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Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing: What it is and how to build your strategy

Jump into this comprehensive guide for crafting an effective social media marketing strategy from scratch. We offers insights into defining goals, selecting the right platforms, and measuring success through key metrics.

Reading time  22 minutes

Published on  September 20, 2023

Table of Contents

• Social media marketing involves using platforms like Instagram, X (formerly referred to as Twitter), and Facebook to promote brands and engage with customers. It encompasses promoting new products, interacting with customers through comments and creating content that reflects a brand's values and story.
• A successful social media strategy starts with setting clear and realistic goals. A few examples of goals for social media strategies are increasing brand awareness, generating leads and sales and providing comprehensive customer care.
• A data-driven approach is essential for measuring the success of a social media strategy. These metrics help brands understand audience perception and the effectiveness of their content. Some examples of important metrics to track include reach, clicks, engagement, organic and paid likes, follower growth and conversion rate.

Looking to fine-tune your social media marketing strategy? Good! Now’s the perfect time to make it happen. 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.

That’s why we put together a comprehensive guide to creating a social media marketing plan from scratch. Whether you’re totally new to social or want to double-check your priorities in 2024, this guide has you covered.

What is social media marketing?

Social media marketing means using social media platforms like Instagram, X (formerly known as Twitter) and Facebook to promote your brand and sell your product or service.

If your business comes out with a new item and you plan to promote the launch on social media, that’s social media marketing. If you interact with your customers via comments, that’s social media marketing. And if you create engaging content that showcases your brand’s values and story, that’s social media marketing too.

This form of marketing requires you to use social media management skills and tools. Just as you prepare other aspects of your marketing strategy, you need to have a plan for your social media marketing.

Now that we’ve defined social media marketing, let’s walk through how to create a plan. Check out our video below to watch how you can use the tips in this article to build a strategy in seven steps.

Set goals that make sense for your business

Social media strategy planning starts with your goals. Whether you want to expand your team, build a larger following or a more active community, taking the time to define your social goals is the first step to reaching them.

Either way, your goals will define your social media marketing strategy and how much time and energy you’ll need to dedicate to your campaigns.

Example social media goals for 2024 and beyond

What really matters is that you set realistic social media goals . We recommend tackling smaller objectives that allow you to scale your social efforts in a way that’s both reasonable and affordable.

Below are some example social media marketing goals that businesses of all shapes and sizes can pursue.

Goal example 1: Increase brand awareness

Brand awareness means getting your name out there. Some 68% of consumers say the primary reason they follow a brand on social media is to stay informed about new products or services, according to The Sprout Social Index™ .

Try to avoid solely publishing promotional messages and strike a good balance with authentic content that emphasizes your brand’s voice and story. The Sprout Social Index™ found that consumers don’t see enough authentic, non-promotional content from brands on social.

For example, in this TikTok video, Sani, a family-owned apparel company features a day in the life of the brand’s founders while visiting India for business:

Goal example 2: Generate leads and sales

Whether online, in-store or directly through your social profiles, followers don’t make purchases by accident. For example, are you alerting customers about new products and promos? Are you integrating your product catalog into your social profiles? Are you running exclusive deals for followers? Social media gives you an avenue to generate revenue.

Goal example 3: Grow your brand’s audience

Bringing new followers into the fold means finding ways to introduce your brand to folks who haven’t heard of you before. Growing your audience also means discovering conversations around your business and industry that matter the most. Digging through your social channels is nearly impossible without monitoring or listening for specific keywords, phrases or hashtags. Having a pulse on these conversations helps you expand your core audience (and reach adjacent audiences) much faster.

Goal example 4: Provide holistic customer care

The Index shows over half of consumers believe the most memorable thing a brand can do on social media is respond to customers.

Although 76% of consumers value quick responses, providing quality customer care isn’t just responding rapidly. Consumer expectations have evolved. Some 70% of consumers expect brands to provide a holistic experience with personalized responses that fit their unique customer service needs.

This means companies need to experiment with messaging and content when approaching customer care . For example, does your team have a protocol for handling @-mentions and comments? Do you have templated responses to FAQs? Does your brand promote user-generated content and hashtags? Your customers can be your best cheerleaders, but only if you give them a reason to grab the megaphone.

Goal example 5: Drive traffic to your site to illustrate ROI of social efforts

The Sprout Social Index™ shows 46% of marketers plan to calculate the return on investment (ROI) of advertising spend to connect the value of social to business goals in 2024.

Simple enough. If you’re laser-focused on generating leads or traffic to your website, social media can make it happen. Whether through organic promotional posts or social ads, keeping an eye on conversions and URL clicks can help you better determine your ROI from social media .

Any combination of these goals is fair game and can help you better understand which networks to tackle, too. When in doubt, keep your social media marketing strategy simple rather than complicating it with too many objectives that might distract you. Pick one or two and rally your team around them.

Bonus resource : A great deck can bridge the gap between raw social data and direct business value. Use this presentation template to pitch a compelling vision for your next campaign, initiative or annual strategy.

Get the deck template

Research your target audience and select your networks

Making assumptions is bad news for marketers. Both leaders and practitioners can disprove assumptions from the valuable insights social data provides. With the right tool, marketers can quickly research their audience . No formal market research or data science chops necessary.

What you need to know about your audience to influence your social media marketing strategy is already available. You just have to know where to look.

Remember: different platforms attract different audiences

Here are some key numbers for your 2024 social media marketing strategy that speak directly to which networks your brand should approach and what types of content to publish:

• According to The Sprout Social Index™, 53% of consumers say their social media usage has been higher over the last two years than the previous two.
• Instagram has 2 billion active users worldwide in 2023 and continues to be one of the most popular networks among teens between 13-17 years old.
• Women make up more than 60% of Pinterest’s global audience . Gen Z and Millennials use the platform the most.
• X has over half a billion monthly monetizable active users. And people spend an average of 31 minutes on the platform.
• LinkedIn is the hub for in-depth, industry-specific content that might be more niche than what you see on Facebook or X.
• LinkedIn is the top platform for B2B lead generation, rated by marketers. Some 4 out of 5 LinkedIn members drive business decisions.
• Some 78% of TikTok users have purchased a product after watching TikTok creator content about the product.
• And some 73% of users feel a deeper connection to brands they interact with on TikTok vs other platforms.
• In Europe messaging apps like WhatsApp play an important role in how people communicate with each other.
• YouTube is one of the most popular search engines in the world with billions of monthly users across 80 languages and 100+ countries.

Social media demographics and stats like the ones above are great for understanding where your target audience lives, but it's also important to understand the nuances of each social network so you can decide where your business needs to be.

Bigger brands with large customer bases tend to have presences across multiple platforms. Giants like McDonald’s and Starbucks are more likely to have the resources to be everywhere at once, but what if you’re a mid-size or small business? And just because there are so many social platforms, doesn’t mean all of them are right for your brand. For the sake of narrowing down where you should spend your time, below is a quick overview of each of the major social platforms:

Simple and straightforward, X is a solid starting point for most businesses. Requiring minimal setup and providing a place to go back and forth with followers directly, there's a reason why X remains one of the go-to platforms for customer service . If you’re trying to master the social media marketing basics of hashtags, tagging, brand voice and social media etiquette, look no further.

Facebook is a must-have for brick-and-mortar businesses looking to target local customers. Allowing check-ins and reviews, it’s a prime place to grow a dedicated local following. Plus, they have an incredible chatbot functionality that can take your customer service strategy and marketing campaigns to the next level.

Like many social algorithm changes, the platform’s algorithm change in late 2022 posed a challenge to some businesses looking to grow their Pages and stay in touch with fans consistently. The earliest algorithm prioritized Likes, but today’s is much more sophisticated and focuses on showing users the most relevant, meaningful content based on inventory, signals, relevancy scoring and other factors. That said, Facebook’s ad platform is the gold standard for social media ads because it can help businesses cut through the noise and lessen the impact of algorithm changes.

At its core, Instagram is a network centered around visual content. A major hub for brick-and-mortar businesses, e-commerce shops and influencers alike, the platform encourages brands to get creative. From eye-popping photos to clever captions, it’s all about finding unique ways to show off what you’re selling.

When Meta released Threads on July 5, 2023, the social network received over 100 million registrations less than a week after its launch, making it the most rapidly downloaded app ever. The launch of Threads sparked conversations about its role in the fediverse, or decentralized social media .

But, for now, Threads is a text-based social network that users can sign up for through their current Instagram account. Users can post on mobile, but Threads is also available on desktop. Threads are great for brands who already have Instagram accounts because the sign up process is pretty seamless.

LinkedIn is a network laser-focused on business trends and networking. LinkedIn is a goldmine, especially for anyone networking in the B2B space. Looking to get in touch with an influencer, marketing manager or CEO? Chances are you can find them here.

There are so many benefits of using LinkedIn marketing beyond networking, including content distribution and lead generation. We also have a guide for LinkedIn best practices so you can get full advantage of those benefits.

Pinterest marketing is insanely popular, especially among Gen Z and Millennials. Over 465 million people use this visual pinning platform every month to find inspiration and their next purchase. Pinterest is noted to be one of the best networks for social selling. Like Instagram, Pinterest thrives on imagery and inspirational content where products serve as the proverbial centerpiece.

Although some might not regard YouTube as a traditional social network, the platform’s active and engaged community speaks for itself. Considering that video represents the top-performing type of content across nearly every social network, YouTube is a great place to house your videos if you’re already producing them.

TikTok reached 1 billion users in September 2021 and remains one of the most popular apps in the world. Along with its viral trends and niche communities, the short-form video app is known for its hyper-personalized algorithm that keeps users scrolling for hours. TikTok marketing has changed the game for brands, allowing them to connect with customers in an entirely new way.

Picking networks for your social media marketing strategy

There are more than 15 social media platforms your brand can use , but don’t spread yourself too thin. Rather than try to dominate them all, you should consider which platforms make the most sense based on your industry and target audience.

Do your homework on your existing social media audience and focus on networks where your core audience is already active. You need to do further analysis before you can determine what your real-world social customers actually look like.

That’s why many brands use a social media marketing dashboard that provides an overview of who’s following you and how they interact with you on each channel.

For example, Sprout’s analytics dashboard puts your audience demographics front and center. It highlights which social networks see the most activity, helping you ensure you spend your time on the right networks. You can also use analytics to determine if you should create a new social media account . With Sprout, you can view X, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube and Pinterest data side-by-side in a customizable format that’s exportable by date range and profile.

There are plenty of other sources of valuable audience data to supplement your social media insights. This includes your Google and email analytics, your CRM, your customer service platform or even your best-selling products.

All of the above will ultimately influence everything from your marketing messaging to how you’ll approach customer service or social commerce .

Establish your most important metrics and KPIs

No matter your goals or industry, your social media strategy should be data-driven. Rather than focus on vanity metrics, dig into data that aligns directly with your goals.

So, what metrics are we talking about? Below you’ll find a quick overview, but our full guide breaks down the social media metrics that matter (and why) in more detail.

• Reach . Post reach is the number of unique users who saw your post. How much of your content actually reaches users’ feeds?
• Clicks . This is the number of clicks on your content or account. Tracking clicks per campaign is essential to understand what drives curiosity or encourages people to buy.
• Engagement . The total number of social interactions divided by the number of impressions. This sheds light on how well your audience perceives you and their willingness to interact.
• Hashtag performance . What were your most-used hashtags? Which hashtags were most associated with your brand? Having these answers can help shape the focus of your content going forward.
• Organic and paid likes . Beyond a standard Like count, these interactions are attributed to paid or organic content. Given how much harder organic engagement is to gain, many brands turn to ads. Knowing these differences can help you budget both your ad spend and the time you invest in different formats.
• Sentiment . This is the measurement of how users react to your content, brand or hashtag. Did customers find your recent campaign offensive? What type of sentiment do people associate with your campaign hashtag? It’s always better to dig deeper and find out how people talk or feel about your brand.

• Video views. This varies by platform, but refers to the number of views you receive on a video. Some channels treat video views as impressions–like TikTok–and others get super detailed with views. For example, Instagram offers views metrics for Stories, Reels and Live. Facebook and LinkedIn count a view when a user watches a video for at least three seconds. From the popularity of TikTok to live streaming, video is taking the internet by storm, so familiarize yourself with social video engagement metrics if you plan to use it in your strategy.
• Follower growth. Follower growth measures the net new followers you earned within a set time frame. Follower count on its own doesn’t tell the whole story: knowing how many followers you gained can help you prove the value and return on investment for campaigns, content types and social media experiments.
• Follower growth rate. This percentage shows how quickly your audience is growing or declining over time.
• Reply time. This refers to how long it takes for your team to reply to a customer message or @-mention on social.
• Total response volume. The sum of responses your team sends to customers.
• Customer satisfaction score (CSAT). A CSAT shows how satisfied customers are with your product, service or brand as a whole. You can use social messaging to measure CSAT by DMing customers and asking them how likely they are to refer your business. Or by working with your customer care team to formalize a survey for after interactions.
• Impressions. The number of times a piece of content was displayed to users. Impressions can indicate how well you’re promoting your account, content, campaigns, ads, etc.
• Brand mentions. This number tracks how many times a brand is mentioned in posts/comments, whether the brand is directly tagged or not.
• Share of voice (SOV). This indicates where your brand ranks in the market compared to competitors. SOV can help you understand how much of the industry conversation your brand dominates.
• Conversion rate. This metric measures how many people you convert to take a desired action on social, such as making a purchase, downloading gated content, or signing up for a free trial, webinar, newletter, etc.

An effective social media marketing strategy is rooted in numbers. That said, those numbers need to be put into context that aligns with your original goals. Conduct analytics reports regularly to convey the story behind the metrics and see if your efforts match up to your vision.

Create (and curate) engaging social content

No surprises here. Your social media marketing strategy hinges on your content. At this point, you should have a pretty good idea of what to publish based on your goals, audience and brand identity. You probably feel confident in which networks to cover, too.

But what about your content strategy? Below are some tips, ideas and inspiration that can help.

Defining your content strategy

Coming up with a content strategy might seem like a lot of legwork, but it all really boils down to your goals.

• Looking to educate your audience in the B2B space? Publish blogs, news and opinions relevant to your industry.
• Trying to push e-commerce products? Post action shots of your products and photos of others showing off your swag.
• Focused on customer service? Tips, shout-outs and company updates are fair game.

Regardless of what you might post, coming up with a hashtag to couple with your content is a brilliant branding move.

Hashtags can be used to get your attention and encourage people to share their photos interacting with your brand.

Find your brand voice

One of the best ways to stand out on social media is to define your distinct brand voice. Chances are you’ve seen a post from a particular brand that just feels like, well, theirs.

The quippy, casual tone that makes Discord’s X presence beloved by casual users and moderators alike is a great example.

Of course, not every company will benefit from the same sort of tone. The key is to present yourself as a human rather than a robot. Adopt a consistent brand voice and style that’s appropriate for your business.

The importance of sticking to content themes

From graphics to Reels and beyond, many brands rely on the same content formats and creative touches time and again. These themes can help you become more consistent and zero in on a content strategy that makes sense.

For example, you might cycle between memes, product photos and user-generated content while sticking to a defined color scheme. If you’re struggling to keep up with all these sources of social content, consider social media management tools that help you organize your media library and schedule your posts in advance.

