

  1. Carousel ads.

Carousel ads allow you to use up to 10 images or videos within a single ad, each of them with their own link or CTA. You can use these ads to show your products since users can swipe from one image/video to the next to see the whole collection. 

carousel ads.
Source: Facebook
  1. Collection ads.

Collection ads give Instagram users the chance to purchase directly from the ad. If users click on your ad, they’ll be sent to an Instant Experience Storefront. These all-in-one ads combine images, videos, and direct-response marketing to call your audience’s attention and persuade them to take the desired action. 

  1. Instagram shopping ads.

Instagram allows you to run shoppable posts as Instagram ads. Users will be directed to your product description page without leaving the Instagram app. Thus, users will be able to purchase through your mobile website. 

How to advertise on Instagram using Facebook Ads Manager

Instagram advertising is managed through Facebook’s Ads Manager. You can handle your Instagram and Facebook’s ads all from the same place, making things way easier. You’ve got lots of different targeting options available. Let’s have a look at some decisive strategies!

Choose your campaign’s objective.

Facebook’s Ads Manager gives you the chance to choose from several campaign objectives. They’re grouped into three main categories: awareness, consideration, and conversion. Examples are engagement, conversions, traffic, etc. 

You must take your time to pick your objective since this one has to make sense with your content, or else you’d waste time and money. Once you finish selecting your campaign objective, you’ll have to name your Instagram ad campaign. 

Determine your audience.

Instagram offers a wide range of targeting options. You can target users by location, age, gender, demographics, interests, behavior, language, and connections. Besides, you can create custom audiences and lookalike audiences. Thus, the options are quite varied. You can customize your ad target audience as much as you like. 

determine your audience
Select your Instagram ad format.

There are lots of formats available to choose from as I explained above. Whether to choose one or another depends on your objective and the type of audience you want to target. You should always go for the format your audience prefers. 

Decide on your ad placements.

You can choose between automatic placements or manual placements. Yet, if you want your ads to appear only on Instagram, you should go for the second option. Besides, you can choose to display your ads on Instagram stories or feed. Make sure you check your ad placements if you want your ad to appear in a specific place.

Set your budget and schedule.

You must decide how much you want to spend on your advertising campaign and for how long. Instagram allows you to choose between a daily and a lifetime budget. Yet, you would only be able to customize your schedule if you pick the latter. You can run your ad at specific times of the day and days of the week during a set amount of time. 

Instagram ad specs

When advertising on Instagram, you must know its ad specifications. It’s worth mentioning that Instagram Feed posts are 1080 x 1080 pixels in size. Whereas Instagram stories size is 1080 x 1920 pixels. Yet, there are other specs you may need to know: 

  1. Image ads.

Caption: 125 characters.

  1. Carousel ads.

Caption: 125 characters.

Length: 3-60 seconds.

  1. Video ads.

Caption: 125 characters.

Length: 3-60 seconds. 

  1. Collection ads.

Caption: 125 characters.

  1. Lead ads.

Caption: 125 characters.

  1. Stories image ads.

Visible for 5 seconds.

  1. Stories video ads.

Length: maximum 15 seconds. 

Tik Tok Advertising

In this section, I’ll focus on Tik Tok advertising. Though it’s not as widely known as Instagram’s or Facebook’s, Tik Tok advertising can help you reach a large audience. You just need to be creative enough and become familiar with the app specifications.

Below, I’ll explain Tik Tok’s advertising types. Afterward, I’ll share with you some killer strategies on how to advertise on this super cool platform. And, to conclude, I’ll talk about some Tik Tok ad specs.

tiktok advertising
Source: TikTok

Yet, before we get into more detail, I’d like to stress the importance of having a look at Tik Tok’s advertising policies. They’ll help you to understand what type of content is banned by country, among other things. 

Tik Tok ad types

Tik Tok offers several advertising options to choose from. If you’re not familiar with Tik Tok advertising yet, it’s worth you explore it. There are different creative ad formats available. Whether to pick one or another, as always, depends on your campaign’s goals.  

  1. In-Feed Ads.

In-Feed ads consist of video ads that pop up in between Tik Tok’s users’ videos when you scroll in your For You Page. These videos last from 9-15 seconds. What I like the most about In-Feed ads is that you can include CTAs. Not to mention that users can like, share, and comment on them. Make sure your videos are enticing. 

  1. Brand Takeover.

Brand Takeover Ads are those that appear as soon as you open the Tik Tok app. They’re full screen. They can also pop up on the For You Page. You can include a clickable link or a Hashtag challenge. Tik Tok users can only see one Brand Takeover ad per day. These ads are highly effective but a bit costly. 

  1. Branded Hashtag Challenge.

Branded Hashtag Challenges are unique to Tik Tok. These ads are pivotal to encourage user-generated content. If users click on a sponsored hashtag, they’re sent to your landing page on Tik Tok, where they would find popular videos using your hashtag. 

  1. TopView.

TopView ads are similar to Brand Takeovers. Yet, Top View ads do not show up as soon as users open the app, they appear in the first in-feed posts. Thus, they are less invasive than their counterparts. They can last for up to 60 seconds; they’re full-screen and are shown with autoplay and sound. 

topview.
Source: TikTok
  1. Branded Effects.

