While social media marketing is beneficial for many clients, it can waste their time and money if run poorly. Learn more about social media marketing and how to invest your time and money efficiently when running a social program below.

First Thing’s First: Social Media Marketing is NOT Digital Marketing

The term digital marketing is often used interchangeably with social media marketing. Even though social media and digital marketing fall under the umbrella of online marketing, they are quite different. Social media marketing is only one aspect of digital marketing where companies showcase their products and services on one or more social media platforms. Digital marketing includes social media marketing as well as search marketing, paid social media marketing, paid Google marketing, website analytics and more. When referring to digital marketing, you’re referring to several components of online marketing, whereas social media marketing only refers to marketing on social media platforms. In order to establish a successful online presence, you should determine what type of program is suitable for your business model (and it doesn’t have to be a Social program).

Signing Up To Every Social Media Platform is A Myth

Business owners tend to fall victim to the misconception that they should have an active business page on all social media platforms, thinking that the more platforms they’re on, the more customers they’ll attract. Unfortunately, quantity does not guarantee quality when it comes to social media marketing. When signing up for social media platforms, you should choose the platforms according to where your ideal target audience spends most of their time and what type of content you want to share. For instance, if you’re the owner of a heavy equipment company and you’re selling construction machinery to other businesses, then the best social media platform for B2B would be LinkedIn. With more than 55 million companies on LinkedIn, 96% of B2B marketers share their content on LinkedIn. When customers visit your LinkedIn page, they would expect to see information about your products and services, the history of your company, current partnerships with other companies and updates or news regarding the industry. Having an online presence on LinkedIn will ensure that you reach your target audience on a platform they use and provide them with content catered to their needs. You are more likely to have business owners interacting with your posts on LinkedIn than on any other social media platform, as customers use LinkedIn as a professional networking platform.

That said, LinkedIn wouldn’t be beneficial for business owners who only focus on B2C, as their primary clientele would not be using LinkedIn to look for their products or services. A nail salon, for instance, would benefit much more from launching an Instagram or TikTok page as customers would be more likely to engage with their content on such platforms. Since Instagram and TikTok are photo and video-oriented platforms, a nail salon can easily showcase its products and services through short videos, engaging reels and attractive photos. For nail salon customers, displaying visual content that demonstrates the salon’s products and services is essential, which is why creating an Instagram or TikTok page would be a much more effective social media marketing strategy.

Each social media platform has its own distinguished users. You cannot expect someone to look for photos of patio sets on a microblogging platform like Twitter, nor can you anticipate that users will hire a legal service via a photo-oriented platform like Pinterest. Before signing up for any social media platform, make sure you have a clear idea of who your target audience is and what platform they use to purchase your product or service. Rather than wasting your time and effort on managing numerous social media platforms, invest your time and energy in strengthening the platforms that reach out to your target audience.

How Does Atrium Digital Conduct an Audit?

Partnering with Atrium Digital for your online marketing programs can significantly improve your website’s traffic, lead generation, and brand awareness. Before we tailor our marketing programs to suit your business, our first step is to conduct a website audit; that way we know exactly what opportunities and challenges we are working with. When our team at Atrium Digital begins looking into your website, there are a few steps we follow and some plugins we use to assist our auditing process.

1. We first analyze what content management system your website is built with. We use plugins to determine the hosting program of your site. Then we can decide if we need to migrate your website to a better hosting platform such as WordPress.
2. Next, we check the HTTPS status. This is the little lock icon in the URL bar of your website. This SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate determines whether your site is up-to-date on its security (i.e. out of date = “http://” vs. up-to-date = “https://”) and whether or not it’s safe for users to access.
3. After that, our team browses your website to determine its mobile responsiveness. This is a relatively easy issue to resolve but, as mentioned previously, an important one for Google’s algorithm.
4. Then, Atrium Digital will dive into your website to determine how Google itself is looking at your website. That means we will use programs like UberSuggest, and SEMRush to discover the number of keywords your website is ranking for, the site’s domain authority, and the comprehensive analytics of your website. It’s important to note that a healthy website will likely be ranking for thousands of keywords but may only have a domain authority grade of 35-40 out of 100.
5. Finally, our team will compile a Digital Health Checklist for your business that outlines the opportunities for growth your website has and some of our recommendations for improvement. From there, we can determine the best digital marketing strategies for your business and tailor and fit our programs to your unique needs.

Posting Daily Is Not Beneficial For Every Platform

Unfortunately, there is a thing called too many posts a week. When posting content on your Facebook or Instagram business page, you should always put into consideration how the algorithm of the platform will react to the frequency of your posting. According to Hubspot, users have experienced a 50% drop in engagement per post when they post more than once a day. As a rule of thumb, businesses should post 3-4 times a week on Facebook or Instagram in order to keep their audience engaged without interfering with the algorithm. On the other hand, posting 1-2 times per day on Twitter is Hootsuite’s recommendation. While Facebook and Instagram’s algorithm works against you when you post more than 3-4 times a week, Twitter’s algorithm drives engagement to your tweets when you post several times a day.

Whether you’re posting on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or any other social media platform, make sure that your content is relevant and valuable to your target audience. The more valuable your content is, the more engagement you will have with your posts. As a result, the algorithm will work with you to push your content to the top of the news feed and reach more users. Depending on the platform you’re using, your posting schedule should vary accordingly, so don’t waste your time and efforts on creating designs, writing content and uploading posts daily on a platform that will only work against you.

Effectively Run Your Social Program with Atrium Digital

Contrary to popular belief, social media marketing is much more complex than it seems. At Atrium Digital, we have an entire social media team that is solely dedicated to our Social Program. Our team includes the strategy director, social media specialists, program coordinators, content writers, graphic designers and data analysts committed to increasing your brand’s exposure. We are dedicated to building exposure and reaching out to your targeted audience through posting consistent and engaging content to communicate with your community online. Contact us today to speak directly to one of our marketing professionals that will guide you through building your online presence to achieve consistent results, or visit our digital marketing agency in Vancouver.