Content ideas for social media marketing in 2024

The Sprout Social Index™ reveals an interesting trend around the type of content consumers want to see on social. When asked what makes brands memorable on social, 38% of consumers said the most memorable brands prioritize original content over following trending topics. Some 37% said engaging directly with their audience rather than publishing a lot of content makes a brand more memorable, followed by 33% who remember brands that publish timely, on-trend posts.

The takeaway? There’s not one sure-fire way to approach content, but consumers generally want a good quality mix of original and timely, trending content.

That’s why businesses should focus on what their audience wants so they can know which content mix is best for their brand. Here are some social media trends to consider to help narrow down the specifics of what you should publish and inspire innovative content.

Stories and time-sensitive posts

Stories aren’t going anywhere. Tapping into your followers’ FOMO (fear of missing out), Stories-style content is both interactive and can’t-miss. Popping up first in your followers’ feeds by default, this content can help your brand’s account “skip the line” and stay fresh in your audience’s minds.

Stories are especially valuable for taking your followers behind-the-scenes and making your social feed feel more personal. For example, consider how you can use Stories to cover an event or take your followers on a journey without them having to leave the comfort of the ‘gram.

Short-form video

Thanks to the rise of TikTok and Instagram Reels , social video is booming. Short-form productions continue to dominate the social space across all platforms due to their high engagement rate.

Sprout Social’s 2022 Index data shows that consumers find short-form videos 2.5x more engaging than long-form ones. Some 66% of consumers report paying the most attention to short-form content as well.

Thanks to advancements in DIY and remote video production , you don’t need massive budgets to be successful. All you need is a laptop or smartphone and a few tricks of the trade, like video length best practices and editing tools .

Posts that show off your brand’s uniqueness and human side

Both personal and personable content should be a cornerstone of your social media marketing strategy. Don’t be afraid to remind followers of the humans behind your posts. Remember that over a third of consumers are looking for authentic, original content from brands.

For example, Zoom has excellent original content on their Instagram and TikTok accounts, like this Reel that explores the different signs in the workplace:

Collaborate with creators

If you haven’t already, it’s time to tap into the creator economy . The Sprout Social Index™ shows that 25% of consumers remember brands that collaborate with content creators and influencers. Social partnerships are very effective when executed correctly: they can help drive traffic to your website, produce compelling content and inspire purchase decisions.

But consumers care about creators’ qualifications, so choose wisely. The two most important qualifications of content creators working with brands is their experience with the product/service and their authenticity.

Identify creators who align with your brand and consider how they can help you craft stand-out content for your audience.

Pro-tip: conduct a competitive analysis to help your content stand out

Before you start creating content, you should have a good idea of what your competitors are up to.

While some brands might want to look into third-party competitor analysis tools to dig deeper into their competitors’ numbers, you can learn a lot from a simple review of your competitors’ social presence.

The simplest way to find competitors is through a Google search. Look up your most valuable keywords, phrases and industry terms to see who shows up.

Then, see how their social channels compare to your own. The goal here isn’t to copycat or steal your competitors’ ideas. No two companies’ social media marketing strategies can be (or should be) the same. Instead, determine what’s working for them and what conclusions you can draw to adapt your own campaigns accordingly.

After identifying some of your industry rivals, you can use competitive analysis tools such as those found in Sprout to quickly compare competitor performance to your own.

See what they’re posting on Facebook. Contrast your X engagement with theirs. Find out how they’re tagging their content on Instagram. Optimize your own strategy. Rinse and repeat.

You can also go a step further using Sprout’s Advanced Listening . Using social listening, you can spotlight unfiltered consumer feedback regarding competitors, as well as their products and services. You get the added bonus of discovering honest conversations about your brand you may have otherwise missed.

Make your social presence as timely as possible

Timeliness is arguably more important than ever for marketers. Not only are you expected to put out fresh content regularly, but also to always be “on” for your followers. But you can’t always expect customers to operate on your clock. And timeliness is a tall order when you’re strapped for resources or are part of a small team.

Let’s look at some ways to maximize your schedule and your time spent on social media.

Assemble your content calendar

Use a content calendar to plan out your posts and stay organized. Knowing in advance what you’re going to post will save you a lot of time and keeps you from posting the same pieces of content too frequently.

With the help of Sprout’s scheduling and publishing , you can house your social posts, captions and creative in one place.

Post at the best times to engage

As evidenced by our best times to post on social , brands have a lot of ground to cover in terms of frequency and how much content to push. It’s important to pay attention to the optimal times for engagement so you can automate the most tedious aspects of your social presence without having to worry about posting in real time.

But, quick question: When is your brand available to engage and interact with customers?

You might see some recommended times to post late in the evening, for example. But if your team isn’t there to communicate, what’s the point of posting at the “preferred” time?

When you’re able to do so, ensure your social media or community managers are available and ready to answer any product questions or concerns when you post. Take time to review the best times to post on social media, but remember that it’s just as critical to engage after posting.

You should also consider taking advantage of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and automation so you can serve and engage with customers when your team is offline, which leads us to our next point.

Respond to your customer questions and shout-outs ASAP

Your customers want speedy responses, but it’s likely impossible to respond to every message across multiple channels manually. Lean into AI to help execute faster. For example, you can use chatbots or automated replies to connect with customers when your team is offline.

The 2023 Index shows 81% of marketers say AI has already had a positive impact on their work. But marketers aren’t just using AI to increase efficiency–they’re using it to scale their entire customer care strategies.

Over half of marketers plan to use customer self-service resources like FAQs, forums and chatbots to grow their social customer care strategy. Nearly half of brands say they will use AI and automation to handle basic customer inquiries and tasks.

Your brand can’t forget these core elements of community building. It takes effort to ensure conversations or engagement opportunities aren’t left unattended. On social media, you gain respect as a brand by being present and talking to your audience. That’s why social customer care is so important to brands wanting to increase audience awareness—word travels fast about great service.

This is why you should designate teams to respond to specific customer cases. It can help your staff run like a well-oiled social media team, whether you’re a group of one or 100.

As social algorithms evolve, organic content has an increasingly tough time reaching the majority of your audience. The last thing you want to do is ignore those who do engage and lose out on sending more people down your marketing funnel.

Evaluate and improve your social media strategy

By now you should have a big-picture understanding of your social media strategy. However, it’s important to adapt your strategy throughout the year.

Without continuously analyzing your efforts, you’ll never know how one campaign did over another. Having a bird’s eye view of your social media activity helps put things into perspective. This means looking at your top-performing content and adjusting your campaigns when your content stalls .

There’s no denying that a lot of social media is a matter of trial-and-error. Monitoring the metrics behind your campaigns in real time allows you to make small tweaks to your social media marketing strategy rather than sweeping, time-consuming changes.

Doing social media marketing right starts by being diligent about your data. You can be reactive in the short term to get the most out of your running campaigns, and then proactively use these takeaways to inform your next strategy overhaul.

To guarantee that you get in front of as many customers as possible, monitoring your growth is a major must-do. With Sprout, social reports can clue you in on everything from your top-performing content to how engaged your audience is. These reports are crucial for accountability and guaranteeing your numbers continue to tick upward.

Reporting on data is also important for the sake of sharing valuable insights from social with your coworkers and colleagues. Remember that 60% of organizations use social data daily—be one of the brands that embrace it.

Sharing this information in regular reports not only holds you accountable for your efforts but also highlights the impact and bottom-line results your social strategy produces.

Based on your data, you can better assess whether your KPIs truly ladder up to your overarching company goals or whether they need to change.

Bring other departments into the mix

Social media teams have a unique advantage when it comes to understanding customer sentiment. You’re the eyes and ears for your brand online. Those insights can do more than just inform marketing strategy. They can transform your business. Stand-out social media teams will approach cross-department collaboration with enthusiasm and intention.

Which departments can benefit from social data?

The short answer? All of them. Index data shows 76% of social marketers say their team’s insights inform other departments.

However, don’t bite off more than you can chew. Instead, start where you think you can make the most impact. Here are a few ideas to jumpstart your strategy.

Human Resources

Collaborating with human resources on social-first employer brand initiatives can do more than just fill open roles quickly. It can attract stronger, more qualified candidates as well. Many companies have embraced social recruiting strategies, such as publishing creative “we’re hiring” posts on LinkedIn to attract top talent.

Data from The 2023 Sprout Social Index™ notes marketers plan to track conversations and sales directly resulting from social efforts in 2024 to better connect the value of social to business goals. Sharing social insights with your sales organization can empower reps to work smarter in the context of increasingly digital customer journeys. Consider learning more about social selling to leverage the power of online networks even further.

Product and merchandising

You’ve probably received quite a few feature or product requests while managing your brand’s social inbox. With a social media management tool , you can distill those messages into actionable insights for your product or merchandising teams. These insights can complement existing roadmap research, creating a customer-focused plan that delights.

Customer care

Monitoring customer service metrics like average reply time, average wait time and response volume can help your social customer care team identify what is working well and spot opportunities for improvement. Marketers are using social media customer service software to elevate their support strategies and get the most out of their tech stack.

And with that, we wrap up your social media strategy guide for 2024 and beyond!

Is your social media marketing strategy future proof?

This guide highlights plenty of moving pieces to maintain a modern social presence. That said, putting together yours doesn’t have to be a drag.

If you set actionable goals and address each of the steps above, you’ll already be way ahead of the curve when it comes to your social media marketing strategy.

And if you need more inspiration for actionable ways to build out your strategies, make sure to download The Sprout Social Index™ to learn more.

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How to Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy in 9 Easy Steps [Free Template]

Creating your social media marketing strategy doesn’t need to be painful. Create an effective plan for your business in 9 simple steps.

A social media marketing strategy is a summary of everything you plan to do and hope to achieve on social media. It guides your actions and lets you know whether you’re succeeding or failing.

The more specific your plan is, the more effective it will be. Keep it concise. Don’t make it so lofty and broad that it’s unattainable or impossible to measure.

In this post, we’ll walk you through a nine-step plan to create a winning social media strategy of your own. We’ve even got expert insights from Amanda Wood, Hootsuite’s Senior Manager of Social Marketing.

How to create a social media strategy:

Bonus: Get a free social media strategy template to quickly and easily plan your strategy, track results, and share with your boss, teammates, and clients.

What is a social media marketing strategy?

A social media strategy is a document outlining your social media goals, the tactics you will use to achieve them and the metrics you will track to measure your progress.

Your social media marketing strategy should also list all of your existing and planned social media accounts along with goals specific to each platform you’re active on. These goals should align with your business’s larger digital marketing strategy.

Finally, a good social media plan should define the roles and responsibilities within your team and outline your reporting cadence.

Create. Schedule. Publish. Engage. Measure. Win.

Creating your own social media marketing strategy (video guide)

No time to read the whole article? Let Amanda, Hootsuite’s own Senior Manager of Social Media Marketing, guide you through our free social media marketing strategy template in less than 10 minutes:

How to create a social media marketing strategy: A step-by-step guide

Step 1. align goals with business objectives, set s.m.a.r.t. goals.

The first step to creating a winning social media strategy is to establish clear objectives and goals. Without goals, you have no way to measure success and return on investment (ROI) .

Each of your social media marketing goals should be SMART : s pecific, m easurable, a ttainable, r elevant and t ime-bound.

Psst: Need help getting started? We’ve got social strategy guides for small businesses , financial services , government , higher education , healthcare , real estate , law firms , and non-profits .

Oh, and if you need examples of smart social media goals , we’ve got you covered there too.

Once you’ve decided on your goals, track them in a social media strategy doc — grab our free template if you don’t have one already.

Track meaningful metrics

Vanity metrics like number of followers and likes are easy to track, but it’s hard to prove their real value. Instead, focus on things like engagement, click-through, and conversion rates.

For inspiration, take a look at these 19 essential social media metrics .

You may want to track different goals for different social media networks, or even different uses for each network.

For example, if you use LinkedIn to drive traffic to your website, you would measure click-throughs. If Instagram is for brand awareness, you might track the number of Instagram Story views. And if you advertise on Facebook, cost-per-click (CPC) is a common success metric.

Social media goals should align with your overall marketing objectives. This makes it easier to show the value of your work and secure buy-in from your boss.

Start developing a successful social media marketing plan by writing down at least three goals for social media.

“ It’s easy to get overwhelmed by deciding what to post and which metrics to track, but you need to focus on what you want to get out of social media to begin with,” says Amanda Wood, Hootsuite’s Senior Manager of Social Marketing. “Don’t just start posting and tracking everything: match your goals to your business, and your metrics to your goals.”

Step 2. Understand your audience inside and out

Get to know your fans, followers, and customers as real people with real wants and needs, and you will know how to target and engage them on social media.

When it comes to your ideal customer, you should know things like:

• Average income
• Typical job title or industry

Here’s a simple guide and template for creating audience/buyer personas .

Don’t forget to document this information in your strategy doc!

Social media analytics can also provide a ton of valuable information about who your followers are, where they live, and how they interact with your brand on social media. These insights allow you to refine your strategy and better target your audience.

Jugnoo, an Uber-like service for auto-rickshaws in India, used Facebook Analytics to learn that 90% of their users who referred other customers were between 18- and 34-years-old, and 65% of that group was using Android. They used that information to target their ads, resulting in a 40% lower cost per referral.

Check out our guide to using social media analytics and the tools you need to track them .

Step 3. Analyze your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses

Odds are your competitors are already using social media, and that means you can learn from what they’re doing.

Conduct a competitive analysis

A competitive analysis allows you to understand who the competition is and what they’re doing well (and not so well). You’ll get a good sense of what’s expected in your industry, which will help you set social media targets of your own.

It will also help you spot opportunities and weaknesses you can document in your social strategy doc.

Maybe one of your competitors is dominant on Facebook, for example, but has put little effort into X (Twitter) or Instagram. You might want to focus on the social media platforms where your audience is underserved, rather than trying to win fans away from a dominant player.

Use social media listening

Social listening is another way to keep an eye on your competitors.

Do searches of the competition’s company name, account handles, and other relevant keywords on social media. Find out what they’re sharing and what other people are saying about them. If they’re using influencer marketing, how much engagement do those campaigns earn them?

Pro tip : Use Hootsuite Streams to monitor relevant keywords, hashtags and accounts in real-time.

Try Hootsuite for free. You can cancel anytime.

As you track, you may notice shifts in how your competitors and industry leaders are using social media. You may come across new, exciting trends. You might even spot specific social content or a campaign that really hits the mark—or totally bombs.

Use this kind of intel to optimize and inform your own social media marketing strategy.

Just don’t go overboard on the spy tactics, Amanda advises. “ Make sure you aren’t ALWAYS comparing yourself to the competition — it can be a distraction. I’d say checking in on a monthly basis is healthy. Otherwise, focus on your own strategy and results.”

Step 4. Conduct a social media audit

If you’re already using social media, take stock of your efforts so far. Ask yourself the following questions:

• What’s working, and what’s not?
• Who is engaging with you?
• What are your most valuable partnerships?
• Which networks does your target audience use?
• How does your social media presence compare to the competition?

Once you collect that information, you’ll be ready to start thinking about ways to improve.

We’ve created an easy-to-follow social media audit guide and template to walk you through each step of this process.

Your audit should give you a clear picture of what purpose each of your social accounts serves. If the purpose of an account isn’t clear, think about whether it’s worth keeping.

To help you decide, ask yourself the following questions:

• Is my audience here?
• If so, how are they using this platform?
• Can I use this account to help achieve my goals?

Asking these tough questions will keep your social media strategy focused.