Branded Effects ads allow you to create shareable stickers, lenses, and AR filters. These ads can live for up to 10 days. Thus, they are perfect for encouraging Tik Tok users to interact with your brand.  

How to advertise on Tik Tok 

Tik Tok advertising can help you reach a younger audience and interact with them in a funnier and creative way. Yet, there are some tactics you need to use to make the most out of your advertising campaign. Let’s have a look at them!

Create your Tik Tok ads account.

First of all, you need to create your Tik Tok ads account. You’ll have to go to the Tik Tok ads homepage and fill in some information. Then, a Tik Tok representative will contact you. 

Generate your Tik Tok ads campaign.

Afterward, you’ll be ready to create your advertising campaign. You need to choose your ad’s goal, as it happens with all the other social media platforms I’ve mentioned above.

There are several objectives to choose from, like traffic, app installs, and conversions. Then, you’ll have to set your budget. You can either go for a daily or total budget. 

Decide on your ad group.

It’s time you choose your ad placements and targeting options. As to audience targeting, Tik Tok allows you to define your ad’s audience based on their age, location, gender, language, device, etc. You can even run a remarketing campaign and use a Tik Tok pixel to assess its effectiveness. 

decide on your ad group.
Set your Tik Tok ads campaign details.

Lastly, you’ll have to determine your budget and scheduling options. You need to decide how much you want to spend and how long your campaign will last. Tik Tok allows you to select specific days of the week and times to display your ads. As to your budget, you can choose the standard or accelerate option. 

Tik Tok ad specs

Your Tik Tok ads need to be optimized for the Tik Tok platform and its audience if you want to succeed. Thus, you need to familiarize yourself with Tik Tok ad specs. 

  1. In-Feed ads.

Video duration: 5-16 seconds. 

Ad description: 12-100 characters.

  1. Newsfeed series.

Video duration: 5-60 seconds.


And that’s all for social media advertising. Now you are aware of its benefits. I hope you’ve found the tips above mentioned useful.

 Since you’re familiar with the most well-known social media platforms, it’s time we move on to the next chapter, where I’ll share my proven social media marketing tips.

Chapter 7

Social Media Marketing Tips

Social media marketing tips are always welcome. There would be tips you’ll find more useful than others. Yet, learning how to make the most of social media networks is not the same as knowing how to use them. See what I mean?

In this chapter, I’ll provide some social media marketing tips. I’ll start by commenting on social media tips for Twitter. Then, for Facebook, Youtube, LinkedIn, and finally, Instagram. 

Becoming familiar with social media platforms is not enough. There are tactics that can help you boost your results. Keep on reading to discover the latest social media marketing tips!

Social media tips for Twitter

It’s a bit hard to know what techniques work best on Twitter since tweets’ lifespan is undoubtedly quite short. Then, what can you do to reach your target audience? Some strategies work better than others. Besides, you must stick to what works for your brand. 

social media tips for twitter

Still, there are some powerful strategies that can help you boost your marketing efforts on Twitter. Let’s have a look at them!

Write a strong profile bio.

It comes as no surprise that you must create a killer profile bio. It is the first thing a visitor will read as regards your company. Thus, you should briefly explain what others can expect from your page. 

You just have 160 characters, so make sure what you say represents your brand. Keep it accurate, and don’t be afraid to be original. If you’ve got some great accomplishments, share them here.

Important note:

Write your bio bearing your audience in mind. And do not forget to include some relevant hashtags. This way, people would be able to find your account if they search for those hashtags. 

It’s of vital importance you choose a great profile photo too. Together, your profile bio and photo represent your brand. Make sure you use them to attract users and share relevant information about your brand. 

Interact with your followers.

Engaging with your audience is critical to growing your number of followers on Twitter. Besides, having followers that interact with your brand and share your comments is crucial to boost your brand’s reach and exposure.

You must foster brand loyalty so that your Twitter followers keep on coming to your page. On top of that, you must share mentions. It’ll help your brand to reach a larger audience.

Mentions work as word of mouth. They’ll help you promote your business from your audience’s point of view. Twitter is a platform where you’re expected to start a conversation and keep it going.

interact with your followers
Source: Twitter

Don’t be afraid to ask questions and guide your followers through the discussion. Share your point of view and listen to what they have to say about your brand and products. Twitter is extremely useful to collect feedback and help your customers. 

Tweet during peak hours.

There are certain times during the day and certain days of the week when users are more active on Twitter. Thus, if you post your tweets during that time, you’ll have more chances to reach a wider audience.

These peak hours vary from one company to another because they depend on your target audience. Indeed, if you target an international audience, there would be different time zones that will affect when you should post. 

You must identify when it’s best to post on Twitter so that you get more impressions, boost engagement, and increase the number of clicks. Your peak posting times depend on your audience. So, the best you can do is to experiment and find out when it’s best to post on Twitter. 

Once you’ve found them out, you’ll be able to schedule your posts ahead of time. This matters since you won’t need to be watching the clock. Planning your posts beforehand also helps you to ensure what you post is high-quality content. 

