Social Media Marketing Beginner’s Guide (2022 Update): Top Strategies to Grow Your Business

Social media usage has evolved more than ever before, and Oberlo predicts that it will continue to grow at a 3.9% annual rate until 2025.

On a global scale, over 3.96 billion people use social media sites such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, and the number is growing.

Social media will undoubtedly be a driving force for people. Developing an effective social media marketing plan for 2022, whether for business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-customer (B2C) purposes, is the key to success.

Social media is a staple area of digital marketing for businesses of all sizes, shapes, industries and audiences.

New releases and updates, on the other hand, make social media an ever-changing landscape. To get the most out of their social channels, brands must keep up with the latest developments and changes in the space.

This comprehensive guide to social media marketing for businesses in 2022 will teach you the ins and outs of building and managing social media channels for a successful reach campaign in 2022.

We’ll not only be sharing core statistics, benefits, and strategies that will drive the direction of your campaign, but we’ll also go over a variety of platforms and how to use them to meet your needs.

Are you all set? Let’s get started!

Before we get started, there’s one important thing you can’t overlook, and that is your website. To achieve effective social media coordination with your customers, it’s crucial to have a fully optimized website for your business.

When it comes to driving a campaign, it’s not just about your social media platforms; your website should be customized to link to your current campaign, with up-to-date branding and a clear focus on the campaign’s objectives.

Part I: What does social media marketing for 2022 mean?
Social media marketing is the practice of conducting business on social media platforms in order to achieve marketing goals such as brand awareness, website traffic, and customer acquisition.

This activity primarily takes the form of content (text, images, and videos), but it also includes community engagement and paid advertisements.

Managing social media platforms is the most effective form of marketing in the modern world, with 3.5 billion daily active users around the world.

A social media marketing campaign, like any other, uses various social media channels to achieve a marketing goal. These social media platforms allow users to share images, thoughts, products, communication, videos, blogs, and news, among other things.

Here is a list of some of the functions that can be achieved as a result of social media success:

Increased brand recognition
Increased traffic to the website
Knowledge regarding competitor performance
Knowledge of current consumer demand trends
Generation of more leads and sales
Key performance indicators (KPIs)
Ease of distribution
Content distribution
Speed of social access
Community engagement
Valuable feedback from customers
Customer retention and loyalty rates

Part II- Key Social Media Stats you need to know

Online technology sourcing giants like Hootsuite, Oberlo, Smash Baloon, and social bakers have been hard at work in recent months compiling these relevant social media statistics from around the world and how they can benefit you in launching your social media marketing campaign in 2022.

Take a look at the most important stats to help you plan your social media marketing strategy for 2022:

85 % of businesses that incorporate social data into their overall business operations are more confident in calculating social media ROI results.
Instagram Stories’ user base has grown from 150 million to 500 million in the last two years, making it a key entry point for new communication channels.
Mobile devices are used by 91% of social media users, demonstrating the importance of optimising posts and content for mobiles.
More than 800 million people in over 70 countries use Facebook Marketplace.
When it comes to buying new products, 49% of consumers rely on influencer ratings and recommendations, whether online or offline.
71% of consumers who have had a positive social media experience with a brand are more likely to buy and recommend the brand to others as well.

Part III- How can social media marketing benefit your business

The specific business outcomes of social media marketing campaigns (such as sales, traffic, and so on) will only depend on what type of objectives you set for your business in the first place.

However, there are several other advantages to brands being active on social media, including:

Branding

One of the most effective ways to connect with your target audience is to display your company’s personality on social media platforms.

Your social media channels are simply more ways for your brand’s voice, content, and interactions to reach a wider audience.

If your online brand presence becomes more consistent and recognizable, a customer might be more likely to become a repeat purchaser. You’re more likely to be discovered by new potential customers if you post content on multiple social media channels that are tailored to your target demographic.