Look for impostor accounts

During the audit, you may discover fake accounts using your business name or the names of your products.

These imposters can be harmful to your brand—never mind that they’re capturing followers that should be yours.

You may want to get your accounts verified too to ensure your fans know they are dealing with the real you.

Here’s how to get verified on:

• X (Twitter)

Step 5. Set up and optimize your accounts

Decide which networks to use.

As you decide which social networks to use, you will also need to define your strategy for each.

Benefit Cosmetics’ social media manager, Angela Purcaro, told eMarketer : “For our makeup tutorials … we’re all about Snapchat and Instagram Stories. [X], on the other hand, is designated for customer service.”

Hootsuite’s own social team even designates different purposes for formats within networks. On Instagram, for example, they use the feed to post high-quality educational infographics and product announcements and Stories to cover live events or quick social media updates.

Pro tip : Write out a mission statement for each network. A one-sentence declaration to keep you focused on a specific goal.

Example: “We will use X for customer support to keep email and call volumes down.”

Or: “We will use LinkedIn for promoting and sharing our company culture to help with recruitment and employee advocacy.”

One more: “We will use Instagram to highlight new products and repost quality content from influencers.”

If you can’t create a solid mission statement for a particular social media channel, you may want to ask yourself if it’s worth it.

Note : While larger businesses can and do tackle every platform, small businesses may not be able to — and that’s ok! Prioritize social platforms that will have the most impact on your business and make sure your marketing team has the resources to handle content for those networks. If you need help focusing your efforts, check out our 18-minute social media plan .

Set up your profiles

Once you’ve decided which networks to focus on, it’s time to create your profiles. Or improve existing ones so they align with your strategy.

• Make sure you fill out all profile fields
• Include keywords people would use to search for your business
• Use consistent branding (logos, images, etc.) across networks so your profiles are easily recognizable

Pro tip : Use high-quality images that follow the recommended dimensions for each network. Check out our always-up-to-date social media image size cheat sheet for quick reference.

We’ve also got step-by-step guides for each network to walk you through the process:

• Create a Facebook business page
• Create an Instagram business account
• Create a TikTok account
• Create a X (Twitter) business account
• Create a Snapchat account
• Create a LinkedIn Company Page
• Create a Pinterest business account
• Create a YouTube channel

Don’t let this list overwhelm you. Remember, it’s better to use fewer channels well than to stretch yourself thin trying to maintain a presence on every network.

Optimize your profiles (and content) for search

Never heard of social SEO ? It’s time to learn.

44% of Gen Z consumers use social platforms to research their purchase decisions, which means it’s extra critical that your channels are optimized for social search.

That means making sure your profile names are clear and descriptive, you’re including relevant hashtags and keywords in your bio and on every post, and you’re using features like alt text and captions to include your target keywords as naturally as possible.

Step 6. Find inspiration for content creation

While it’s important that your brand be unique, you can still draw inspiration from other businesses that are great on social.

“ I consider it my job to stay active on social: to know what’s trending, which campaigns are winning, what’s new with the platforms, who’s going above and beyond,” says Amanda. “This might be the most fun step for you, or the hardest one, but it’s just as crucial as the rest of them.”

Social media success stories

You can usually find these on the business section of the social network’s website. ( Here’s Facebook’s , for example.)

Case studies can offer valuable insights that you can apply to your own social media plan.

Award-winning accounts and campaigns

You could also check out the winners of The Facebook Awards or The Shorty Awards for examples of brands that are at the top of their social media game.

For learning and a laugh, check out Fridge-Worthy, Hootsuite’s bi-weekly awards show highlighting brands doing smart and clever things on social media.

Your favorite brands on social media

Who do you enjoy following on social media? What do they do that compels people to engage and share their content?

National Geographic, for example, is one of the best on Instagram, combining stunning visuals with compelling captions.

Then there’s Shopify. The ecommerce brand uses Facebook to sell themselves by showcasing customer stories and case studies.

And Lush Cosmetics is a great example of superior customer service on X. They use their 280 characters to answer questions and solve problems in an extremely charming and on-brand way.

Source: lushcosmetics on X

Notice that each of these accounts has a consistent voice, tone, and style. That’s key to letting people know what to expect from your feed. That is, why should they follow you? What’s in it for them?

Consistency also helps keep your content on-brand even if you have multiple people on your social media team.

For more on this, read our guide on establishing a compelling brand voice on social media .

Ask your followers

Consumers can also offer social media inspiration.

What are your target customers talking about online? What can you learn about their wants and needs?

If you have existing social channels, you could also ask your followers what they want from you. Just make sure that you follow through and deliver what they ask for.

Step 7. Create a strategic social media content calendar

Sharing great content is essential, of course, but it’s equally important to have a plan in place for when you’ll share content to get the maximum impact.

Your social media content calendar also needs to account for the time you spend interacting with the audience (although you need to allow for some spontaneous engagement as well).

Set your posting schedule

Your social media content calendar lists the dates and times at which you will publish types of content on each channel. It’s the perfect place to plan all of your social media activities—from images, link sharing, and re-shares of user-generated content to blog posts and videos. It includes both your day-to-day posting and content for social media campaigns.

Your calendar also ensures your posts are spaced out appropriately and published at the best times to post .

Pro tip: You can plan your whole content calendar and get recommended best times to post on every network based on your past engagement rate, impressions, or link click data in Hootsuite.

Hootsuite’s Best Time to Publish feature

Determine the right content mix

Make sure your content strategy and calendar reflect the mission statement you’ve assigned to each social profile, so that everything you post is working to support your business goals.

(We know, it’s tempting to jump on every meme, but there should always be a strategy behind your social media marketing efforts!)

You might decide that:

• 50% of content will drive traffic back to your website
• 25% of content will be curated from other sources
• 20% of content will support lead-generation goals (newsletter sign-ups, ebook downloads, etc.)
• 5% of content will be about your company culture

Placing these different post types in your content calendar will ensure you maintain the right mix.

If you’re starting from scratch and you’re not sure what types of content to post, try the 80-20 rule :

• 80% of your posts should inform, educate, or entertain your audience
• 20% can directly promote your brand.

You could also try the social media content marketing rule of thirds :

• One-third of your content promotes your business, converts readers, and generates profit.
• One-third of your content shares ideas and stories from thought leaders in your industry or like-minded businesses.
• One-third of your content is personal interactions with your audience

Whatever you decide on, be sure to document it in your strategy doc.

Don’t post too much or too little

If you’re starting a social media marketing strategy from scratch, you may not have figured out how often to post to each network for maximum engagement yet.

Post too frequently and you risk annoying your audience. But, if you post too little, you risk looking like you’re not worth following.

Start with these posting frequency recommendations:

• Instagram (feed): 3-7 times per week
• TikTok: 3-5 times per week
• Facebook: 1-2 times per day
• X (Twitter): 1-5 times per day
• LinkedIn: 1-5 times per day

Pro tip : Once you have your social media content calendar planned out, use a scheduling tool to prepare messages in advance rather than updating constantly throughout the day.

We might be biased, but we think Hootsuite is the best social media management tool. You can schedule social media posts to every network and the intuitive calendar view gives you a full picture of all your social activity each week.

Try It Free

Step 8. Craft compelling and high-quality content

Remember those mission statements you created for each channel in Step 5? Well, it’s time to go a bit deeper, a.k.a. provide some examples of the type of content you’ll post to fulfill your mission on each network.

If you’re not sure what to post, here’s a long list of social media content ideas to get you started. Or (to make it even easier) you can use an AI tool like OwlyWriter to generate on-brand content in a flash.

The idea here is to:

• Keep your content aligned with the purpose of each network;
• Show other stakeholders (if applicable) what kind of content they can expect to see on each network.

This last point especially will help you avoid any tension when your colleagues want to know why you haven’t posted their case study/whitepaper/blog post to TikTok yet. It’s not in the strategy, Linda!

Ideally, you will generate content types that are both suited to the network and the purpose you’ve set out for that network.

For example, you wouldn’t want to waste time posting brand awareness tweets if you’ve designated X/Twitter for primarily customer support. And you wouldn’t want to post super polished corporate video ads to TikTok, as users expect to see short, unpolished videos on that platform.

It might take some testing over time to figure out which type of content works best on which type of network, so prepare to update this section frequently.

We won’t lie: content creation isn’t as easy as everyone not on the social team seems to think. But if you’re struggling, Amanda suggests going back to basics.

The first question to ask is: is there cohesion between your content types? Is your content providing value? Do you have a good mix of entertaining, or educational content? What does it offer that makes a person stop and spend time? Creating a few different content pillars or categories that encompass different aspects of storytelling for your brand, and what you can offer your audience is a good start.

This brings us to Step 9.

Step 9. Track performance and make adjustments

Your social media marketing strategy is a hugely important document for your business, and you can’t assume you’ll get it exactly right on the first try.

As you start to implement your plan and track your results, you may find that some strategies don’t work as well as you’d anticipated, while others are working even better than expected.

That’s why it’s important to document your progress along the way.

Look at performance metrics

In addition to the analytics within each social network (see Step 2), you can use UTM parameters to track social visitors as they move through your website, so you can see exactly which social posts drive the most traffic to your website.

Benchmark your results

You’ve got your numbers, but how do they stack up to the competition in your industry? Industry benchmarks are a great way to evaluate your performance against other businesses in your category.

If you’ve got Hootsuite Analytics , you can use our built-in social media benchmarking tool to compare the performance of your social accounts against the average of brands in your industry with just a couple of clicks.

You can set up custom timeframes, switch between networks — Instagram, Facebook, X (Twitter), LinkedIn, and TikTok — and look up benchmarks for metrics like followers, audience growth rate, engagement rate, clicks, shares, and much more.

You’ll also find resources to improve your performance  right in the summary section:

Re-evaluate, test, and do it all again

Once this data starts coming in, use it to re-evaluate your strategy regularly. You can also use this information to test different posts, social marketing campaigns, and strategies against one another. Constant testing allows you to understand what works and what doesn’t, so you can refine your social media marketing strategy in real time.

You’ll want to check the performance of all your channels at least once a week and get to know the basics of social media reporting so you can track your growth over time.

Pro tip: If you use Hootsuite, you can review the performance of all your posts on every network in one place. Once you get the hang of checking your analytics, you may even want to customize different reports to show specific metrics over a variety of different time periods.

Surveys can also be a great way to find out how well your social media strategy is working. Ask your followers, email list, and website visitors whether you’re meeting their needs and expectations, and what they’d like to see more of. Then make sure to deliver on what they tell you.

Finalizing your social media strategy

Spoiler alert: nothing is final.

Social media moves fast. New networks emerge, others go through demographic shifts.

Your business will go through periods of change as well.

All of this means that your social media marketing strategy should be a living document that you review and adjust as needed. Refer to it often to stay on track, but don’t be afraid to make changes so that it better reflects new goals, tools, or plans.

When you update your social strategy, make sure to watch our 5-step video on how to updating your social media strategy for 2024:

Social media strategy template

Ready to start documenting? Grab your free social media strategy template below!

What’s next? When you’re ready to put your plan into action, we’re here to help…

Save time managing your social media marketing strategy with Hootsuite. From a single dashboard you can easily:

• Plan, create, and schedule posts to every network
• Track relevant keywords, topics, and accounts
• Stay on top of engagement with a universal inbox
• Get easy-to-understand performance reports and improve your strategy as needed

Try Hootsuite for Free

With files from Shannon Tien .

Do it better with Hootsuite , the all-in-one social media tool. Stay on top of things, grow, and beat the competition.

Become a better social marketer.

Get expert social media advice delivered straight to your inbox.

Christina Newberry is an award-winning writer and editor whose greatest passions include food, travel, urban gardening, and the Oxford comma—not necessarily in that order.

Amanda Wood is a senior social marketing professional who combines analytical and creative thinking to build brands.

As head of social at Hootsuite, Amanda oversees the global social strategy encompassing organic and paid social on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and LinkedIn, a social engagement and listening strategy, and an employee advocacy program.

As the leader of a high-performing social team, she has extensive experience collaborating with creatives to bring campaigns to life on social and drive business results.

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Social Media Marketing Strategy

While firms strive to survive by gaining a significant market share and to position their products in the market with the ultimate aim of generating sufficient profits to sustain their survival, research has demonstrated that the marketing approach adopted by these firms underlies the strength of their positions in the market today. That has driven a significant number of firms in the world to invest a significant share of their revenues to conduct the marketing of their product using direct marketing strategies on the best media that has in the recent past unveiled itself, social media. Typically, that is because the internet has virtually merged the real world with the virtual world and its presence in the whole world is overwhelming. Unlike, therefore, the traditional marketing strategies that focused on segmentation with the 4Ps underlying concepts, a radical departure in the recent past where social media is increasingly taking the place of social media has been the trend. However, the implications and future trend share that firms have to fully get into the internet and use social media as one of the best strategies of direct marketing to reap the benefits of direct marketing strategies to generate higher company revenues.

Introduction

Direct marketing using the internet has been an observable trend that marketers have adapted to access and reach their target audience in a world where the virtual world and the real world seem to merge seamlessly. Typically, the rationale underpinning the use of the internet is the rapid growth and use of the internet virtually in every form of communication today (Jantsch, n.d; Boyd & Ellison, 2008). That has been the driving force behind the direct marketing strategies companies find compelled to adopt to meet their marketing strategies and more specifically their revenue generation expectations (Bryan & Farrell, 1996).

That said it is worth mentioning that companies are compelled to use the internet as a direct marketing platform to address a number of expectations besides revenue generation. These include the need to reach a wider audience making a significant number of people aware of the products and services offered by companies in real time, which leads to a larger market share and strong market position. However, it is crucial to note that the customers only get a virtual feel of the product and services offered by a specific firm in the market (Bryan & Farrell, 1996).

Typically, the direct marketing strategy eliminates some descriptive elements that include smells, touch, taste, sound, and some evaluations on the product being sold. Despite these drawbacks, direct marketing on the internet has taken an unprecedented growth with many sites recording significant growth and profit generation over the online sales (Bryan & Farrell, 1996).

Typically, using social media like Facebook and Twitter provides direct channels for online direct marketing. Other forms of direct marketing include the use of mails which include brochures, etc., direct response broadcasting, and many other forms of direct marketing. However, the current study focuses on the use of direct marketing using social media and other forms of online communications. Typically, the current study focuses on Social media marketing strategy as a form of direct marketing, the current, emerging trends and future implications of direct marketing using social media.

The aim of the current study is to establish the benefits associated with using social media as a marketing strategy that firms have adopted in the recent past and the underlying expectations in the form of revenue generation, market position, and product promotion, planning, pricing, and place strategies.

The main objective is to understand the benefits of direct on-line social marketing strategies and their impact on company’s revenue versus off-line (traditional) methods.

Problem Statement

Many companies have trended toward adopting the use of social media as direct marketing strategy to reach a wider market audience, gain a strong market position, and accelerate higher revenue generations. However, many are still in a dilemma to invest in social media as a direct marketing strategy due to limited information and projections on the impact of social media as a direct marketing strategy in profit generation, despite the current trends when compared with traditional direct marketing strategies.

Research Questions

• How is social media used by firms as a direct marketing strategy?
• Why do firms use social media as a direct marketing strategy?
• What is the social network revenue generation cycle against time?
• How can firms create an interactive marketing strategy to position their products and services using social media?
• What statistical data is available showing the trend in using social networking as a direct marketing strategy?
• What are the current trends and future trends?
• What is the difference in trend between direct marketing using social media and traditional direct marketing strategies?
• What are the social networking sites and their usage?

