Social Media Marketing: A Guide to Growing Your Brand with Social Media

By Jacob Kirby

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

"Social Media Marketing: A Guide to Growing Your Brand with Social Media" is a great introductory guide to using social media platforms to market your business or brand. This book provides a beginner-friendly introduction to the world of social media

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rivercat Books LLC
• Release date: May 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9781960748256

Book preview

Introduction

In an article written by Investopedia that was recently updated in June 2022, it was reported that, in the first quarter of 2022, there were over 4.6 billion social media users globally. This accounts for about 58% of the world’s population. This reported figure was about a 10% increase in social media users from the previous year. What this tells us is that more and more people are turning to social media to pass the time, find entertainment, get the latest news, keep up to date with friends and family, and to network. Data suggests that the average person spends more than two hours a day on social media. Additionally, this amount of time is not spent in one go. Often, users will look at their phones throughout the day to see if something new has popped up in their feeds, or to engage with messages they have received from friends, family, and acquaintances.

It is inarguable that social media is here to stay. It has become an integral part of our lives and provides us with various reasons to keep checking our phones over and over again. It’s become the all-too-important time filler whenever we are bored or faced with awkwardness and silence.

What is also inarguable is the fact that social media has become a great playing ground for marketing. With this massive base of users, businesses have come alive to the fact that social media is a perfect place for marketing their products and services. It gives them the opportunity to reach their customer base with ease, and to also reach new customers without having to put boots on the ground that go door-to-door searching for new customers. Gone are the days of only needing to get flyers done and putting up a website. New businesses that want to scale can take advantage of the tools, features, and strategies that are available to them in order to market their brands on social media.

Not only have businesses become alive to the fact that social media provides a new marketing platform, but social media users have also become alive to the fact that marketing is now an integral part of social media, and have largely welcomed this recent development with open arms. At first, social media users were a bit hesitant to the increased level of marketing that goes on in the space. After all, the entire reason why users opened social media accounts was to engage with friends, family, and other people they wanted to follow. It wasn’t so that a brand could throw their products and services in their face without having to approach them physically. However, that feeling has not seemed to translate to a rebellious march against marketing. In fact, over 80% of consumers reported that social media content significantly impacted their buying decisions. Sprout Social reported that 68% of consumers say that social media gives them the opportunity to interact with brands and companies. They also found that 43% of consumers increased their social media use to discover new products in the last year. Additionally, 78% of consumers are willing to buy from a company after having a positive experience with them on social media.

What all of these statistics tell us is that social media is increasingly becoming the place where consumers interact with brands and get to know more about the products and services they offer. They implicitly accept that marketing has become part and parcel of the social media experience, and are aware of the benefits that come with interacting with businesses on social media. Social media has become like physical marketing–you like it when it is good, but hate it when it's bad. In either case, the problem is not marketing itself, but rather it is bad, annoying marketing.

Where We’re Headed

Three conclusions can be made from all of this information. Firstly, social media now plays a major role in the lives of the majority of people across the globe, and the number of people using social media is only going to increase exponentially over the years. Secondly, because of the sheer size of social media and the breadth of opportunity that exists in the social media space, many businesses are now focusing their marketing efforts on social media. Businesses and brands now coexist in this space with individual consumers and often mingle with each other for reasons related to the products and services offered by businesses. Thirdly, because of the depth of marketing opportunities that exist on social media, it would be in every business’s best interest that they start redirecting their marketing efforts towards the social media space (or, at least some of their marketing efforts).

That being said, the key question that you might be