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Customer Loyalty

Brands are positioning a bigger emphasis on consumer experience as deeply impact the reputation of a business. Customers are more loyal to brands that engage with them from time to time, on social media channels.

Fruitful conversations with potential consumers 💬

It’s no surprise that so many businesses use Twitter for customer service or use Instagram Stories for Q&As. Social media marketing allows you to get to know your audience in a more personal and informal way.

Increase in conversion rates

Every social media post, ad, blog post, follower, and email is an opportunity for customers to convert.

Whether you’re a B2C or B2B business, social media can help you achieve the following goals:

Acquiring new prospects
Moving people through your sales funnel
Assisting you in meeting your overall marketing goals

Recruitment opportunities 👥

Social media marketing has made it easier than ever to share a company’s culture and the people who make it up with the rest of the world. This not only improves customer loyalty but also assists in hiring brilliant new employees.

Humanization

Faceless corporations are no longer an option, and by humanizing your social media efforts, you can now achieve better results. Consumers nowadays are concerned not only with what they buy but also with the type of company from which they purchase it.

According to Hubspot, Social media has a 100% higher lead-to-close rate than outbound marketing. You can use this advantage to practice rapid response in order to build a good relationship with your customers.

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Consumer Support

Social media is the best place for customer service. It was created solely for the purpose of communication before businesses got involved in it, and that is still the case today.

Customer interactions provide the public with the opportunity to resolve complaints.

It’s also a place where you can improve your relationship with them by:

Recommending new product items
Following them back, and
Establishing an open line of communication

You can utilize the power of social media platforms’ messenger apps which are great tools for reputation management.

Help in building a community 🤝

Social media marketing connects you with your target audience and other relevant businesses, regardless of your industry.

With each app update, you’ll find new and innovative ways to improve your social media marketing and meet your KPIs.

Customer Insights

Have you ever tried your hand at social listening? By using social media, you can gain valuable, real-time insights into your customers’ interests and behaviours.

Look at customer reviews or comments to see what they have to say about your company. Examine the engagement rates for each social media post to see which types of content are the most popular.

Track conversions from your purchase or lead ads to see which types of people are most interested in your product or service.

Inbound Traffic

Last but not least, increased inbound traffic is the reason that is most likely to result in ROI.

Without social media, your leads are limited to those who are familiar with your brand and those who find you through ranked keyword searches.

You can add another path back to your site by increasing the frequency of your social media content and expanding your social media channel presence.

As a result, you’ll see an increase in traffic as well as conversions.

The advantages are numerous, and the more you learn about which platforms and content are most effective for your goals, the more you will benefit from social media marketing.

Related Post: 15 Budget-Wasting Facebook Ad Mistakes + How to Fix Them (2022)

Part IV- The Importance of an Effective Social Media Marketing Strategy
A social media marketing strategy lays out your company’s objectives and establishes measurable goals for achieving them. Here, we have mentioned the top six reasons why you should create a social media plan are as follows:

To Increase awareness and branding
To improves online search ranking
To develops loyal fans for business
To Increase exposure to generate traffic, leads, and sales
To reduces marketing costs
To grows the customer base

However, ensuring that your strategy is actionable is the significant key to success in the importance of social media marketing strategies.

The most effective strategies include:

Knowing who your customers are,
How to create content that will allow you to have meaningful conversations with them, and
What platforms make conversions go smoothly?

And that is precisely what Part III is all about: developing a workable social media marketing strategy.

Part V: How to Develop a Social Media Marketing Strategy for Business Growth?
Now we’ve covered a brief overview of what social media marketing is, how it can benefit your business and what is the importance of developing an Effective Social Media Marketing Strategy, let’s move on to the practical bit.

In a landscape with more competition, content and networks than ever, a succinct strategy gives you the focus needed to say “no” to efforts that don’t serve your goals.