To answer the research questions, a detained study of available literature and a quantitative data collection and analysis provided answers to the research questions.

Literature Review

To answer the research questions, literature on the use of social media as a direct marketing strategy, current, emerging trends, and future implications of the direct marketing strategy using social media was analyzed forming the source of qualitative study to complement quantitative statistical data to answer the research questions.

Research studies have shown marketing as the backbone of firm if in its strategy it has to attain the main objective of generating sustainable and sufficient revenue to cover expenditure and generate sufficient profits (Dewey, 1975). That is the case with social media.

Marketing on Social Media

According to Stelzner (2009), marketing on the social media platform underlines the positioning of a firm’s products and services in the market, provides a channel to reach audiences with different demographic characteristics and buyer behavior (who decide on when, how where, why to buy a service or product), and provide relevant information about their products and services, and specifically support and a firm’s branding strategies (Van, Strazzieri & Woodside, 2001). One of the crucial direct marketing strategies, based on market intelligence reports is the use of social media in direct marketing (Bryan & Farrell, 1996; Vogt & Knapman, 2008).

According to Vogt and Knapman (2008), social media plays a significant role in establishing direct access and relationship with the customer. That has been due to the current global rise in the use of internet as a communication platform based on its characteristic that includes its presence, immediate access, real time communication capabilities, and ability to reach the target customer any time of the day (Weber, 2009). Wu (2003) argues that social media provides interactive support and direct negotiation between the customer and the product based on consumer behavior, needs, and the buyer decision making process which is characterized by problem recognition, searching for information on the internet using social media, evaluating different product alternatives, making a decision to buy a specific product, and evaluating post purchase behavior based on the black box model (Wu, 2003).

Typically, social media provides a platform for information search based on the web presence in many parts of the world coupled with ease of access at low cost in any part of the world (Shimp, 2007). Accordingly, Shih (2009) compares with traditional forms of communication and for the fact that current trend show that the internet or online communication has seamlessly been merged the virtual world with the real world, making both complimentary to the other (Barefoot & Szabo, 2010). The trend certainly leaves organizations with no option other than to adapt to the current trends of communicating and directly accessing the market and expected markets. Thus, communication forms the underbelly of any marketing strategy (Bryan & Farrell, 1996). The nature of social media is exemplified below.

Prominent Social Sites

According to Bodkin & Perry (2004), studies have shown prominent social networking sites that many firms use to conduct their direct marketing and for branding their products to include Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedln. Each of these sites provide the flexibility for the marketer to directly and interactively reach the client online without having using the traditional direct marketing strategy (Jantsch, n.d). Typically, these sites provide the platform for bloggers. Bloggers provide an environment and flexibility to allow readers make comments in the fabric of direct marketing (Ofcom Office of Communications, 2008). Typically, that allows people to access information about particular services and products using search engines hosted on the internet (Bryan & Farrell, 1996). Typically, Pagon and Quigley (2007) affirm that the blogger provides the flexibility used by the marketer to provide information online about a specific brand while making it possible to update content in different ways and to add content the appropriate site (French, 1997; Jantsch, n.d; Pitta & Fowler, 2005; Shih, 2009).

Usage Statistics

Statistical evidence shows that the sites mentioned above occupy a significant portion of the world market in terms of usage and access throughout the world. That said, estimates indicate a significant share of access on a daily basis to constitute 2.5 billion people on the daily basis with a typical example of a visit that was made to the sites constituting 2.5 million visitors in 2009 alone (Ofcom Office of Communications, 2008).

However, it is worth mentioning that the sites mentioned above are a little less accessed in terms of the number of visits in a year when compared with Google and yahoo being the most frequently visited sites in the world today. However, projections show that social media has provided such competition in terms of access rates compared with Google and yahoo. Typically, that results, hypothetically, in a rising trend in the use of social media and a marketing platform and powerful tool to enable the growth of business and the market position of any firm offering products and services to the target customers. It has been argued that if the revenue generated by these sites are compared with the income levels of different countries in the world, it is possible to rank social media with the equivalent of a fourth position in the income level of the rankling of all countries (French, 1997).

That gives a clear and distinct view of the level of usage of social media as an interactive platform being exploited by firms to conduct sales of their product and services online with the direct marketing strategy playing a significant underlying role. However, it is crucial to establish the approach used to access the market which has many characteristics. One such tool used as a direct marketing tool is blogging, in the current direct marketing approach (Jantsch, n.d). However, it is curial to note that social media for marketing purposes is characterized by blogging that ranges from shallow to deep engagements as illustrated in the diagram, below.

Usage Trend

While figure 2 above is true, the current marketing trend, bloggers contribute significantly to the current trend in direct marketing based on social media include the ability to provide pages to add content about a particular product or service, enable readers to interact directly with the marketer for different subscriptions, and search engines to enable content delivery directly to the target market audience (Dewey, 1975). Thus, marketers are able to directly access the customer and provide detailed descriptions about product content, context information about the market, and other market variations, and related information. In addition to that, other means of communicating with the customer interactively include social networking, and encouraging social search using social media as a tool that provides a rich ground for fulfilling a firm’s marketing objectives (Jantsch, n.d).

It is crucial to mention that firms are compelled to use social media as a platform for reaching the market characterized by different demographic distributions to attain their marketing objectives (Dewey, 1975). These objectives are wide and vary according to each firm’s marketing strategies and goals. It is however, worth mentioning some of the objectives, which include the need to spread marketing information, work with other firms that provide collaborative support in the growth of business, build a community of customers from around the world, and provide information about specific products and services to build strong brands (Jantsch, n.d).

Current Trends

Firms find it crucial to use social media as a direct marketing strategy based on the their projections on the return on investment, growth of revenue and particularly a focus on profits that provide firms with the financial health to remain in the market (Bryan & Farrell, 1996).

Statistical data showing the significance of social media as an important tool for direct marketing is evident with many firms. One of the successful examples which include CMO which has consistently used social media as a direct marketing strategy has shown significant revenue improvement. One of the strategies used by CMO to tap into the potential for online direct marketing included investing in social media and encouraging interactive marketing focusing more on the customer. “The survey was conducted among 133 CMOs in September 2009” (Jantsch, n.d). The “industries included software/hardware (17%), finance/insurance (9%)” (Jantsch, n.d). Typically, it included industries with respective percentages including “travel/hospitality (9%), media/publishing (9%), consumer goods (8%), and retail (7.5%), among others” (Jantsch, n.d). On the other hand, the “Annual revenues of CMO companies ranged from $6 to $50 million (25%), $51 to $999 million (42%), and more than $1 billion (23%)” (Bryan & Farrell, 1996). Thus, showing evidence of the growth in business for many of the firms engaged in online direct marketing (Jantsch, n.d).

Typical examples are shown in the chart below

Figure 1 shows typical current trends that demonstrate that many firms have been compelled to move toward embracing social media as a direct marketing strategy based on the benefits associated with the use of social media as a marketing platform. It is also evident that many of the firms have invested a significant amount of money to drive their marketing online to access the customers. Typically, many firms have experienced a rise in social spending with a rise in social tracking (Jantsch, n.d). It has been reported that “In 2009, the top metrics tracked for social media initiatives included site traffic (90%), number of page views (85%), and number of fans (83%). In 2010, CMOs expect top metrics to track more closely to P&L business goals, not just web-related goals.

The fastest-growing metrics for 2010 include revenue, conversion, and average order value, which grew 333%, 174%, and 150% respectively” (Weber, 2009). Thus, the current trends demonstrate a need to evaluate the differences between social media and traditional marketing strategies and the use of social media as direct marketing strategies firms have used (Bryan & Farrell, 1996). Other statistics that show the implications of using social media as a direct marketing strategy are summarized figure 2 below.

Traditional Marketing Strategies

Traditional direct marketing strategies provided marketing functions for the marketing of product and services to the intended customer. It is a strategy that targets one specific audience or market and focuses on the end user focusing on the use of the famous 4Ps. These 4Ps included an underlying concept defined by the price of a product, the specific place to sell the product or service, the promotional activities on the product or price, and the product characteristics. These were the underlying drivers characterizing traditional marketing. However, using social media as the current trend in direct marketing, one is convince of some modifications that the 4Ps are still significant factors in the new trend in direct marketing using social media with a radical departure demonstrated in the segmentation component used in the traditional marketing strategy. Typically, the different between traditional marketing and current trends using social media is in market segmentation (Bryan & Farrell, 1996). However, the marketing strategies to position products are summarized in diagram 5 below.

Segmentation

According to Day, Shocker & Srivastava (1979) and Crittenden, Crittenden and Muzyka (2002), segmentation (characterized by occupation, gender, income levels, economic determinants, family, media, product, psychographic lifestyle, pricing, geographic distributions, and morbidity) is a crucial component of the traditional marketing strategy (Dibb, Simpkin, Pride & Ferrell, 2001). Thus it is crucial to examine its role segmentation plays in traditional direct marketing as exemplified in figure 5 below.

Different studies have shown that segmentation draws on dividing a target market identified with a specific product into segments and sub-segments based on geographic, demographic distributions, market behavior, and psycho graphic characteristics (Griffith & Pol, 1994). Each segment is characterized by a given homogeneous behavior and with some sections of the market considered as niche markets. However, Green (1979) identifies a radical departure from the direct marketing strategy using the social media strategy as demonstrated in the type of research and investigations that are done before a product is launched (Jantsch, n.d). On the other hand, in social media, everyone is free to peruse through a catalogue of products and select from a range of products without the restrictions of a market segment (Green, 1979).

Thus, as opposed to traditional marketing where a product is produced and made available to the market, it is crucial to note without exception that using the social media as a direct marketing strategy does not lay emphasis on a particular product, but every product is disposed for the customer to select from a variety of products despite buyer characteristics (Bryan & Farrell, 1996; Goller, Hogg & Kalafatis, 2002). However that is typically, influenced by consumer charcteritics that are exemplified in figure 6 below.

Product and Parent Company

On the other hand, Dibb, Simpkin, Pride, & Ferrell (2001) provide an additional perspective by arguing that traditional marketing lays emphasis and focuses on a product and its parent company. Typically, that allows the producer of the product, that is the parent company control any emotional attachments developed by the customers toward a product. It is a company controlled strategy. Typically, the traditional marketing strategy draws on the 4Ps in marketing and marketing segmentation (Jantsch, n.d).

Research Methodology

Having conducted a literature review as a source of qualitative data, it was crucial to conduct a data collection and analysis of quantitative data using a number of tools to establish answers to the research study on using social media marketing strategy as a form of direct marketing, while establishing today’s emerging trends and tomorrow’s implications. Typically, that could answer the research questions as discussed in the findings and discussion sections. Among the tools to use are questionnaires and interviews that are discussed in the following sections.

Research Design

Based on the current study on the use of social media as a form of direct marketing strategy, samples use in the study were collected across the demographic divide of the cohort of internet users. The general characteristics of the demographic distribution the population that buys using social media (buyers), different gender, consumers from different backgrounds (including income levels, occupation, gender, and race) who are influenced by factors that influence buyer behaviour. The population sample corresponds to the number of questionnaires issued as shown in the data collection table in the next section.

On the other hand, it was deemed wise to ensure the samples used in the study were well represented in the study. That required the use of different techniques to identify specific characteristics of the samples that were desirable to be covered in the study. Different techniques were employed to ensure accurate and fair distribution and representations in the sampling frame. These included ensuring that each element with unique characteristics was included in the study. In addition to that, each element identified in the study has to be included in the frame to ensure fair representations.

Typically, both, qualitative and quantitative data collection methods were applied to collect and address data requirements for the study. Both types of data are characteristically different. A significant number of scientific research studies generally agree qualitative research to be highly subjective. Qualitative research is subjectively naturalistic and produces results that do not rely on statistical methods to collect and analyze. On the other hand, quantitative data should be assigned numerical values depending on the, measurement scale and area of application.

Another tool, identified for use in the study was interviews. Different people participated in the interviews. In addition to that, a wide range of issues were considered when administering interviews. It was however, important to keep information provided with confidentiality to ensure that their privacy was preserved as agreed prior to the interviews (Odendahl & Shaw, 2002). Among those presented in the interviews were bloggers, company personnel, marketing executives, and customers from different market segments. However, it was crucial to establish the validity of the interviews in providing reliable data for the current study. Typically, the reliability of interviews is based on the fidelity and perspectives of the interviewer.

The interviewers in this case are the researcher or aany team member recruited into the research team. The interviewers were people taken for training before commencing the data collection exercise. The bloggers, customers, marketing staff, other company executives, and other third parties directly or indirectly affected by the study were among the sources of data used in the study. Typically, the population using the internet or social media to sell or buyer products online were used to identify the problems and benefits associated with the use of social media as a direct marketing strategy. Thus, it is important to conclude that that a number of problems can be associated with the use of interviews as data gathering instruments.

Typically, different authors concur on different problems that interviews present as data gathering instruments (Odendahl & Shaw, 2002). One of the problems is persistence of record noted to occur in the same direction. The argument is that the interviewer is usually subject to the subjectivity of the subject to interview. In the current study, observations showed that the initial use of interviews registered validity problems with a high degree of persistence. The persistence problem noted included a biasness on the use of social media as a direct marketing strategy based on interviewee attitude toward the use of social media as a direct marketing strategy (Odendahl & Shaw, 2002).

Questionnaires

One of the critical tools used in the current study was a questionnaire. Questionnaires were administered on population that had been identified to capture the data critical to the study. Typically, data collection from the target population was characterized a range of elements that included interactivity of the social media, internet presence, and the response rates. Other items that were considered salient to the use of social media as a direct marketing strategy included features integrated into the social media sites that support interactivity and other functionalities, interactive use of the application, and the quality of input content. The data collected from the population identified in the study was critical to inform the study based on the elements that were used in the study (Odendahl & Shaw, 2002).

To obtain valid results, it was crucial to evaluate the questionnaire as a data-gathering tool to confirm its validity for use in the study. The questionnaire was identified as the most appropriate data-gathering tool for use in the study based on its relative advantage to the case under investigation. Among the benefits associated with the use of a questionnaire included its convenience in administering to the respondents.

Though questionnaires was the basic component in the study, interviews at various points were used to make significant contributions to the research in question. In addition to the use of interviews, document analysis formed additional backbone to the study as mentioned elsewhere in the paper. Questionnaires and interviews were used together to benefit from the synergy associated with using both tools in the acquisition of data.

Data Collection and Findings

Based on the above statistical data, one observes that a significant number of firms use the internet to conduct their marketing basically, employing social media as a marketing strategy. In addition to that, a significant number of people have shown a trend of purchasing product from the internet based on a statistical significance of the use of the internet in which many people use the internet as a communication tool due to the presence of the internet, in particular social media. There was a good response to questions, while it was crucial to note the significance of marketing communication as one of the underlying elements in attaining the marketing objective of accessing the market and specifically interactive access to the market.

However, from the study, it was clear that the current trend is for firms to invest a substantial amount of budget in interactively communicating with the client and ensure a significant amount of presence in the market today. On the other hand, it is crucial to note that firms have embraced a radical departure from the traditional marketing model involving the 4Ps characterized by market segmentation strategies, a concept that has been dropped with the advent and use of social media as a platform to implement and increase their presence in the market using the direct marketing strategy.

