What comes to mind when you hear social media marketing? Posting pretty photos of yours or doing some funny activities and posting them in the form of shorts or reels , right? But what if I tell you that’s not the actual information about it? Social media marketing is way more than what people think and know. 

So if you are a business owner, running your own brand, or someone who is working online. Then social media marketing can be a key to your success, but before that, it is necessary for you to understand what social media marketing includes and what it doesn’t. 

Here in this article, you’ll get the perfect and well-defined knowledge about components of social media marketing. 

So firstly, we’ll talk about what social media marketing includes:

1.Making a plan

Planning is very important before execution. Similarly with social media marketing, the clearer and smarter plans you have, the more chances you have of getting success. These plans or goals can be as follows:

• What are you willing to achieve? (e.g., more audience or more sales?) 

1. On which platform will you be able to interact with your target audience? (e.g., Facebook, Instagram?) 
2. Who is your target audience? (Teenagers , young adults, or adults?
3. What’s your style of interaction?

All these plans and plans other than these help you in posting and creating what is profitable for you, but if you thought that it’s not important and you can just post whenever and whatever you want, then it’s nothing more than a speculation for you. Maybe that’ll give you what you want, but mostly it’s not good. Hence, you should always try to move forward with good and smart plans so that you can keep yourself and your business focused and clear. 

2. Creating and scheduling content

We are familiar that creating and posting is a crucial part of social media marketing. But it’s not just about snapping and posting; it’s a huge concept that you need to understand very sincerely. To post or to create content in digital marketing, you have to do various other things like:

1. Writing descriptions
2. Making graphics or videos 
3. Developing a proper schedule of posting 
4. Adjusting your post according to the platform on which you are posting 

You may have observed that some influencers and brands on social media don’t post regularly, but whenever they post, they grab the attention of the audience. It happens because they have a proper plan and schedule for posting, and also they follow it honestly, which helps them in working smartly. Although we know that quality matters much more than quantity.

3. Talking with your followers

This one is very simple: social media means socializing yourself. And if you’re a business owner or a brand, the same logic is applied with you too, but there are various ways that will help you in socializing your business or brand with your audience. Here they are:

1. Replying to comments and messages of your audience 
2. Liking and commenting on others’ posts 
3. Solving the issues of your audience or customers 
4. Hosting Q&A sessions with your audience 

It will help you in bonding with your customers and audience, as people like to connect with the brand or business with whom they feel comfortable. That’s why being active and socializing with your audience is important. 

4. Tracking results 

Improvement becomes difficult when you’re unaware of deviations. So monitoring your activities on social media helps you in performing better than earlier. Social media marketing includes monitoring things like:

1. How many views are you getting on your post? 
2. Are people who are watching your post liking or commenting on your post or not? 
3. Are people clicking on your link or buying something or not? 
4. What type of post gets more reach? 

Keeping these factors in mind helps you in knowing what you can do more of and what you should stop doing. 

5. Running ads

These days it’s hard to get organic reach. Businesses use paid ads for getting more reach. These paid advertisements include:

1. Making ads for Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, etc. 
2. Targeting people to show the ad 
3. Trying various versions of advertisements 

• Analyzing which ad gives you the best outcome. 

Paid advertising will help you a lot in getting more reach and more audience, but only when you are properly working on it. 

Now let us talk about what social media marketing  doesn’t include: 

1.Just posting random stuff

Social media marketing is not about posting anything without having any aim or goal. It’s a fun activity and not an activity that’ll help your brand or business to grow. 

2. One-Time Posting

You can’t imagine huge reach and success on social media just by posting one thing. Social media marketing requires lots of time, patience, consistency, and, importantly, your efforts. 

3. Working all by itself

Platforms of social media marketing can help your business grow more with the help of websites or emails, but it shouldn’t be your only marketing. 

4. Instant sales

Marketing through social media doesn’t always result in fast sales. But it’s the primary step that’ll help you in making your brand visible in front of a large number of people. And will let them know more about you and your business, building trust for you and then inspiring them to buy from you. 

5. Trying to “go viral” every time

Everyone wants to go viral on social media, but it’s not in anyone’s hands. Instead of trying hard to get viral, keep focusing on building goodwill and loyal customers for your business who are going to stay with your business all the time and not on short-term attention. 

Conclusion

Lastly, social media marketing is actually about developing relations with the audience virtually. It requires an innovative mind, smart planning, and patience. Hence, if you’re trying to do marketing online, make sure of these few things:

1. Who is your target audience?
2. Post as per your audience’s needs.
3. Make consistency 
4. Keep monitoring your activities. 
5. Don’t run behind everything—just do a few things very well.