Recommended Post: LinkedIn Marketing Strategies (2022 Update)

Set Social Media Marketing Objectives and Goals🏅

The first step is to establish the goals and objectives you want to achieve.

A key component of setting effective goals is determining what metrics you’ll use to measure them.

Are you looking for purchases or leads? Or likes and retweets or followers?

You should use the acronym S.M.A.R.T when setting these goals.

Each objective is Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.

Deciding targets in advance will:

Save your time and resources
Ensure you’re not producing content ‘for the sake of it’
Help you establish the key metrics to track the success

Here’s an example of our Home Décor client:

“For Instagram, we will share client photos that showcase our products in real homes.

We will do this by posting three client photos a week.

The target for each is at least 50 likes and 5 comments.”

Objectives will naturally vary from business to business, which is why there isn’t a blanket answer for ‘what works best.

Write a list of everything you want out of your social media marketing activity, and then prioritize them in terms of value for your business. Once you have your core objectives decided, you can proceed with the next step.

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Conduct a Current Social Media Audit

“You can’t know where you’re going until you know where you’ve been.”

Take a look at where you are and consider a few points:

Current active social networks
Are your networks complete (URL, Images, Bio, etc.)?
How does your social media presence compare to your competitors?
What sites is your target market on?

It should be clear which accounts need to be updated or deleted altogether.

It’s better to maximize your presence on fewer channels than to be scarce on all channels.

Narrow Down Your Ideal Customer Demographics or Buyer Persona

Just as it’s important to outline why you’re using social media marketing, you also need to clarify who you’re trying to reach. This will help to determine which social channels will be most effective for your objectives.

For example, 72% of teenagers are on Instagram, whereas the majority of Twitter users are aged 18-29. Depending on who your target demographic is, you might decide to prioritize a certain social network over another.

Clearly outline your audience demographic, and go into as much detail as possible:

Age/Gender
Location
Interests
Challenges they face(that your business can solve)
Where they hang out
Hobbies
Income
What other brands they like – and the lists can go on and on.

Determining these characteristics will ensure you use the best social networks to reach them, and also cater your content to best reach your objectives.

Market research 📈

Analyzing your competitors’ social media marketing activity is an important and valuable part of your strategy. After all, their target audience is your target audience. Spend some time researching:

Which platforms they’re most active on
What kind of content do they publish
How much average engagement do they get
What hashtags do they use
What tone of voice do they use
What kind of conversations do they have with their audience
What call to action do they promote

The list goes on…

Investing the time in conducting this social media marketing analysis will help you determine which platforms are best for your audience and objectives, as well as learn about the social media habits of your target demographics.

Prioritize social networks 📱

With all of the above planning, you should have a good idea of which social networks are most beneficial to your company.

In some ways, all social media channels can benefit businesses, but trying to be active on all of them will spread you too thin.

Instead, focus on which networks are most effective for your audience and business goals, and create a variety of content types to maximize results.

If you sell a consumer product that lends itself well to visual marketing, Instagram should be your first choice. If you’re a B2B service provider, on the other hand, you’ll probably find Twitter or LinkedIn more effective. Soon, you’ll learn which social media platforms to employ for laser-focused targeting.

Curate Engaging, Quality Content

When you first consider starting an online social media presence, you may be tempted to skip straight to this step.

Instant gratification is always rewarding… right?

Wrong!

You’ll also need a solid content marketing strategy as part of your success strategy.

Think about the following questions:

What types of content will be published on social media?
Who will the target audience be?
How frequently will you post?

You know who your ideal customer is as you used that research to create your mission statements. Here are a few examples of content you could create:

Images
Blog Posts
Videos
Articles
Gifs
Livestreams
Stories
eBooks/Infographics
Graphics
Company Updates

All of these content options have sub-categories to think about. For example, if you decide to make Instagram photos the majority of your content, you’ll need to consider:

What the photos are of
Color scheme and feed aesthetic
Who will take them
Where they’ll be taken
Using user-generated photographs
What style they are taken in

Many of these details will emerge as you get started and learn what your audience responds to best, so it’s important to adjust your content as needed!