Use keyword targeting and hashtags.

Keyword targeting allows you to engage with Twitter users through words you’ve included in your content, and they’ve searched for. Likewise, Twitter hashtags are key to boost your engagement.

use keyword targeting and hashtags
Source: Twitter

There are two types of keyword targeting on Twitter. Search keyword targeting helps you to show up in front of Twitter users who are searching for topics related to your business. Timeline keyword targeting allows you to target users based on their thoughts, feelings, and emotions. 

As to hashtag usage, you shouldn’t overuse hashtags, or else it would look spammy, and it won’t have the desired effect. What you should do is to create a hashtag that’s unique to your brand and use it when appropriate.

You can also employ hashtags that are related to a specific campaign you’re running or just relevant to the content you post. It’s advisable not to use more than two hashtags since you might have less engagement. 

Social media tips for Facebook

Facebook is an extremely powerful marketing tool. Thus, running social media ads on Facebook is mandatory these days. Not to mention that Facebook has more than 2 billion monthly active users.

Almost everyone is on Facebook, and you must be where your audience is. However, there’s lots of competition because most brands are on Facebook too. Thus, you need to carefully plan your Facebook presence. 

If you want to excel in Facebook’s marketing, follow the tips below:

Know when to post.

If you want to get the maximum impact, you must post when most of your target audience is active on Facebook. But how do you know when to post? You can make use of Facebook insights and find out when to post.

know when to post

Besides, if you do not have enough followers yet, you can also research your industry’s best practices. There are many guides available that suggest when to post based on research like these ones by CoSchedule, Hubspot, and Hootsuite, among others. 

On top of that, it’s critical that you experiment and then choose the timing and frequency that works best for your brand. If you know when it is best to post on Facebook, you can prepare your posts beforehand and schedule them. 

This will help you to make the most out of your content. And, if you respond to your followers in real-time, you’ll be able to gain loyal followers. You should keep an eye on conversations regarding your Facebook page and content too. 

Join the right groups and partner with influencers.

Facebook groups are a great way to engage with an interested audience. Look for groups that haven’t grown too large and focus on your area of interest. Once you found one you’re interested in, do not openly promote your business.

Try to be a resource instead and help others with whatever issues they might be facing. You can also start a conversation and ask for feedback as regards something you’re currently working on. 

Tip:

The most important aspect of Facebook groups is to interact with group members in a friendly way. Show them you care about their pains. You can even create your own Facebook group for customers and share useful information with them.

Anyway, as important as participating in Facebook groups, it is to partner with influencers. If they’re well established, and you’re interested in their audience, it’s a fantastic way to reach new prospects. 

Yet, not any influencer will do the trick. Make sure you partner with someone whose audience you’re interested in. Influencers’ audiences trust their opinions. This works like word of mouth. But you must choose the right fit for your brand. 

Post videos.

Posting videos is vital to boost engagement. People love watching videos since they’re easy to consume. Besides, videos get more shares than simpler link posts. The popularity of videos seems to be growing indeed.

It is for all these reasons that you should definitely post video content on Facebook. Yet, most Facebook users watch videos with the sound of. So, you must create captions for your videos if you want them to increase engagement. 

You must set them up properly, as many people get annoyed when videos are posted with auto-play sound. You can even produce live videos to explain something of interest. Your audience will love them.

post videos

You don’t need a lot of equipment to create videos for Facebook. You can record them with your mobile device. Videos will help you to get noticed. You just need to call your audience’s attention, and you’ll succeed. 

Share user-generated content.

Sharing user-generated content is detrimental to boost your brand’s loyalty. Not to mention that it makes your audience feel included, and it saves you time since you won’t have to create so many posts. 

Thus, you can openly ask your followers to share videos and photos of them interacting with your products. You can also repost content from their own pages as long as they tag you. 

It would be nice if you thank them for their images or videos. You can even share this content on your Facebook community page. The possibilities are endless. If you allow users to feel part of your brand, you’ll boost their loyalty.

When a follower mentions you on their posts, they’re talking on your behalf and promoting your brand to their family, friends, and acquaintances. There’s no better promotion than this. So it’s critical you encourage UGC.

Social media tips for Youtube

Since Youtube is the leader in online video consumption, there is no doubt you should create a Youtube channel for your brand. It offers limitless possibilities for sharing engaging content. 

You can post tutorials and demonstrations to educate your audience, for instance. Well-designed videos have a huge potential. What’s more, they can have an impact on your company’s growth. 

social media tips for youtube
Source: YouTube

Yet, there are some guidelines you need to follow if you want to succeed. It’s important you keep a consistent tone and use effective CTAs. Not to mention that you should use several video formats. 

Below, you’ll find some killer tips you cannot miss:

Start each video with a hook.

You need to catch viewers’ attention if you want them to watch your video. You can easily do so if you show them a stunning end result, for example, if you create DIY or makeover videos.

Another way to call users’ attention is by telling a story. Most people will stick around because they want to know what happens. So, you can start your video with an intriguing story and then go into the subject matter. 

Whatever hook you use, you must make sure it’s related to your video’s subject matter. You can also start with an off-topic fact and then go into the subject matter, but only if you already have a broad audience of loyal followers. 