Thus, the trend is toward the use of social media as a direct marketing strategy for firms and a radical departure from the traditional direct marketing strategies. The future implications, based on the study can be deductively concluded that each firm intending to penetrate the market and acquire a significant share to gain sufficient profits must make their full presence on social media as an interactive media and platform to reach the widest audience on the internet in the world today. However, it is recommended that further research be conducted to identify the impact of uncertainties associated with making payments for goods that are never delivered to the customer.

Conclusions and Recommendations

It has been demonstrated based on data collected from various sources the impact and significance of social media as a direct marketing strategy that firms have increasingly adopted as the most feasible current marketing trend and strategy to use in direct marketing in the world today. The rationale for companies to adopt the marketing strategy based on a number of underlying reasons are significant with the current trend showing that firms have no option but to shift toward the use of social media as a direct marketing strategy to adopt. That has shown a radical departure from the traditional marketing strategies which focused on product, prices, promotion, and place with the underlying principle being market segmentation.

On the other hand, the strategy to use social media to market their services and products has enabled firms to radially depart from the traditional marketing strategies based on the significance of the presence of the internet, the benefits associated with the internet, and modern trends in marketing.

In addition to that, firms have shown significant increases in spending in direct marketing while other firms have shown an increase in revenue, superior brand presence, improved media performance in different forms of marketing with the aim of reaching and stimulating action and response from the customer, and a rapid increase in the use of social media as a platform for product offerings.

One can also conclude that social media provides a platform from different firms to gain market intelligence reports on marketing strategies other firms use to woe customers, and strategies to maintain customers and win more customers, with the ultimate goal of enhancing customer loyalty, brand positioning, and higher revenue generation. However, it is recommended that implications and future trend is that firms have to fully get into the internet and use social media as one of the best strategies of direct marketing.

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The following is one of the questionnaires administered on respondents with the aim of studying social media marketing strategy as a form of direct marketing, today’s emerging trends and tomorrow’s implications. This presents a sample of the questions administered on the respondents.

Dear Respondent

This questionnaire is solely meant exclusively for the purpose of this study and shall not be used for any other purpose whatsoever. Any information provided will be treated with utmost confidentiality and shall not be disclosed to any third party whatsoever, except at the express request of the respondent. Please take your time to answer the questions without any reservations whatsoever.

• What is your gender?
• Do you have direct access to the internet? Yes/No
• How often do you use the internet to communicate? Daily/Once a week/Once a month
• Do you use social media to communicate? Yes/No
• Do you use the internet to purchase products? Yes/No
• Do you use social media as your platform to purchase products? Yes/No
• Which of the social media is your most prominent site?
• Do you recommend one to buy products using social media? Yes/No
• What is your profession?
• Do you work for a business organization? Yes/No
• What position do you hold in the firm, if at all you work for the firm?
• How does your firm conduct its marketing ventures?
• Whom do they target most?
• Which kind of products and services does the firm offer for the target market?
• Which marketing strategy does your firm use to reach its target market?
• Does your firm use the internet to advertise their products and services?
• Does the firm use social media as a marketing strategy to reach its target market?
• What is the firm’s presence on social media?
• Does marketing on social media have any impact on revenue generation on the income of the firm?
• Which is the impact? Positive/Negative___________
• What is the long term marketing strategy adopted by the firm?
• Has the firm used traditional marketing strategies? Yes/No If yes, does it have plans to exit from that strategy?

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Likes, Shares, and Beyond: Exploring the Impact of Social Media in Essays

Table of contents

• 1 Definition and Explanation of a Social Media Essay
• 2.1 Topics for an Essay on Social Media and Mental Health
• 2.2 Social Dynamics
• 2.3 Social Media Essay Topics about Business
• 2.4 Politics
• 3 Research and Analysis
• 4 Structure Social Media Essay
• 5 Tips for Writing Essays on Social Media
• 6 Examples of Social Media Essays
• 7 Navigating the Social Media Labyrinth: Key Insights

In the world of digital discourse, our article stands as a beacon for those embarking on the intellectual journey of writing about social media. It is a comprehensive guide for anyone venturing into the dynamic world of social media essays. Offering various topics about social media and practical advice on selecting engaging subjects, the piece delves into research methodologies, emphasizing the importance of credible sources and trend analysis. Furthermore, it provides invaluable tips on structuring essays, including crafting compelling thesis statements and hooks balancing factual information with personal insights. Concluding with examples of exemplary essays, this article is an essential tool for students and researchers alike, aiding in navigating the intricate landscape of its impact on society.

Definition and Explanation of a Social Media Essay

Essentially, when one asks “What is a social media essay?” they are referring to an essay that analyzes, critiques, or discusses its various dimensions and effects. These essays can range from the psychological implications of its use to its influence on politics, business strategies, and social dynamics.

A social media essay is an academic or informational piece that explores various aspects of social networking platforms and their impact on individuals and society.

In crafting such an essay, writers blend personal experiences, analytical perspectives, and empirical data to paint a full picture of social media’s role. For instance, a social media essay example could examine how these platforms mold public opinion, revolutionize digital marketing strategies, or raise questions about data privacy ethics. Through a mix of thorough research, critical analysis, and personal reflections, these essays provide a layered understanding of one of today’s most pivotal digital phenomena.

Great Social Media Essay Topics

When it comes to selecting a topic for your essay, consider its current relevance, societal impact, and personal interest. Whether exploring the effects on business, politics, mental health, or social dynamics, these social media essay titles offer a range of fascinating social media topic ideas. Each title encourages an exploration of the intricate relationship between social media and our daily lives. A well-chosen topic should enable you to investigate the impact of social media, debate ethical dilemmas, and offer unique insights. Striking the right balance in scope, these topics should align with the objectives of your essays, ensuring an informative and captivating read.

Topics for an Essay on Social Media and Mental Health

• The Impact of Social Media on Self-Esteem.
• Unpacking Social Media Addiction: Causes, Effects, and Solutions.
• Analyzing Social Media’s Role as a Catalyst for Teen Depression and Anxiety.
• Social Media and Mental Health Awareness: A Force for Good?
• The Psychological Impacts of Cyberbullying in the Social Media Age.
• The Effects of Social Media on Sleep and Mental Health.
• Strategies for Positive Mental Health in the Era of Social Media.
• Real-Life vs. Social Media Interactions: An Essay on Mental Health Aspects.
• The Mental Well-Being Benefits of a Social Media Detox.
• Social Comparison Psychology in the Realm of Social Media.

Social Dynamics

• Social Media and its Impact on Interpersonal Communication Skills: A Cause and Effect Essay on Social Media.
• Cultural Integration through Social Media: A New Frontier.
• Interpersonal Communication in the Social Media Era: Evolving Skills and Challenges.
• Community Building and Social Activism: The Role of Social Media.
• Youth Culture and Behavior: The Influence of Social Media.
• Privacy and Personal Boundaries: Navigating Social Media Challenges.
• Language Evolution in Social Media: A Dynamic Shift.
• Leveraging Social Media for Social Change and Awareness.
• Family Dynamics in the Social Media Landscape.
• Friendship in the Age of Social Media: An Evolving Concept.

Social Media Essay Topics about Business

• Influencer Marketing on Social Media: Impact and Ethics.
• Brand Building and Customer Engagement: The Power of Social Media.
• The Ethics and Impact of Influencer Marketing in Social Media.
• Measuring Business Success Through Social Media Analytics.
• The Changing Face of Advertising in the Social Media World.
• Revolutionizing Customer Service in the Social Media Era.
• Market Research and Consumer Insights: The Social Media Advantage.
• Small Businesses and Startups: The Impact of Social Media.
• Ethical Dimensions of Social Media Advertising.
• Consumer Behavior and Social Media: An Intricate Relationship.
• The Role of Social Media in Government Transparency and Accountability
• Social Media’s Impact on Political Discourse and Public Opinion.
• Combating Fake News on Social Media: Implications for Democracy.
• Political Mobilization and Activism: The Power of Social Media.
• Social Media: A New Arena for Political Debates and Discussions.
• Government Transparency and Accountability in the Social Media Age.
• Voter Behavior and Election Outcomes: The Social Media Effect.
• Political Polarization: A Social Media Perspective.
• Tackling Political Misinformation on Social Media Platforms.
• The Ethics of Political Advertising in the Social Media Landscape.
• Memes as a Marketing Tool: Successes, Failures, and Pros of Social Media.
• Shaping Public Opinion with Memes: A Social Media Phenomenon.
• Political Satire and Social Commentary through Memes.
• The Psychology Behind Memes: Understanding Their Viral Nature.
• The Influence of Memes on Language and Communication.
• Tracing the History and Evolution of Internet Memes.
• Memes in Online Communities: Culture and Subculture Formation.
• Navigating Copyright and Legal Issues in the World of Memes.
• Memes as a Marketing Strategy: Analyzing Successes and Failures.
• Memes and Global Cultural Exchange: A Social Media Perspective.

Research and Analysis

In today’s fast-paced information era, the ability to sift through vast amounts of data and pinpoint reliable information is more crucial than ever. Research and analysis in the digital age hinge on identifying credible sources and understanding the dynamic landscape. Initiating your research with reputable websites is key. Academic journals, government publications, and established news outlets are gold standards for reliable information. Online databases and libraries provide a wealth of peer-reviewed articles and books. For websites, prioritize those with domains like .edu, .gov, or .org, but always critically assess the content for bias and accuracy. Turning to social media, it’s a trove of real-time data and trends but requires a discerning approach. Focus on verified accounts and official pages of recognized entities.

Analyzing current trends and user behavior is crucial for staying relevant. Platforms like Google Trends, Twitter Analytics, and Facebook Insights offer insights into what’s resonating with audiences. These tools help identify trending topics, hashtags, and the type of content that engages users. Remember, it reflects and influences public opinion and behavior. Observing user interactions, comments, and shares can provide a deeper understanding of consumer attitudes and preferences. This analysis is invaluable for tailoring content, developing marketing strategies, and staying ahead in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.

Structure Social Media Essay

In constructing a well-rounded structure for a social media essay, it’s crucial to begin with a strong thesis statement. This sets the foundation for essays about social media and guides the narrative.

Thesis Statements

A thesis statement is the backbone of your essay, outlining the main argument or position you will explore throughout the text. It guides the narrative, providing a clear direction for your essay and helping readers understand the focus of your analysis or argumentation. Here are some thesis statements:

• “Social media has reshaped communication, fostering a connected world through instant information sharing, yet it has come at the cost of privacy and genuine social interaction.”
• “While social media platforms act as potent instruments for societal and political transformation, they present significant challenges to mental health and the authenticity of information.”
• “The role of social media in contemporary business transcends mere marketing; it impacts customer relationships, shapes brand perception, and influences operational strategies.”

Social Media Essay Hooks

Social media essay hooks are pivotal in grabbing the reader’s attention right from the beginning and compelling them to continue reading. A well-crafted hook acts as the engaging entry point to your essay, setting the tone and framing the context for the discussion that will follow.

Here are some effective social media essay hooks:

• “In a world where a day without social media is unimaginable, its pervasive presence is both a testament to its utility and a source of various societal issues.”
• “Each scroll, like, and share on social media platforms carries the weight of influencing public opinion and shaping global conversations.”
• “Social media has become so ingrained in our daily lives that its absence would render the modern world unrecognizable.”

Introduction:

Navigating the digital landscape, an introduction for a social media essay serves as a map, charting the terrain of these platforms’ broad influence across various life aspects. This section should briefly summarize the scope of the essay, outlining both the benefits and the drawbacks, and segue into the thesis statement.

When we move to the body part of the essay, it offers an opportunity for an in-depth exploration and discussion. It can be structured first to examine the positive aspects of social media, including improved communication channels, innovative marketing strategies, and the facilitation of social movements. Following this, the essay should address the negative implications, such as issues surrounding privacy, the impact on mental health, and the proliferation of misinformation. Incorporating real-world examples, statistical evidence, and expert opinions throughout the essay will provide substantial support for the arguments presented.

Conclusion:

It is the summit of the essay’s exploration, offering a moment to look back on the terrain covered. The conclusion should restate the thesis in light of the discussions presented in the body. It should summarize the key points made, reflecting on the multifaceted influence of social media in contemporary society. The essay should end with a thought-provoking statement or question about the future role of social media, tying back to the initial hooks and ensuring a comprehensive and engaging end to the discourse.

Tips for Writing Essays on Social Media

In the ever-evolving realm of digital dialogue, mastering the art of essay writing on social media is akin to navigating a complex web of virtual interactions and influences. Writing an essay on social media requires a blend of analytical insight, factual accuracy, and a nuanced understanding of the digital landscape. Here are some tips to craft a compelling essay:

• Incorporate Statistical Data and Case Studies

Integrate statistical data and relevant case studies to lend credibility to your arguments. For instance, usage statistics, growth trends, and demographic information can provide a solid foundation for your points. Case studies, especially those highlighting its impact on businesses, politics, or societal change, offer concrete examples that illustrate your arguments. Ensure your sources are current and reputable to maintain the essay’s integrity.

• Balance Personal Insights with Factual Information

While personal insights can add a unique perspective to your essay, balancing them with factual information is crucial. Personal observations and experiences can make your essay relatable and engaging, but grounding these insights in factual data ensures credibility and helps avoid bias.

• Respect Privacy

When discussing real-world examples or case studies, especially those involving individuals or specific organizations, be mindful of privacy concerns. Avoid sharing sensitive information, and always respect the confidentiality of your sources.

• Maintain an Objective Tone

It is a polarizing topic, but maintaining an objective tone in your essay is essential. Avoid emotional language and ensure that your arguments are supported by evidence. An objective approach allows readers to form opinions based on the information presented.

• Use Jargon Wisely

While using social media-specific terminology can make your essay relevant and informed, it’s important to use jargon judiciously. Avoid overuse and ensure that terms are clearly defined for readers who might not be familiar with their lingo.

Examples of Social Media Essays

Title: The Dichotomy of Social Media: A Tool for Connection and a Platform for Division

Introduction

In the digital era, social media has emerged as a paradoxical entity. It serves as a bridge connecting distant corners of the world and a battleground for conflicting ideologies. This essay explores this dichotomy, utilizing statistical data, case studies, and real-world examples to understand its multifaceted impact on society.

Section 1 – Connection Through Social Media:

Social media’s primary allure lies in its ability to connect. A report by the Pew Research Center shows that 72% of American adults use some form of social media, where interactions transcend geographical and cultural barriers. This statistic highlights the platform’s popularity and role in fostering global connections. An exemplary case study of this is the #MeToo movement. Originating as a hashtag on Twitter, it grew into a global campaign against sexual harassment, demonstrating its power to mobilize and unify people for a cause.

However, personal insights suggest that while it bridges distances, it can also create a sense of isolation. Users often report feeling disconnected from their immediate surroundings, hinting at the platform’s double-edged nature. Despite enabling connections on a global scale, social media can paradoxically alienate individuals from their local context.

Section 2 – The Platform for Division

Conversely, social media can amplify societal divisions. Its algorithm-driven content can create echo chambers, reinforcing users’ preexisting beliefs. A study by the Knight Foundation found that it tends to polarize users, especially in political contexts, leading to increased division. This is further exacerbated by the spread of misinformation, as seen in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election case, where it was used to disseminate false information, influencing public opinion and deepening societal divides.

Respecting privacy and maintaining an objective tone, it is crucial to acknowledge that social media is not divisive. Its influence is determined by both its usage and content. Thus, it is the obligation of both platforms to govern content and consumers to access information.