Still, if you’re stumped as to what kind of content to create, use the social media rule of thirds as a guide.

Before attempting to sell your product or service, it’s crucial to have a good mix of content to engage the audience:

1/3 of your social content promotes your products, services, events, etc. (Sell Content)
1/3 of your social content shares educational, entertaining, or emotional content to help users connect more with your page. (Share Content)
1/3 of your social content shares tips, how-tos, blogs, educational recorded or live videos, company photos, etc. (Brand Content).

Creating high-quality, engaging content is a top priority.

It’s helpful to create a content calendar outlining:

how often you will post,
what networks those posts will go on,
what time you will post, and
the topics you will post about

Don’t forget to check for brand-related tweets and retweet customer reviews or mentions when your audience does so on Twitter. Alternatively, if they’ve shared a photo or video of your product or service, make sure to share it. Also, mention in your bio that if they post something about your brand, they can tag you or use a specific hashtag. This will not only boost your engagement but also your hashtag ranking, as many people will use it.

Schedule social media content ⏰

You must schedule content if you want to save hours of time and improve the overall quality of your social media marketing.

8 social media scheduling tools can boost your marketing workflow

Sprout Social.
CoSchedule.
Feedly.
Tweetdeck.
Planable.
Sked Social.
Airtable.
Post Planner.

Scheduling social media content ahead of time increases efficiency by keeping everything in one place and freeing up time for content creation and other creative aspects of social media marketing.

Track your metrics and Optimize 📊

Last but not least, when it comes to social media success, the most important step is to track the metrics and KPIs linked with your objectives for each social network.

Trial and error will be your best friend when it comes to analyzing data and making improvements.

By tracking key metrics you can develop and optimize your activity and become excellent at social media marketing!

Monitor ‘Hashtag’ engagement
Look at the subscriber and follower volume
Check competitor performance
Compare reach with paid content and organic content
Measure engagement of comments, likes, shares, reach, saves and shares of social posts
Track audience demographics to see if targets are being met
Compare impressions with click rates and lead conversions
Track page visits driven by social posts or ads via Google Analytics
Use an outsourced social media analytics tool to track the likes, comments, reach, and shares of social posts
Track the number of clicks, leads, or purchases your ads get by using Facebook Ads Manager

It’s all well and good to produce excellent content and engage with your audience, but if you’re not paying attention to the numbers, you’ll never learn what works best. You may think a Facebook campaign is brilliant, but if it fails to achieve its goals, it is a waste of time and resources.

Remember that social media marketing strategies are constantly evolving.

It’s never written in stone.

As new products and updates become available, you may want to revise your strategy.

As the results come in, you’ll learn more about your target audience and may want to adjust your demographics.

Part VI- Top Social Media Platforms for Laser Sharp Targeting

There are over ten different types of platforms you could use for your business to reach out to your audience and grow it. While it is not necessary to use every platform or even every type of platform, as the saying goes, “don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”

Consider the differences between each platform’s trope and how they might benefit your brand identity and help you reach your target audience, whether on a B2B or B2C level.

Related Blog: Facebook ads Course Complete Guide

Social Media Sites

These are the most popular social media platforms that are active contenders for the tailored approach to social media marketing in 2022. Audiences are everyday users who allow you to express your brand in the most humane way possible.

However, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter will be the best platforms for reaching new audiences, whereas Snapchat and WhatsApp will be placed to connect with existing followers, subscribers, audiences, and partners.

Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
Snapchat
WhatsApp

Social Groups

These are the platforms with the most diverse published content. All of these can be very useful in the business-to-business sphere because they can be perceived as more professional (especially in the case of LinkedIn). You can go into great detail about press releases and other news with your audience.