Use keywords and CTAs.

You should include relevant keywords in your Youtube video description and video tags because of Youtube’s search capabilities. When you upload a video to Youtube, there is an option to tag it with keywords. 

These keywords will help you to expand your reach across the platform and increase your video views. Yet, you must use topic-related keywords. These can either be general or more specific, but they have to be relevant to your video content.

As important as using keywords, it is to add CTAs. You can add them at the end of your video or include them within the description. Most seasoned YouTubers use CTAs to close their videos.

use keywords and ctas.
Source: YouTube

Examples of CTAs are: like and subscribe, call us today, visit our website to learn more, etc. What matters is that you use action verbs. You can even add links to your website and social media profiles in the About section of your Youtube channel or within your video description. 

Add end screens to promote your website, videos, Youtube channels, etc.

End screens consist of interactive graphics that you can use to link to another video, your website, a specific web page, or your Youtube channel. Youtube allows you to add end screens in the last 20 seconds of your video. 

Thus, you should plan where the end screens will appear while still engage the viewer till the end of your recording. It’s somehow a great way to keep on providing relevant information to your viewers. Yet, you must give them a reason to click. 

On top of that, session length is vital to Youtube’s algorithm. End screens are a brilliant way to increase session length. You can even add a subscribe end screen. You should point to the subscribe button and talk about it in your video. 

You can also promote a collaboration with another creator by promoting another channel as well as your own. You can send your video viewers anywhere you want. Ensure you do not add more than three links, or else people won’t know what to choose. 

Mix various video types.

You should definitely incorporate various video types. Youtube allows you to create almost any kind of video you can think of. It’s a platform that’s ideal for creativity and innovation. As a brand, you must create educational videos such as Q&A videos.

You can also produce how-to-videos to help customers use your latest products or how to perform a specific task. You can broadcast company events or give a tour of your office and facilities. 

mix various video types.

Above all, there is a type of video you must produce: testimonials. You should interview your customers and ask them to share their views about your products or services. Likewise, you can also interview your employees and ask them about their experience working for your brand.

The latter is vital to call the attention of new employees. It’s perfect for attracting talent to your business. It would be wise to invite a social media influencer or well-known Youtuber to talk and collaborate with you in a video. The possibilities are endless. 

Social media tips for LinkedIn

Linkedin is one of the most effective social media platforms for generating B2B leads. Thus, it is a must for B2B marketers. It’ll help you with customer acquisition too. Not to mention that LinkedIn is an excellent choice for sharing professionally relevant content. 

It’s for all these reasons that you must create a business account if, for whatever reason, you’re not already on the platform. Linkedin marketing can work wonders for your business. 

Let’s have a look at some powerful tips: 

Get your employees involved. 

Your employees can play a crucial role in strengthening your LinkedIn account. They’re the most reliable advocates of your brand. Thus, it would be wise to involve some of them in your LinkedIn marketing strategy.

You should encourage your employees to include your company in their profiles. This will allow them to engage with your content and share it with their connections.

On top of that, you can ask some of your employees to take part in LinkedIn Groups and share their expertise. Employee advocacy can help you expand your reach. However, it’s also positive for brand awareness. 

get your employees involved

Besides, if your employees share their experience working for your brand together with relevant content and company updates, it’ll work wonders. You’ll draw the attention of future quality employees.  

Create content that adds value.

Not surprisingly, you must publish valuable content. Thus, instead of sharing promotional content, you should post content that serves a purpose. I mean, you need to create educational, informative, and entertaining content. 

This will help you to increase your engagement and reach on LinkedIn. You can also share informative content from industry experts. Not all you post needs to be original from your brand. 

You should also use all of Linkedin’s different post types: articles, images, and videos. And you must write a catchy headline. You need to use a hook if you want them to click the link to read your full blog post, among other things. 

Use the matched audiences feature. 

The matched audiences feature is an excellent marketing strategy to target relevant users with LinkedIn ads. It allows you to retarget website visitors that left without taking any action.

You can also use this feature to target your email contacts and people on the platform. With retargeting, you’ll reach all those users who didn’t convert, and you’ll have a second chance to convince them.

use the matched audiences feature
Source: LinkedIn

It’s quite difficult that people convert when they first interact with your business. LinkedIn’s matched audiences feature is pivotal to remind them they were interested in your brand, products, or services. 

Besides, LinkedIn’s audience is formed by professionals. It’s more likely that this highly selective audience converts. It’s a very cost-effective feature. So, if you’re not already using it, I strongly advise you to give it a try!

Leverage personalized InMail. 

Though InMail is a paid feature that is only available to premium accounts, it’s worth you activate it. This feature not only allows you to reach out to prospects and influencers, but it also helps you to reach individuals that otherwise you wouldn’t be able to. 

Not to mention that InMail response rate is three times higher than regular emails. Since it’s more personal, recipients are more likely to respond. You can use it to promote your products and services to suitable prospects. 

leverage personalized inmail
Source: LinkedIn

You can also share offers, content updates, whatever that might be of interest to your email’s recipients based on their profile. InMail includes built-in-analytics that help you to get insights into the performance of your messages. 