In conclusion, it is a complex tool. It has the unparalleled ability to connect individuals worldwide while possessing the power to divide. Balancing the personal insights with factual information presented, it’s clear that its influence is a reflection of how society chooses to wield it. As digital citizens, it is imperative to use it judiciously, understanding its potential to unite and divide.

Delving into the intricacies of social media’s impact necessitates not just a keen eye for detail but an analytical mindset to dissect its multifaceted layers. Analysis is paramount because it allows us to navigate through the vast sea of information, distinguishing between mere opinion and well-supported argumentation.

This essay utilizes tips for writing a social media essay. Statistical data from the Pew Research Center and the Knight Foundation lend credibility to the arguments. The use of the #MeToo movement as a case study illustrates its positive impact, while the reference to the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election demonstrates its negative aspects. The essay balances personal insights with factual information, respects privacy, maintains an objective tone, and appropriately uses jargon. The structure is clear and logical, with distinct sections for each aspect of its impact, making it an informative and well-rounded analysis of its role in modern society.

Navigating the Social Media Labyrinth: Key Insights

In the digital age, the impact of social media on various aspects of human life has become a critical area of study. This article has provided a comprehensive guide for crafting insightful and impactful essays on this subject, blending personal experiences with analytical rigor. Through a detailed examination of topics ranging from mental health and social dynamics to business and politics, it has underscored the dual nature of social media as both a unifying and divisive force. The inclusion of statistical data and case studies has enriched the discussion, offering a grounded perspective on the nuanced effects of these platforms.

The tips and structures outlined serve as a valuable framework for writers to navigate the complex interplay between social media and societal shifts. As we conclude, it’s clear that understanding social media’s role requires a delicate balance of critical analysis and open-mindedness. Reflecting on its influence, this article guides the creation of thoughtful essays and encourages readers to ponder the future of digital interactions and their implications for the fabric of society.

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Feb 15, 2023

6 Example Essays on Social Media | Advantages, Effects, and Outlines

Got an essay assignment about the effects of social media we got you covered check out our examples and outlines below.

Social media has become one of our society's most prominent ways of communication and information sharing in a very short time. It has changed how we communicate and has given us a platform to express our views and opinions and connect with others. It keeps us informed about the world around us. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn have brought individuals from all over the world together, breaking down geographical borders and fostering a genuinely global community.

However, social media comes with its difficulties. With the rise of misinformation, cyberbullying, and privacy problems, it's critical to utilize these platforms properly and be aware of the risks. Students in the academic world are frequently assigned essays about the impact of social media on numerous elements of our lives, such as relationships, politics, and culture. These essays necessitate a thorough comprehension of the subject matter, critical thinking, and the ability to synthesize and convey information clearly and succinctly.

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So, whether you're a student looking to better your essay writing skills or want to remain up to date on the latest social media advancements, Jenni.ai is here to help. Jenni.ai is the ideal tool for helping you write your finest essay ever, thanks to its simple design, an extensive database of example essays, and cutting-edge AI technology. So, why delay? Sign up for a free trial of Jenni.ai today and begin exploring the worlds of social networking and essay writing!

Want to learn how to write an argumentative essay? Check out these inspiring examples!

We will provide various examples of social media essays so you may get a feel for the genre.

6 Examples of Social Media Essays

Here are 6 examples of Social Media Essays:

The Impact of Social Media on Relationships and Communication

Introduction:.

The way we share information and build relationships has evolved as a direct result of the prevalence of social media in our daily lives. The influence of social media on interpersonal connections and conversation is a hot topic. Although social media has many positive effects, such as bringing people together regardless of physical proximity and making communication quicker and more accessible, it also has a dark side that can affect interpersonal connections and dialogue.

Positive Effects:

Connecting People Across Distances

One of social media's most significant benefits is its ability to connect individuals across long distances. People can use social media platforms to interact and stay in touch with friends and family far away. People can now maintain intimate relationships with those they care about, even when physically separated.

Improved Communication Speed and Efficiency

Additionally, the proliferation of social media sites has accelerated and simplified communication. Thanks to instant messaging, users can have short, timely conversations rather than lengthy ones via email. Furthermore, social media facilitates group communication, such as with classmates or employees, by providing a unified forum for such activities.

Negative Effects:

Decreased Face-to-Face Communication

The decline in in-person interaction is one of social media's most pernicious consequences on interpersonal connections and dialogue. People's reliance on digital communication over in-person contact has increased along with the popularity of social media. Face-to-face interaction has suffered as a result, which has adverse effects on interpersonal relationships and the development of social skills.

Decreased Emotional Intimacy

Another adverse effect of social media on relationships and communication is decreased emotional intimacy. Digital communication lacks the nonverbal cues and facial expressions critical in building emotional connections with others. This can make it more difficult for people to develop close and meaningful relationships, leading to increased loneliness and isolation.

Increased Conflict and Miscommunication

Finally, social media can also lead to increased conflict and miscommunication. The anonymity and distance provided by digital communication can lead to misunderstandings and hurtful comments that might not have been made face-to-face. Additionally, social media can provide a platform for cyberbullying , which can have severe consequences for the victim's mental health and well-being.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, the impact of social media on relationships and communication is a complex issue with both positive and negative effects. While social media platforms offer many benefits, such as connecting people across distances and enabling faster and more accessible communication, they also have a dark side that can negatively affect relationships and communication. It is up to individuals to use social media responsibly and to prioritize in-person communication in their relationships and interactions with others.

The Role of Social Media in the Spread of Misinformation and Fake News

Social media has revolutionized the way information is shared and disseminated. However, the ease and speed at which data can be spread on social media also make it a powerful tool for spreading misinformation and fake news. Misinformation and fake news can seriously affect public opinion, influence political decisions, and even cause harm to individuals and communities.

The Pervasiveness of Misinformation and Fake News on Social Media

Misinformation and fake news are prevalent on social media platforms, where they can spread quickly and reach a large audience. This is partly due to the way social media algorithms work, which prioritizes content likely to generate engagement, such as sensational or controversial stories. As a result, false information can spread rapidly and be widely shared before it is fact-checked or debunked.

The Influence of Social Media on Public Opinion

Social media can significantly impact public opinion, as people are likelier to believe the information they see shared by their friends and followers. This can lead to a self-reinforcing cycle, where misinformation and fake news are spread and reinforced, even in the face of evidence to the contrary.

The Challenge of Correcting Misinformation and Fake News

Correcting misinformation and fake news on social media can be a challenging task. This is partly due to the speed at which false information can spread and the difficulty of reaching the same audience exposed to the wrong information in the first place. Additionally, some individuals may be resistant to accepting correction, primarily if the incorrect information supports their beliefs or biases.

In conclusion, the function of social media in disseminating misinformation and fake news is complex and urgent. While social media has revolutionized the sharing of information, it has also made it simpler for false information to propagate and be widely believed. Individuals must be accountable for the information they share and consume, and social media firms must take measures to prevent the spread of disinformation and fake news on their platforms.

The Effects of Social Media on Mental Health and Well-Being

Social media has become an integral part of modern life, with billions of people around the world using platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to stay connected with others and access information. However, while social media has many benefits, it can also negatively affect mental health and well-being.

Comparison and Low Self-Esteem

One of the key ways that social media can affect mental health is by promoting feelings of comparison and low self-esteem. People often present a curated version of their lives on social media, highlighting their successes and hiding their struggles. This can lead others to compare themselves unfavorably, leading to feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem.

Cyberbullying and Online Harassment

Another way that social media can negatively impact mental health is through cyberbullying and online harassment. Social media provides a platform for anonymous individuals to harass and abuse others, leading to feelings of anxiety, fear, and depression.

Social Isolation

Despite its name, social media can also contribute to feelings of isolation. At the same time, people may have many online friends but need more meaningful in-person connections and support. This can lead to feelings of loneliness and depression.

Addiction and Overuse

Finally, social media can be addictive, leading to overuse and negatively impacting mental health and well-being. People may spend hours each day scrolling through their feeds, neglecting other important areas of their lives, such as work, family, and self-care.

In sum, social media has positive and negative consequences on one's psychological and emotional well-being. Realizing this, and taking measures like reducing one's social media use, reaching out to loved ones for help, and prioritizing one's well-being, are crucial. In addition, it's vital that social media giants take ownership of their platforms and actively encourage excellent mental health and well-being.

The Use of Social Media in Political Activism and Social Movements

Social media has recently become increasingly crucial in political action and social movements. Platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram have given people new ways to express themselves, organize protests, and raise awareness about social and political issues.

Raising Awareness and Mobilizing Action

One of the most important uses of social media in political activity and social movements has been to raise awareness about important issues and mobilize action. Hashtags such as #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter, for example, have brought attention to sexual harassment and racial injustice, respectively. Similarly, social media has been used to organize protests and other political actions, allowing people to band together and express themselves on a bigger scale.

Connecting with like-minded individuals

A second method in that social media has been utilized in political activity and social movements is to unite like-minded individuals. Through social media, individuals can join online groups, share knowledge and resources, and work with others to accomplish shared objectives. This has been especially significant for geographically scattered individuals or those without access to traditional means of political organizing.

Challenges and Limitations

As a vehicle for political action and social movements, social media has faced many obstacles and restrictions despite its many advantages. For instance, the propagation of misinformation and fake news on social media can impede attempts to disseminate accurate and reliable information. In addition, social media corporations have been condemned for censorship and insufficient protection of user rights.

In conclusion, social media has emerged as a potent instrument for political activism and social movements, giving voice to previously unheard communities and galvanizing support for change. Social media presents many opportunities for communication and collaboration. Still, users and institutions must be conscious of the risks and limitations of these tools to promote their responsible and productive usage.

The Potential Privacy Concerns Raised by Social Media Use and Data Collection Practices

With billions of users each day on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, social media has ingrained itself into every aspect of our lives. While these platforms offer a straightforward method to communicate with others and exchange information, they also raise significant concerns over data collecting and privacy. This article will examine the possible privacy issues posed by social media use and data-gathering techniques.

Data Collection and Sharing

The gathering and sharing of personal data are significant privacy issues brought up by social media use. Social networking sites gather user data, including details about their relationships, hobbies, and routines. This information is made available to third-party businesses for various uses, such as marketing and advertising. This can lead to serious concerns about who has access to and uses our personal information.

Lack of Control Over Personal Information

The absence of user control over personal information is a significant privacy issue brought up by social media usage. Social media makes it challenging to limit who has access to and how data is utilized once it has been posted. Sensitive information may end up being extensively disseminated and may be used maliciously as a result.

Personalized Marketing

Social media companies utilize the information they gather about users to target them with adverts relevant to their interests and usage patterns. Although this could be useful, it might also cause consumers to worry about their privacy since they might feel that their personal information is being used without their permission. Furthermore, there are issues with the integrity of the data being used to target users and the possibility of prejudice based on individual traits.

Government Surveillance

Using social media might spark worries about government surveillance. There are significant concerns regarding privacy and free expression when governments in some nations utilize social media platforms to follow and monitor residents.

In conclusion, social media use raises significant concerns regarding data collecting and privacy. While these platforms make it easy to interact with people and exchange information, they also gather a lot of personal information, which raises questions about who may access it and how it will be used. Users should be aware of these privacy issues and take precautions to safeguard their personal information, such as exercising caution when choosing what details to disclose on social media and keeping their information sharing with other firms to a minimum.

The Ethical and Privacy Concerns Surrounding Social Media Use And Data Collection

Our use of social media to communicate with loved ones, acquire information, and even conduct business has become a crucial part of our everyday lives. The extensive use of social media does, however, raise some ethical and privacy issues that must be resolved. The influence of social media use and data collecting on user rights, the accountability of social media businesses, and the need for improved regulation are all topics that will be covered in this article.

Effect on Individual Privacy:

Social networking sites gather tons of personal data from their users, including delicate information like search history, location data, and even health data. Each user's detailed profile may be created with this data and sold to advertising or used for other reasons. Concerns regarding the privacy of personal information might arise because social media businesses can use this data to target users with customized adverts.

Additionally, individuals might need to know how much their personal information is being gathered and exploited. Data breaches or the unauthorized sharing of personal information with other parties may result in instances where sensitive information is exposed. Users should be aware of the privacy rules of social media firms and take precautions to secure their data.

Responsibility of Social Media Companies:

Social media firms should ensure that they responsibly and ethically gather and use user information. This entails establishing strong security measures to safeguard sensitive information and ensuring users are informed of what information is being collected and how it is used.

Many social media businesses, nevertheless, have come under fire for not upholding these obligations. For instance, the Cambridge Analytica incident highlighted how Facebook users' personal information was exploited for political objectives without their knowledge. This demonstrates the necessity of social media corporations being held responsible for their deeds and ensuring that they are safeguarding the security and privacy of their users.

Better Regulation Is Needed

There is a need for tighter regulation in this field, given the effect, social media has on individual privacy as well as the obligations of social media firms. The creation of laws and regulations that ensure social media companies are gathering and using user information ethically and responsibly, as well as making sure users are aware of their rights and have the ability to control the information that is being collected about them, are all part of this.

Additionally, legislation should ensure that social media businesses are held responsible for their behavior, for example, by levying fines for data breaches or the unauthorized use of personal data. This will provide social media businesses with a significant incentive to prioritize their users' privacy and security and ensure they are upholding their obligations.

In conclusion, social media has fundamentally changed how we engage and communicate with one another, but this increased convenience also raises several ethical and privacy issues. Essential concerns that need to be addressed include the effect of social media on individual privacy, the accountability of social media businesses, and the requirement for greater regulation to safeguard user rights. We can make everyone's online experience safer and more secure by looking more closely at these issues.

In conclusion, social media is a complex and multifaceted topic that has recently captured the world's attention. With its ever-growing influence on our lives, it's no surprise that it has become a popular subject for students to explore in their writing. Whether you are writing an argumentative essay on the impact of social media on privacy, a persuasive essay on the role of social media in politics, or a descriptive essay on the changes social media has brought to the way we communicate, there are countless angles to approach this subject.

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The future of social media in marketing

• Conceptual/Theoretical Paper
• Open access
• Published: 12 October 2019
• Volume 48 , pages 79–95, ( 2020 )

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• Gil Appel 1 ,
• Lauren Grewal 2 ,
• Rhonda Hadi 3 &
• Andrew T. Stephen 3 , 4  

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Social media allows people to freely interact with others and offers multiple ways for marketers to reach and engage with consumers. Considering the numerous ways social media affects individuals and businesses alike, in this article, the authors focus on where they believe the future of social media lies when considering marketing-related topics and issues. Drawing on academic research, discussions with industry leaders, and popular discourse, the authors identify nine themes, organized by predicted imminence (i.e., the immediate, near, and far futures), that they believe will meaningfully shape the future of social media through three lenses: consumer, industry, and public policy. Within each theme, the authors describe the digital landscape, present and discuss their predictions, and identify relevant future research directions for academics and practitioners.