Reddit
LinkedIn
Slack
Tumblr

Image Boards

Image boards are exactly what they sound like. It is, however, critical to understanding the distinction between them. For example, you’ll need accounts on Flickr, 500px, and Pinterest to upload images into relevant categories and tags desired by your target audience. Google Images, on the other hand, is an automated system that collects images from your website and social media accounts.

Flickr
500px
Google Images
Pinterest
Social General

Video Platforms

Again, these social media boards are designed to optimize and promote video content and titles. While the description and pinned comment are required, the written content is not what viewers are looking for. When younger audiences demand ‘how-to’, informational content, or visual tours, these platforms should be available.

YouTube
Vimeo
TikTok

Presentation Decks

When considering a social media campaign, it’s important to remember that it’s not just about spreading content directly through social platforms in the hopes that tags and SEO will bring in the right target audience. It’s also important to consider behind-the-scenes operations.

For example, a hotel business can use SlideShare to introduce new campaign ideas that stakeholders might be interested in. These presentations and online decks can then be embedded directly into other channels, such as your hotel’s website or LinkedIn profile.

SlideShare
Speaker Deck
Issuu

Ratings and Review Sites

These social sites give your customers a platform to speak up and do organic marketing for you through User Generated Content (UGC). You can create a business profile for each platform, post a few news updates, and ask clients to rate your hotel rooms and service.

However, it is up to the guests to tell future guests what they can expect when walking through your doors. Because there is no liable trust involved, this can be the most dependable form of organic marketing to new customers.

Google My Business
G2 Crowd
Trust Radius
Yelp

Question Communities

Question communities and FAQ boards are the zeniths of SEO, as they directly answer the search criteria. You can start by answering people’s questions if you want to become authoritative and trusted in your field. Consider Quora as a social media marketing tool.

Quora
Answerbag
Yahoo! Answers

News Communities

Using search engine news outlets as part of your content strategy to reach new audiences can improve your own website’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Before any negative news can be released, it is best to portray positive news from reliable sources through press releases and newfound information.

Knowing how to submit, on the other hand, is a completely different story. For example, if your hotel wanted to publicize a new renovation on Yahoo! News, you’d have to submit via Yahoo! Channels like Tumblr or the Yahoo Yodelers group.

Yahoo! News
Google News
Medium
Digg

Audio-Only Apps

Audio apps are one of the emerging social media platforms that have been making waves due to the increasing demand for audio content. You have enough room to interact with users who have a variety of interests.

For instance, if you are a hotelier or own a hotel, you can host your own event, invite your audience, and share your knowledge. This allows you to establish yourself as a thought leader in the hospitality industry while also increasing brand awareness.

Here are a few audio-only apps that you can use to promote your content and raise brand awareness.

Spotify
Clubhouse
Angle
Yoni
Circle
Quilt

You can also share your content via Twitter Spaces and Facebook Live Audio Rooms.

Social Shopping Networks

Whether you are a business owner or a social media marketer, social shopping networks can help you expand your reach and engagement. You get a ready-made audience for your brand here, which gives you a good chance of converting them into potential customers.

Social word of mouth would help increase traffic, engagement, and brand awareness. All you have to do is be descriptive in your writing.

Other than Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, there are a few social shopping networks that can help you build your own community of people:

Amazon Live
Etsy
Faveable
Taggbox Commerce
Verint

There are many different types of social media platforms, and you can use any of them to put your social media strategies into action and achieve your marketing goals.

Final Thoughts
This Social Media Marketing guide highlights that there are numerous moving parts to a modern social presence. When it comes to your social media marketing strategy, if you set actionable goals and address each of the steps outlined above, you’ll be well ahead of the game.

If you want to fine-tune your strategy throughout the year, I recommend tracking your social media analytics, on-site referral traffic, and feedback forms.

Watch this practical two-hour tutorial video to learn how to optimize various social media platforms and achieve the desired results at a low cost via social media paid ads.

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