Social media tips for Instagram

According to Instagram, 90% of its users follow a business account. What’s more, Instagram users not only use the platform to research products and services, but they also interact with brands. 

It’s worth mentioning that Instagram uses Facebook’s demographic data to improve its targeting options. This will help you to stay relevant to your current followers and call the attention of new ones. 

Here are some powerful Instagram marketing tips you cannot miss:

Partner with influencers.

Working with an influencer can help you build your credibility and reach a large audience. You must select an influencer whose audience you’re interested in. That’s to say, your influencer’s audience has to be relevant for your product or service. 

This way, you’ll increase your brand’s exposure and build brand awareness with new audiences. Your influencer’s followers can end up following you or turning into potential customers.

If you trust the influencer, you can host an Instagram takeover. This means you’ll allow the influencer to manage your Instagram account for a set period of time. Thus, the influencer will create posts and stories for you. 

It’s a win-win since the influencer will get exposure to a new audience (your audience), and you’ll get an expert or well-known person talking on your behalf. 

Use Instagram stories.

Instagram stories are a must to succeed in your Instagram marketing strategy. They can help you generate more leads. Instagram stories only live for 24 hours. Users expect them to be more real than what you post in your feed. 

You can use Instagram stories to share behind-the-scenes content. It’s an opportunity to engage with your followers in a more creative way. You can post photos, videos, live videos, boomerangs, and GIF-like images. 

Important note:

You can use filters, text, and stickers to make your stories more eye-catching for your audience. Not to mention that you can post multiple short scenes to tell a story. You’re even allowed to use a CTA, which I strongly advise you to. 

On top of that, your followers may tag you in their stories. If you like what you see, you can reshare it to your own story. Fans will appreciate it. And, it’s perfect for sharing user-generated content. 

Write great captions and use hashtags.

Even though Instagram is a visual platform, how you write your captions does matter. Your captions must serve a purpose. They need to be relevant for your post. Besides, they can also be entertaining or informative.

You must create compelling captions. Above all, it does matter how you write the first two lines of your captions, as it is what users can see unless they tap to read more. So, you must put essential information at the beginning to call their attention.

Likewise, the hashtags you use matters to such an extent that they are mandatory to increase your content discoverability. But, do not include hashtags for the sake of using them.

write great captions and use hashtags
Source: Instagram

Instagram hashtags must be relevant to your post and specific to your niche. You can use some general niche hashtags, but it’s mandatory you use content-specific ones that relate to your post’s image. 

Make sure you do not use banned hashtags and try not to be repetitive, or else your hashtags will look spammy, and you could end up being penalized. Hashtags and captions complement your post’s images. Make sure you give them the attention they deserve. 

Engage with your audience. 

It seems obvious, but if you want engagement, you must interact with your audience. Posting quality content is not enough to grow your Instagram account. You can not ignore comments; you must provide prompt answers.

You should also like and comment on your follower’s posts. It would be wise to interact with well-known niche experts since it’ll increase your band’s visibility and trust. The same happens with stories; you should reshare a story when someone tags you.

On top of that, you can watch others’ stories and comment on them. It’s a great way to engage with your followers and prove to them that you care. 

You should also try to encourage engagement in your posts. You can easily do that by asking questions and interacting to keep the conversation going. 


And that’s all for now. I hope you’ve found the above-mentioned tips useful. Yet, if you are interested in learning more, we’ve got a super complete eBook that contains more than 250 Social Media Marketing tips. And guess what? You can download it for free. 

There, you’ll find the latest tips and strategies as to how to make the most out of your social media efforts. We’ll show you how to create your social media plan, the importance of a social media calendar, content optimization, hashtags, and much more. 

Do not hesitate to download it as it’s full of must-have tactics that you may sooner or later need to boost your social media advertising efforts and beat your competitors. 

Being familiar with social media platforms is not enough; these days, there’s a lot of competition, which means you must be up-to-date and learn about what others are doing. Yet, instead of copying your competitors’ strategies, you need to come up with your own. 

Social media is not one-size-fits-all marketing. What works for one brand doesn’t necessarily have to work for yours. However, if you become familiar with the best tips and strategies, you’ll be able to test them and see what works best for your brand. 

In the next chapter, I’ll provide a social media marketing glossary that you can use to check the meaning of key social media marketing terms. I hope you find it useful!

Chapter 8

Social Media Marketing Glossary

In this chapter, I’ll provide you with a social media marketing glossary. I’ll define key social media terms. It’s great to have a glossary to check whenever you need it. Let’s get into it!

What is a social media network?

A social media network is an online platform that allows you to create a public profile and interact with other users. People use them to make connections. You can either confirm or deny connections.

Social media networks vary quite a lot as regards format and features. There are social networks to establish professional connections, such as LinkedIn. However, others combine private and professional connections like Facebook.

Each social media network has its own online community. Generally, people use social media networks to share their views on a specific topic, post images and videos, comment on what other people post, etc.

What is a social media user?

A social media user is someone who uses social media networks to connect with other people. Social media users can engage with their favorite social media networks through their computers, tablets, or smartphones. Yet, it’s more and more common that they use their mobile phones.