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Introduction

Social media is used by billions of people around the world and has fast become one of the defining technologies of our time. Facebook, for example, reported having 2.38 billion monthly active users and 1.56 billion daily active users as of March 31, 2019 (Facebook 2019 ). Globally, the total number of social media users is estimated to grow to 3.29 billion users in 2022, which will be 42.3% of the world’s population (eMarketer 2018 ). Given the massive potential audience available who are spending many hours a day using social media across the various platforms, it is not surprising that marketers have embraced social media as a marketing channel. Academically, social media has also been embraced, and an extensive body of research on social media marketing and related topics, such as online word of mouth (WOM) and online networks, has been developed. Despite what academics and practitioners have studied and learned over the last 15–20 years on this topic, due to the fast-paced and ever-changing nature of social media—and how consumers use it—the future of social media in marketing might not be merely a continuation of what we have already seen. Therefore, we ask a pertinent question, what is the future of social media in marketing?

Addressing this question is the goal of this article. It is important to consider the future of social media in the context of consumer behavior and marketing, since social media has become a vital marketing and communications channel for businesses, organizations and institutions alike, including those in the political sphere. Moreover, social media is culturally significant since it has become, for many, the primary domain in which they receive vast amounts of information, share content and aspects of their lives with others, and receive information about the world around them (even though that information might be of questionable accuracy). Vitally, social media is always changing. Social media as we know it today is different than even a year ago (let alone a decade ago), and social media a year from now will likely be different than now. This is due to constant innovation taking place on both the technology side (e.g., by the major platforms constantly adding new features and services) and the user/consumer side (e.g., people finding new uses for social media) of social media.

What is social media?

Definitionally, social media can be thought of in a few different ways. In a practical sense, it is a collection of software-based digital technologies—usually presented as apps and websites—that provide users with digital environments in which they can send and receive digital content or information over some type of online social network. In this sense, we can think of social media as the major platforms and their features, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. We can also in practical terms of social media as another type of digital marketing channel that marketers can use to communicate with consumers through advertising. But we can also think of social media more broadly, seeing it less as digital media and specific technology services, and more as digital places where people conduct significant parts of their lives. From this perspective, it means that social media becomes less about the specific technologies or platforms, and more about what people do in these environments. To date, this has tended to be largely about information sharing, and, in marketing, often thought of as a form of (online) word of mouth (WOM).

Building on these definitional perspectives, and thinking about the future, we consider social media to be a technology-centric—but not entirely technological—ecosystem in which a diverse and complex set of behaviors, interactions, and exchanges involving various kinds of interconnected actors (individuals and firms, organizations, and institutions) can occur. Social media is pervasive, widely used, and culturally relevant. This definitional perspective is deliberately broad because we believe that social media has essentially become almost anything—content, information, behaviors, people, organizations, institutions—that can exist in an interconnected, networked digital environment where interactivity is possible. It has evolved from being simply an online instantiation of WOM behaviors and content/information creation and sharing. It is pervasive across societies (and geographic borders) and culturally prominent at both local and global levels.

Throughout the paper we consider many of the definitional and phenomenological aspects described above and explore their implications for consumers and marketing in order to address our question about the future of marketing-related social media. By drawing on academic research, discussions with industry leaders, popular discourse, and our own expertise, we present and discuss a framework featuring nine themes that we believe will meaningfully shape the future of social media in marketing. These themes by no means represent a comprehensive list of all emerging trends in the social media domain and include aspects that are both familiar in extant social media marketing literature (e.g., online WOM, engagement, and user-generated content) and emergent (e.g., sensory considerations in human-computer interaction and new types of unstructured data, including text, audio, images, and video). The themes we present were chosen because they capture important changes in the social media space through the lenses of important stakeholders, including consumers, industry/practice, and public policy.

In addition to describing the nature and consequences of each theme, we identify research directions that academics and practitioners may wish to explore. While it is infeasible to forecast precisely what the future has in store or to project these on a specific timeline, we have organized the emergent themes into three time-progressive waves, according to imminence of impact (i.e., the immediate, near, and far future). Before presenting our framework for the future of social media in marketing and its implications for research (and practice and policy), we provide a brief overview of where social media currently stands as a major media and marketing channel.

Social media at present

The current social media landscape has two key aspects to it. First are the platforms—major and minor, established and emerging—that provide the underlying technologies and business models making up the industry and ecosystem. Second are the use cases; i.e., how various kinds of people and organizations are using these technologies and for what purposes.

The rise of social media, and the manner in which it has impacted both consumer behavior and marketing practice, has largely been driven by the platforms themselves. Some readers might recall the “early days” of social media where social networking sites such as MySpace and Friendster were popular. These sites were precursors to Facebook and everything else that has developed over the last decade. Alongside these platforms, we continue to have other forms of social media such as messaging (which started with basic Internet Relay Chat services in the 1990s and the SMS text messaging built into early digital mobile telephone standards in the 2000s), and asynchronous online conversations arranged around specific topics of interest (e.g., threaded discussion forums, subreddits on Reddit). More recently, we have seen the rise of social media platforms where images and videos replace text, such as Instagram and Snapchat.

Across platforms, historically and to the present day, the dominant business model has involved monetization of users (audiences) by offering advertising services to anyone wishing to reach those audiences with digital content and marketing communications. Prior research has examined the usefulness of social media (in its various forms) for marketing purposes. For example, work by Trusov et al. ( 2009 ) and Stephen and Galak ( 2012 ) demonstrated that certain kinds of social interactions that now happen on social media (e.g., “refer a friend” features and discussions in online communities) can positively affect important marketing outcomes such as new customer acquisition and sales. More recently, the value of advertising on social media continues to be explored (e.g., Gordon et al. 2019 ), as well as how it interacts with other forms of media such as television (e.g., Fossen and Schweidel 2016 , 2019 ) and affects new product adoption through diffusion of information mechanisms (e.g., Hennig-Thurau et al. 2015 ).

Although the rise (and fall) of various kinds of social media platforms has been important for understanding the social media landscape, our contention is that understanding the current situation of social media, at least from a marketing perspective, lies more in what the users do on these platforms than the technologies or services offered by these platforms. Presently, people around the world use social media in its various forms (e.g., news feeds on Facebook and Twitter, private messaging on WhatsApp and WeChat, and discussion forums on Reddit) for a number of purposes. These can generally be categorized as (1) digitally communicating and socializing with known others, such as family and friends, (2) doing the same but with unknown others but who share common interests, and (3) accessing and contributing to digital content such as news, gossip, and user-generated product reviews.

All of these use cases are essentially WOM in one form or another. This, at least, is how marketing scholars have mainly characterized social media, as discussed by Lamberton and Stephen ( 2016 ). Indeed, online WOM has been—and, we contend, will continue to be—important in marketing (e.g., in the meta-analysis by Babić Rosario et al. 2016 the authors found, on average, a positive correlation between online WOM and sales). The present perspective on social media is that people use it for creating, accessing, and spreading information via WOM to various types of others, be it known “strong ties” or “weak ties” in their networks or unknown “strangers.” Some extant research has looked at social media from the WOM perspective of the consequences of the transmission of WOM (e.g., creating a Facebook post or tweeting) on others (e.g., Herhausen et al. 2019 ; Stephen and Lehmann 2016 ), the impact of the type of WOM content shared on others’ behavior (e.g., Villarroel Ordenes et al. 2017 ; Villarroel Ordenes et al. 2018 ), and on the motivations that drive consumer posting on social media, including considerations of status and self-presentation (e.g., Grewal et al. 2019 ; Hennig-Thurau et al. 2004 ; Hollenbeck and Kaikati 2012 ; Toubia and Stephen 2013 ; Wallace et al. 2014 ).

While this current characterization of WOM appears reasonable, it considers social media only from a communications perspective (and as a type of media channel). However, as social media matures, broader social implications emerge. To appropriately consider the future, we must expand our perspective beyond the narrow communicative aspects of social media and consider instead how consumers might use it. Hence, in our vision for the future of social media in marketing in the following sections, we attempt to present a more expansive perspective of what social media is (and will become) and explain why this perspective is relevant to marketing research and practice.

Overview of framework for the future of social media in marketing

In the following sections we present a framework for the immediate, near, and far future of social media in marketing when considering various relevant stakeholders. Themes in the immediate future represent those which already exist in the current marketplace, and that we believe will continue shaping the social media landscape. The near future section examines trends that have shown early signs of manifesting, and that we believe will meaningfully alter the social media landscape in the imminent future. Finally, themes designated as being in the far future represent more speculative projections that we deem capable of long-term influence on the future of social media. The next sections delve into each of the themes in Table 1 , organized around the predicted imminence of these theme’s importance to marketing (i.e., the immediate, near, and far futures).

The immediate future

To begin our discussion on the direction of social media, in this section, we highlight three themes that have surfaced in the current environment that we believe will continue to shape the social media landscape in the immediate future. These themes—omni-social presence, the rise of influencers, and trust and privacy concerns—reflect the ever-changing digital and social media landscape that we presently face. We believe that these different areas will influence a number of stakeholders such as individual social media users, firms and brands that utilize social media, and public policymakers (e.g., governments, regulators).

Omni-social presence

In its early days, social media activity was mostly confined to designated social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter (or their now-defunct precursors). However, a proliferation of websites and applications that primarily serve separate purposes have capitalized on the opportunity to embed social media functionality into their interfaces. Similarly, all major mobile and desktop operating systems have in-built social media integration (e.g., sharing functions built into Apple’s iOS). This has made social media pervasive and ubiquitous—and perhaps even omnipotent—and has extended the ecosystem beyond dedicated platforms.

Accordingly, consumers live in a world in which social media intersects with most aspects of their lives through digitally enabled social interactivity in such domains as travel (e.g., TripAdvisor), work (e.g., LinkedIn), food (e.g., Yelp), music (e.g., Spotify), and more. At the same time, traditional social media companies have augmented their platforms to provide a broader array of functionalities and services (e.g., Facebook’s marketplace, Chowdry 2018 ; WeChat’s payment system, Cheng 2017 ). These bidirectional trends suggest that the modern-day consumer is living in an increasingly “omni-social” world.

From a marketing perspective, the “omni-social” nature of the present environment suggests that virtually every part of a consumer’s decision-making process is prone to social media influence. Need recognition might be activated when a consumer watches their favorite beauty influencer trying a new product on YouTube. A consumer shopping for a car might search for information by asking their Facebook friends what models they recommend. A hungry employee might sift through Yelp reviews to evaluate different lunch options. A traveler might use Airbnb to book future accommodation. Finally, a highly dissatisfied (or delighted) airline passenger might rant (rave) about their experience on Twitter. While the decision-making funnel is arguably growing flatter than the aforementioned examples would imply (Cortizo-Burgess 2014 ), these independent scenarios illustrate that social media has the propensity to influence the entire consumer-decision making process, from beginning to end.

Finally, perhaps the greatest indication of an “omni-social” phenomenon is the manner in which social media appears to be shaping culture itself. YouTube influencers are now cultural icons, with their own TV shows (Comm 2016 ) and product lines (McClure 2015 ). Creative content in television and movies is often deliberately designed to be “gifable” and meme-friendly (Bereznak 2018 ). “Made-for-Instagram museums” are encouraging artistic content and experiences that are optimized for selfie-taking and posting (Pardes 2017 ). These examples suggest that social media’s influence is hardly restricted to the “online” world (we discuss the potential obsolescence of this term later in this paper), but is rather consistently shaping cultural artifacts (television, film, the arts) that transcend its traditional boundaries. We believe this trend will continue to manifest, perhaps making the term “social media” itself out-of-date, as it’s omni-presence will be the default assumption for consumers, businesses, and artists in various domains.

This omni-social trend generates many questions to probe in future research. For example, how will social interactivity influence consumer behavior in areas that had traditionally been non-social? From a practitioner lens, it might also be interesting to explore how marketers can strategically address the flatter decision-making funnel that social media has enabled, and to examine how service providers can best alter experiential consumption when anticipating social media sharing behavior.

The rise of new forms of social influence (and influencers)

The idea of using celebrities (in consumer markets) or well-known opinion leaders (in business markets), who have a high social value, to influence others is a well-known marketing strategy (Knoll and Matthes 2017 ). However, the omnipresence of social media has tremendously increased the accessibility and appeal of this approach. For example, Selena Gomez has over 144 million followers on Instagram that she engages with each of her posts. In 2018, the exposure of a single photo shared by her was valued at $3.4 million (Maxim 2018 ). However, she comes at a high price: one post that Selena sponsors for a brand can cost upwards of $800,000 (Mejia 2018 ). However, putting high valuations on mere online exposures or collecting “likes” for specific posts can be somewhat speculative, as academic research shows that acquiring “likes” on social media might have no effect on consumers’ attitudes or behaviors (John et al. 2017 ; Mochon et al. 2017 ). Moreover, Hennig-Thurau et al. ( 2015 ), show that while garnering positive WOM has little to no effect on consumer preferences, negative WOM can have a negative effect on consumer preferences.

While celebrities like Selena Gomez are possible influencers for major brands, these traditional celebrities are so expensive that smaller brands have begun, and will continue to, capitalize on the popularity and success of what are referred to as “micro-influencers,” representing a new form of influencers. Micro-influencers are influencers who are not as well-known as celebrities, but who have strong and enthusiastic followings that are usually more targeted, amounting anywhere between a few thousand to hundreds of thousands of followers (Main 2017 ). In general, these types of influencers are considered to be more trustworthy and authentic than traditional celebrities, which is a major reason influencer marketing has grown increasingly appealing to brands (Enberg 2018 ). These individuals are often seen as credible “experts” in what they post about, encouraging others to want to view the content they create and engage with them. Furthermore, using these influencers allows the brand via first person narration (compared to ads), which is considered warmer and more personal, and was shown to be more effective in engaging consumers (Chang et al. 2019 ).

Considering the possible reach and engagement influencers command on social media, companies have either begun embracing influencers on social media, or plan to expand their efforts in this domain even more. For example, in recent conversations we had with social media executives, several of them stated the growing importance of influencers and mentioned how brands generally are looking to incorporate influencer marketing into their marketing strategies. Further, recent conversations with executives at some globally leading brands suggest that influencer marketing spending by big brands continues to rise.

While influencer marketing on social media is not new, we believe it has a lot of potential to develop further as an industry. In a recent working paper, Duani et al. ( 2018 ) show that consumers enjoy watching a live experience much more and for longer time periods than watching a prerecorded one. Hence, we think live streaming by influencers will continue to grow, in broad domains as well as niche ones. For example, streaming of video game playing on Twitch, a platform owned by Amazon, may still be niche but shows no signs of slowing down. However, live platforms are limited by the fact that the influencers, being human, need to sleep and do other activities offline. Virtual influencers (i.e., “CGI” influencers that look human but are not), on the other hand, have no such limitations. They never get tired or sick, they do not even eat (unless it is needed for a campaign). Some brands have started exploring the use of virtual influencers (Nolan 2018 ), and we believe that in coming years, along with stronger computing power and artificial intelligence algorithms, virtual influencers will become much more prominent on social media, being able to invariably represent and act on brand values and engage with followers anytime.

There are many interesting future research avenues to consider when thinking about the role of influencers on social media. First, determining what traits and qualities (e.g., authenticity, trust, credibility, and likability) make sponsored posts by a traditional celebrity influencer, versus a micro-influencer, or even compared to a CGI influencer, more or less successful is important to determine for marketers. Understanding whether success has to do with the actual influencer’s characteristics, the type of content being posted, whether content is sponsored or not, and so on, are all relevant concerns for companies and social media platforms when determining partnerships and where to invest effort in influencers. In addition, research can focus on understanding the appeal of live influencer content, and how to successfully blend influencer content with more traditional marketing mix approaches.