There are 4.14 billion social media users, according to Datareportal. What’s more, this number has increased quite a lot in recent years. There are several types of social media users. For example, listener, activist, troll, spammer, early adopter, influencer, etc. 

What is a social media post?

A social media post is any type of content that is published on social media platforms. Depending on the network, social media posts can be image posts, video content, text, or a combination of these three.

Each social media platform has its own specifications as to the number of characters, image size, video length, etc. You can even link your posts to your website. A social media post must be interesting and easy to consume, or else it won’t generate engagement, nor will it go viral. 

What is a hashtag?

A hashtag consists of the pound symbol together with a word o series of words written without spaces (e.g., #sale, #TBT, #entrepreneur, #picoftheday, etc.). People use them to add content to a post.

They serve to mark a topic on social media so that what you post can later be discovered by other users. They’re extremely popular on Twitter and Instagram. You cannot use punctuation or symbols. They must be relevant to the content of your post. 

What is an impression?

An impression refers to how many times your content is displayed, no matter whether it was clicked or not. So, impressions determine the number of people who have seen your content on social media, even if they didn’t click, comment, or somehow engage with your post.

Impressions is a very important metric since it measures the number of times your content is consumed. Yet, impressions don’t necessarily have to translate into a purchase. They’re not an exact science, but they serve to give you an idea of your marketing efforts. 

What is an audience?

A social media audience consists of a group of people that you want to target through social media channels. Not surprisingly, each social media network has its own audience groups.

A social media target audience are people who might be interested in your products or services. They must share some common characteristics based on demographics and behavior, such as age, location, income, gender, education, job, etc.  

What is a follower?

A follower is someone who follows another person on a social media platform, such as Instagram or Twitter. It’s common to have followers and people you follow. Your followers don’t necessarily have to be your friends, but people who belong to a network and follow you due to shared interests or because you’re an expert on a topic they like.

The best way to increase your number of followers is to be active. It’s also fundamental that you post relevant content. There are times when followers accept the leadership of other social media users, like in the case of influencer’s followers. The latter trust the opinion of the former. 

What is a social media interaction?

A social media interaction refers to your followers’ communication with your brand’s social media profile. Not surprisingly, there are platform-specific interactions. On Facebook, you can use likes, comments, shares, and emojis. On Twitter, there are mentions and retweets. On Instagram, likes, and comments.

Social media interactions are of utmost importance; they can make your content go viral. If you want to increase your interactions, you must engage with your followers. You can also encourage your followers to participate in your campaigns.  

What is a pin? (Pinterest)

A pin is a bookmark that you can use to save ideas on Pinterest. What’s more, Pinterest content consists of pins. A pin can either be an image or a website. Pinterest users can search, save, and click on pins.

Businesses use pins to share their products and ideas. Pins include specific information as to the board where they’re pinned, the source (webpage), and it also says if they’ve been repinned. Pins appear on people’s walls or Pinterest feed. 

What is a social share?

A social share, as the name implies, consists of sharing a video, photo, link, etc., on a social media network. Social media users share content they find interesting. You can share content with your connections, in a group or to a specific individual.

Social shares are essential to boost brand awareness. Shares are key to promote your content. The best part is that it is social media users who would promote it for you, as long as your content is relevant and good enough.

What is a social comment?

A comment refers to when a user replies to a social media post. There are lots of types of comments; you can use them to ask a question, praise something, show disagreement, etc. Apart from text, you can include hashtags, mentions, and emojis in your comments.

You must comment on your audience’s posts and answer their comments. This form of engagement is necessary to keep the conversation going. Comments are mandatory to build a relationship with your audience. If your posts have lots of comments, it means you’ve got a lot of engagement. 

What is a social mention?

A mention is when a user tags your brand or another user in a social media message. When you are @ mentioned, you receive a notification. Social media mentions help you understand how others perceive your brand.

On top of that, mentions matter for PR, brand awareness, and SEO. When you’re mentioned, you get more visibility. Yet, not all mentions are positive. There are times when users mention brands to express they are upset with something. 

What is social media engagement?

Engagement consists of any kind of interaction on social media networks. It can either be with likes, comments, or shares. Engagement refers to the ability of a brand to engage with its audience.

Besides, engagement is a metric that can be measured. It indicates how good your relationship with your audience is. Engagement matters since it can boost your sales and reduce customer acquisition costs, among other things. 

What is a social media trend?

A social media trend is a trend that takes place on social media platforms. Social media trends can be long-lasting or short-lived. A trend is somehow a society/audience reaction. It can involve an audience segment or all your target audience.

What does organic reach mean?

Organic reach is a metric that tells you the number of unique users that have seen your post on social media platforms without paid promotion. Organic reach means that social media users find your content organically through their feeds.

You must boost your organic reach since it affects your engagement. The more exposure you have, the more interactions you’ll get. Organic reach also happens when someone visits your business profile after a search they made. It’s also considered organic reach when users share your content with their connections and friends. 

What is a social media ad?

A social media ad is paid content that you publish on social media platforms. You can use paid ads to reach new audiences that otherwise you wouldn’t be able to reach with organic content.

You should use the information you’ve collected from your audience to create segmented social media ads. Still, social media ads differ from platform to platform. So, you need to learn about ad specifications. Social networks allow you to select business goals based on what you want to achieve in your paid advertising campaign. 

Chapter 9

Bonus: Social Media Marketing Resources

In this last chapter, I’ll comment on social media marketing resources. Thus, I’ll deal with social media marketing templates and social media marketing tools. Let’s have a look at them!

Social Media Marketing Templates

Not surprisingly, there exist lots of social media marketing templates. This matters since social media marketing templates can make your job way easier. We all know social media marketing is time-consuming. Yet, with the help of templates, you’ll be able to reduce your workload significantly.

Most social media marketing templates are customizable, which means you can adapt them to your needs. I’m about to share the best free social media marketing templates with you below. Carry on reading to find out about their benefits!

Hubspot social media marketing templates.

Managing social media marketing takes a lot of time. You have to keep track of your social media accounts, the content you post, metrics, etc. Besides, you must engage with your audience and check whether you achieved your goals. 

It is for this reason that Hubspot offers a wide range of social media marketing templates. They’ve got a social media calendar template, Facebook and Instagram templates, customer service templates, image templates, Youtube templates, Pinterest templates, crisis communication and management templates, etc. 

Aren’t you impressed by the number of free resources they leave at your disposal?  Check the link above to inspect them and feel free to download whatever you need.  

CoSchedule social media marketing templates.

If you want to get more done faster, you should have a look at CoSchedule’s 50+ social media templates. They’ve compiled their best social media marketing templates in one ZIP-file so that it’s easier to download them.

Not to mention that they also explain how to use them. So, what are you waiting for? These templates will help you in the planning and execution processes of your social media marketing strategy. There are templates for measuring your success too. 

The key to save time is to reuse the work you’ve already done. CoSchedule offers reusable templates so that you don’t have to start from scratch once and again. 

Hootsuite social media marketing templates.

Hootsuite also leaves at your disposal several social media marketing templates to save you hours of work. There are free templates for every stage of the journey. You just have to fill them in and customize them.

They provide a social media strategy template, a social media audit template, a social media content calendar template, an analytics template, an images template, a bios template, etc. 

What’s more, if you’re interested in social media design templates, they help you to customize templates on your own channels and use Adobe Spark to design your own social media marketing templates. Interested? Click on the link above. 

Influencer Marketing Hub social media marketing templates.

Influencer Marketing Hub offers a collection of social media strategy and campaign templates. You just have to follow the instructions and download your templates. On their site, you’ll find templates to help you with your social media strategy, planning, analysis, and reporting. You cannot miss them!

There’s a social media strategy template, a social media audit template, a social media competitor analysis template, an editorial calendar template, a social media calendar template, a social listening template, an influencer marketing tracking template, and more. 

Buffer social media marketing templates.

Buffer social media templates will help you speed up the social media marketing process. These Buffer social media marketing templates will help you save lots of time. They provide a list of varied templates to help you better organize your marketing efforts.

You’ll find a social media report template, a social media audit template, copywriting templates, visual social media templates,  an influencer marketing template, a social media strategy template, social media image sizes template, etc. 

Social Media Marketing Tools

Social media marketing tools are vital to schedule your posts at the right time and track the performance of your campaigns. It is thanks to social media tools that you’ll be able to boost your social media presence.

There are lots of social media marketing tools out there. Yet, the ones I’m about to share with you below will make a great difference in your social media marketing. I’ll deal with varied tools, form analytics and lead generation tools to content curation tools and more. 

Analytical tools

  1. Agora Pulse.

Agora Pulse is an easy to use and affordable tool. It’ll help you with your social media management. It’s got scheduling and analytics features. And, you can also use it for your promotions and to compare your results with your competitors. 

  1. Twitter Analytics.

Twitter Analytics is a free tool that allows you to measure the performance of your Twitter campaigns. It’ll show you data as regards likes, comments, tweets, and retweets to name a few. It also provides reports with lots of information. Thus, it’s critical to boost your marketing campaigns on Twitter. 

  1. Facebook Analytics.

Facebook Analytics tells you how users interact with your content. It not only shows you numbers, it tells you who interacted with your content and where. Not surprisingly, Facebook’s Analytics is more complete than Twitter’s since it’s got more features. Thus, there’s much more information to track. 

Lead generation tools

  1. Audiense.

Audiense is a tool that can help you build your relationships with your customers. It’s a social intelligence tool you can use to find out new target audiences and segment them based on their characteristics. It also creates reports so that you can optimize your audience engagement. 

  1. OptinMonster.

OptinMonster is a lead generation tool that allows you to engage with visitors at the best time. You can use it for many things: capture leads from landing pages, create popups and lightboxes, and improve your social media marketing campaigns.

  1. Tweepi.

Tweepi, as the name implies, is a Twitter tool that helps you get more followers on Twitter. It aims at discovering relevant users who might be interested in your content. Afterward, you’ll have to do your best to engage with them by whatever means, such as mentioning them in your tweets or following them.   

Graphics tools

  1. Canva.

Canva will help you to create outstanding images for your social media marketing campaigns. Besides, you don’t need to be a graphic designer to use Canva. It’s got many ready-made templates and graphics you can use.

  1. Animoto.

Animoto is a fantastic social media tool that allows you to create engaging content. It’s got storyboard templates and it’s fairly easy to use. Still, if you want to be creative you can use blank canvas and produce videos from scratch. 

  1. Visage.

Visage is a social media marketing tool that helps you to design optimal social media graphics for each and every platform. Its editable designs are perfect for team collaboration and updates. It’s got graphic templates which make this tool quite easy to manage even for beginners. 

Monitoring and sharing tools

  1. Sprout Social. 

Sprout Social is a multi-level social media marketing tool that allows you to manage all your social media efforts in one platform. It offers social listening, scheduling, and analytics features. Thus, it’ll help you to optimize your content and better understand your audience so that you can interact with them.  

  1. Brand24.

Brand 24 is a social media tool that provides information as regards what people say about your brand online. It informs you about any kind of brand mentions on the web, including social media mentions. Besides, it classifies people’s mentions in positive, negative, or neutral. 

Content creation tools

  1. BuzzSumo.

BuzzSumo is a great tool for finding out new content on the web. You can either search for a specific topic or a selection of keywords you’re interested in. On top of that, you can use it to discover influencers that share keyword-related content. Thanks to BuzzSumo you’ll be able to optimize your content marketing campaigns. 

  1. Revive Old Posts.

Revive Old Posts is a tool that allows you to share old posts into your social media accounts. This way, users would be able to interact with popular content from your website. It allows you to share posts, media, pages, and more. And you can automatically add hashtags to optimize your content discoverability. 

  1. Tagboard.

Tagboard is a social media listening tool that allows you to research social media content. You just have to introduce a term, topic, or hashtag, and it’ll inform you about what’s being said online. You can also monitor product and brand mentions. 

Content curation tools

  1. Buffer.

Buffer is a social media tool that allows you to schedule posts on any social media platform. It’s not only useful for automation, but you can also use it to follow-up and evaluate the effectiveness of your posts. 

  1. Hootsuite.

Hootsuite helps you to schedule social media posts in advance. It also offers analytics to track your content engagement so that you can optimize your performance. It’s fairly easy to manage. You can use it for planning, creation, and scheduling.  

  1. IFTTT.

IFTTT stands for “If this, then that”. It’s a free social media tool that you can use to connect your apps and devices altogether. It’s a bit challenging to navigate at first. But, once you get used to it, you’ll be able to grow your brand with this powerful integrations platform. 

  1. SocialFlow.

 SocialFlow is a tool that allows you to schedule your posts so that they are published when your audience is more active. Thus, it’s key to boost engagement. SocialFlow makes use of real-time data to decide which posts to publish and when it’s best to do it. All you have to do is to upload them to the queue. 

Other tools

  1. Bitly.

Bitly is a tool that allows you to shorten any URL so that it fits the needs of social media channels. It also helps you to track your results with link analytics. You can later use this data to optimize your social media efforts. 

  1. Influential.

Influential is a tool that uses AI to research your social media profiles. Afterward, it helps you to find influencers who are a suitable match for you. This platform connects your brand with influencers across the main social media outlets. 

  1. Feedly.

Feedly is a content discovery tool that you can use to collect data from varied fields and areas. It provides you extensive reading material so that you don’t run out of ideas regarding what to post on social media.

Conclusion

And that’s all for our Social Media Marketing guide. I hope you’ve found it useful. Now you know how important it is to interact with your audience and target them wherever they are. This way, you’ll not only boost your conversions from social media, but you’ll also strengthen your relationship with your existing customers and prospects. 

Now, I’d like to hear from you!

Which of the above-mentioned strategies are you going to apply first?

Is there any advantageous tactic that I forgot to mention?

Have you got any questions about this post?

Let us know by leaving a comment below!

14 thoughts on “Social Media Marketing: Definitive Guide & Free Templates [2023]”

  1. Wow! this is such an awesome resource. I am just about to start a new social media marketing project for our client. And this post would really help me a lot with it. Thank you for sharing this!! also, is there a PDF for this that I can download?

    Reply
    • Thank you Rohan! I have created a PDF Checklist and you can download it in the blue box at the beginning of the post. I hope you find it helpful! 🙂

      Reply
  2. Thanks for mentioning that social media marketing helps you remind the target audience that visited your website but didn’t make purchases about your products again. My brother-in-law owns a small business. He’s thinking of investing in social media marketing services.

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  3. It’s amazing how social marketing can help businesses today through Facebook. That’s why internet marketers are continuously searching for ways to get Facebook followers faster. Got to keep up with the competition and hope that optimizing Facebook accounts will lift the business towards success.

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  4. As we all know social media marketing is booming the market and also have proof benefits of it. Keep posting and fin some more interesting article to get more traffic.

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  5. Thanks for this great post. I like how you explained that our weaknesses can actually be our strength. So true. You mentioned keeping an eye on new social networks. What do you think, which not so the well-known social network could grow most in 2021?

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  6. Social media marketing is a very effective way to start and upgrade a brand. It however needs you to know what aspects to really focus on and be intentional about it.

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