Privacy concerns on social media

Consumer concerns regarding data privacy, and their ability to trust brands and platforms are not new (for a review on data privacy see Martin and Murphy 2017 ). Research in marketing and related disciplines has examined privacy and trust concerns from multiple angles and using different definitions of privacy. For example, research has focused on the connections between personalization and privacy (e.g., Aguirre et al. 2015 ; White et al. 2008 ), the relationship of privacy as it relates to consumer trust and firm performance (e.g., Martin 2018 ; Martin et al. 2017 ), and the legal and ethical aspects of data and digital privacy (e.g., Culnan and Williams 2009 ; Nill and Aalberts 2014 ). Despite this topic not seeming novel, the way consumers, brands, policy makers, and social media platforms are all adjusting and adapting to these concerns are still in flux and without clear resolution.

Making our understanding of privacy concerns even less straightforward is the fact that, across extant literature, a clear definition of privacy is hard to come by. In one commentary on privacy, Stewart ( 2017 ), defined privacy as “being left alone,” as this allows an individual to determine invasions of privacy. We build from this definition of privacy to speculate on a major issue in privacy and trust moving forward. Specifically, how consumers are adapting and responding to the digital world, where “being left alone” isn’t possible. For example, while research has shown benefits to personalization tactics (e.g., Chung et al. 2016 ), with eroding trust in social platforms and brands that advertise through them, many consumers would rather not share data and privacy for a more personalized experiences, are uncomfortable with their purchases being tracked and think it should be illegal for brands to be able to buy their data (Edelman 2018 ). These recent findings seem to be in conflict with previously established work on consumer privacy expectations. Therefore, understanding if previously studied factors that mitigated the negative effects of personalization (e.g., perceived utility; White et al. 2008 ) are still valued by consumers in an ever-changing digital landscape is essential for future work.

In line with rising privacy concerns, the way consumers view brands and social media is becoming increasingly negative. Consumers are deleting their social media presence, where research has shown that nearly 40% of digitally connected individuals admitted to deleting at least one social media account due to fears of their personal data being mishandled (Edelman 2018 ). This is a negative trend not only for social media platforms, but for the brands and advertisers who have grown dependent on these avenues for reaching consumers. Edelman found that nearly half of the surveyed consumers believed brands to be complicit in negative aspects of content on social media such as hate speech, inappropriate content, or fake news (Edelman 2018 ). Considering that social media has become one of the best places for brands to engage with consumers, build relationships, and provide customer service, it’s not only in the best interest of social media platforms to “do better” in terms of policing content, but the onus of responsibility has been placed on brands to advocate for privacy, trust, and the removal of fake or hateful content.

Therefore, to combat these negative consumer beliefs, changes will need to be made by everyone who benefits from consumer engagement on social media. Social media platforms and brands need to consider three major concerns that are eroding consumer trust: personal information, intellectual property and information security (Information Technology Faculty 2018 ). Considering each of these concerns, specific actions and initiatives need to be taken for greater transparency and subsequent trust. We believe that brands and agencies need to hold social media accountable for their actions regarding consumer data (e.g., GDPR in the European Union) for consumers to feel “safe” and “in control,” two factors shown necessary in cases of privacy concerns (e.g., Tucker 2014 ; Xu et al. 2012 ). As well, brands need to establish transparent policies regarding consumer data in a way that recognizes the laws, advertising restrictions, and a consumer’s right to privacy (a view shared by others; e.g., Martin et al. 2017 ). All of this is managerially essential for brands to engender feelings of trust in the increasingly murky domain of social media.

Future research can be conducted to determine consumer reactions to different types of changes and policies regarding data and privacy. As well, another related and important direction for future research, will be to ascertain the spillover effects of distrust on social media. Specifically, is all content shared on social media seen as less trustworthy if the platform itself is distrusted? Does this extend to brand messages displayed online? Is there a negative spillover effect to other user-generated content shared through these platforms?

The near future

In the previous section, we discussed three areas where we believe social media is immediately in flux. In this section, we identify three trends that have shown early signs of manifesting, and which we believe will meaningfully alter the social media landscape in the near, or not-too-distant, future. Each of these topics impact the stakeholders we mentioned when discussing the immediate social media landscape.

Combatting loneliness and isolation

Social media has made it easier to reach people. When Facebook was founded in 2004, their mission was “to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together... use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what’s going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them” (Facebook 2019 ). Despite this mission, and the reality that users are more “connected” to other people than ever before, loneliness and isolation are on the rise. Over the last fifty years in the U.S., loneliness and isolation rates have doubled, with Generation Z considered to be the loneliest generation (Cigna 2018 ). Considering these findings with the rise of social media, is the fear that Facebook is interfering with real friendships and ironically spreading the isolation it was designed to conquer something to be considered about (Marche 2012 )?

The role of social media in this “loneliness epidemic” is being hotly debated. Some research has shown that social media negatively impacts consumer well-being. Specifically, heavy social media use has been associated with higher perceived social isolation, loneliness, and depression (Kross et al. 2013 ; Primack et al. 2017 ; Steers et al. 2014 ). Additionally, Facebook use has been shown to be negatively correlated with consumer well-being (Shakya and Christakis 2017 ) and correlational research has shown that limiting social media use to 10 min can decrease feelings of loneliness and depression due to less FOMO (e.g., “fear of missing out;” Hunt et al. 2018 ).

On the other hand, research has shown that social media use alone is not a predictor of loneliness as other factors have to be considered (Cigna 2018 ; Kim et al. 2009 ). In fact, while some research has shown no effect of social media on well-being (Orben et al. 2019 ), other research has shown that social media can benefit individuals through a number of different avenues such as teaching and developing socialization skills, allowing greater communication and access to a greater wealth of resources, and helping with connection and belonging (American Psychological Association 2011 ; Baker and Algorta 2016 ; Marker et al. 2018 ). As well, a working paper by Crolic et al. ( 2019 ) argues that much of the evidence of social media use on consumer well-being is of questionable quality (e.g., small and non-representative samples, reliance on self-reported social media use), and show that some types of social media use are positively associated with psychological well-being over time.

Managerially speaking, companies are beginning to respond as a repercussion of studies highlighting a negative relationship between social media and negative wellbeing. For example, Facebook has created “time limit” tools (mobile operating systems, such as iOS, now also have these time-limiting features). Specifically, users can now check their daily times, set up reminder alerts that pop up when a self-imposed amount of time on the apps is hit, and there is the option to mute notifications for a set period of time (Priday 2018 ). These different features seem well-intentioned and are designed to try and give people a more positive social media experience. Whether these features will be used is unknown.

Future research can address whether or not consumers will use available “timing” tools on one of many devices in which their social media exists (i.e., fake self-policing) or on all of their devices to actually curb behavior. It could also be the case that users will actually spend less time on Facebook and Instagram, but possibly spend that extra time on other competing social media platforms, or attached to devices, which theoretically will not help combat loneliness. Understanding how (and which) consumers use these self-control tools and how impactful they are is a potentially valuable avenue for future research.

One aspect of social media that has yet to be considered in the loneliness discussion through empirical measures, is the quality of use (versus quantity). Facebook ads have begun saying, “The best part of Facebook isn’t on Facebook. It’s when it helps us get together” (Facebook 2019 ). There have been discussions around the authenticity of this type of message, but at its core, in addition to promoting quantity differences, it’s speaking to how consumers use the platform. Possibly, to facilitate this message, social media platforms will find new ways to create friend suggestions between individuals who not only share similar interests and mutual friends to facilitate in-person friendships (e.g., locational data from the mobile app service). Currently there are apps that allow people to search for friends that are physically close (e.g., Bumble Friends), and perhaps social media will go in this same direction to address the loneliness epidemic and stay current.

Future research can examine whether the quantity of use, types of social media platforms, or the way social media is used causally impacts perceived loneliness. Specifically, understanding if the negative correlations found between social media use and well-being are due to the demographics of individuals who use a lot of social media, the way social media works, or the way users choose to engage with the platform will be important for understanding social media’s role (or lack of role) in the loneliness epidemic.

Integrated customer care

Customer care via digital channels as we know it is going to change substantially in the near future. To date, many brands have used social media platforms as a place for providing customer care, addressing customers’ specific questions, and fixing problems. In the future, social media-based customer care is expected to become even more customized, personalized, and ubiquitous. Customers will be able to engage with firms anywhere and anytime, and solutions to customers’ problems will be more accessible and immediate, perhaps even pre-emptive using predictive approaches (i.e., before a customer even notices an issue or has a question pop into their mind).

Even today, we observe the benefits that companies gain from connecting with customers on social media for service- or care-related purposes. Customer care is implemented in dedicated smartphone apps and via direct messaging on social media platforms. However, it appears that firms want to make it even easier for customers to connect with them whenever and wherever they might need. Requiring a customer to download a brand specific app or to search through various social media platforms to connect with firms through the right branded account on a platform can be a cumbersome process. In those cases, customers might instead churn or engage in negative WOM, instead of connecting with the firm to bring up any troubles they might have.

The near future of customer care on social media appears to be more efficient and far-reaching. In a recent review on the future of customer relationship management, Haenlein ( 2017 ) describes “invisible CRM” as future systems that will make customer engagement simple and accessible for customers. New platforms have emerged to make the connection between customer and firm effortless. Much of this is via instant messaging applications for businesses, which several leading technology companies have recently launched as business-related features in existing platforms (e.g., contact business features in Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp or Apple’s Business Chat).

These technologies allow businesses to directly communicate via social media messaging services with their customers. Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google are in the process, or have already released early versions of such platforms (Dequier 2018 ). Customers can message a company, ask them questions, or even order products and services through the messaging system, which is often built around chatbots and virtual assistants. This practice is expected to become more widespread, especially because it puts brands and companies into the social media messaging platforms their customers already use to communicate with others, it provides quicker—even instantaneous—responses, is economically scalable through the use of AI-driven chatbots, and, despite the use of chatbots, can provide a more personalized level of customer service.

Another area that companies will greatly improve upon is data collection and analysis. While it is true that data collection on social media is already pervasive today, it is also heavily scrutinized. However, we believe that companies will adapt to the latest regulation changes (e.g., GDPR in Europe, CCPA in California) and improve on collecting and analyzing anonymized data (Kakatkar and Spann 2018 ). Furthermore, even under these new regulations, personalized data collection is still allowed, but severely limits firm’s abilities to exploit consumers’ data, and requires their consent for data collection.

We believe that in the future, companies will be able recognize early indications of problems within customer chatter, behavior, or even physiological data (e.g., monitoring the sensors in our smart watches) before customers themselves even realize they are experiencing a problem. For example, WeWork, the shared workspace company, collects data on how workers move and act in a workspace, building highly personalized workspaces based on trends in the data. Taking this type of approach to customer care will enable “seamless service,” where companies would be able to identify and address consumer problems when they are still small and scattered, and while only a small number of customers are experiencing problems. Customer healthcare is a pioneer in this area, where using twitter and review sites were shown to predict poor healthcare quality (Greaves et al. 2013 ), listen to patients to analyze trending terms (Baktha et al. 2017 ; Padrez et al. 2016 ), or even predict disease outbreaks (Schmidt 2012 ).

Companies, wanting to better understand and mimic human interactions, will invest a lot of R&D efforts into developing better Natural Language Processing, voice and image recognition, emotional analysis, and speech synthesis tools (Sheth 2017 ). For example, Duplex, Google’s latest AI assistant, can already call services on its own and seamlessly book reservations for their users (Welch 2018 ). In the future, AI systems will act as human ability augmenters, allowing us to accomplish more, in less time, and better results (Guszcza 2018 ).

For marketers, this will reduce the need for call centers and agents, reducing points of friction in service and increasing the convenience for customers (Kaplan and Haenlein 2019 ). However, some raise the question that the increased dependence on automation may result in a loss of compassion and empathy. In a recent study, Force (2018) shows that interacting with brands on social media lowered people’s empathy. In response to such concerns, and to educate and incentivize people to interact with machines in a similar way they do with people, Google programmed their AI assistant to respond in a nicer way if you use a polite, rather than a commanding approach (Kumparak 2018 ). While this might help, more research is needed to understand the effect of an AI rich world on human behavior. As well, future research can examine how consumer generated data can help companies preemptively predict consumer distress. Another interesting path for research would be to better understand the difference in consumer engagement between the various platforms, and the long-term effects of service communications with non-human AI and IoT.

Social media as a political tool

Social media is a platform to share thoughts and opinions. This is especially true in the case of disseminating political sentiments. Famously, President Barack Obama’s victory in the 2008 election was partially attributed to his ability to drive and engage voters on social media (Carr 2008 ). Indeed, Bond et al. ( 2012 ) have shown that with simple interventions, social media platforms can increase targeted audiences’ likelihood of voting. Social media is considered one of the major drivers of the 2010 wave of revolutions in Arab countries, also known as the Arab Spring (Brown et al. 2012 ).

While social media is not new to politics, we believe that social media is transitioning to take a much larger role as a political tool in the intermediate future. First evidence for this could be seen in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, as social media took on a different shape, with many purported attempts to influence voter’s opinions, thoughts, and actions. This is especially true for then-candidate and now-President Donald Trump. His use of Twitter attracted a lot of attention during the campaign and has continued to do so during his term in office. Yet, he is not alone, and many politicians changed the way they work and interact with constituents, with a recent example of Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that even ran a workshop for fellow congress members on social media (Dwyer 2019 ).

While such platforms allow for a rapid dissemination of ideas and concepts (Bonilla and Rosa 2015 ; Bode 2016 ), there are some, both in academia and industry that have raised ethical concerns about using social media for political purposes. Given that people choose who to follow, this selective behavior is said to potentially create echo chambers, wherein, users are exposed only to ideas by like-minded people, exhibiting increased political homophily (Bakshy et al. 2015 ). People’s preference to group with like-minded people is not new. Social in-groups have been shown to promote social identification and promote in-group members to conform to similar ideas (Castano et al. 2002 ; Harton and Bourgeois 2004 ). Furthermore, it was also shown that group members strongly disassociate and distance themselves from outgroup members (Berger and Heath 2008 ; White and Dahl 2007 ). Thus, it is not surprising to find that customized newsfeeds within social media exacerbate this problem by generating news coverage that is unique to specific users, locking them in their purported echo chambers (Oremus 2016 ).

While social media platforms admit that echo chambers could pose a problem, a solution is not clear (Fiegerman 2018 ). One reason that echo chambers present such a problem, is their proneness to fake news. Fake news are fabricated stories that try to disguise themselves as authentic content, in order to affect other social media users. Fake news was widely used in the 2016 U.S. elections, with accusations that foreign governments, such as Iran and Russia, were using bots (i.e., online automatic algorithms), to spread falsified content attacking Hillary Clinton and supporting President Trump (Kelly et al. 2018 ). Recent research has furthermore shown how the Chinese government strategically uses millions of online comments to distract the Chinese public from discussing sensitive issues and promote nationalism (King et al. 2017 ). In their latest incarnation, fake news uses an advanced AI technique called “Deep Fake” to generate ultra-realistic forged images and videos of political leaders while manipulating what those leaders say (Schwartz 2018 ). Such methods can easily fool even the sharpest viewer. In response, research has begun to explore ways that social media platforms can combat fake news through algorithms that determine the quality of shared content (e.g., Pennycook and Rand 2019 ).

One factor that has helped the rise of fake news is echo chambers. This occurs as the repeated sharing of fake news by group members enhance familiarity and support (Schwarz and Newman 2017 ). Repetition of such articles by bots can only increase that effect. Recent research has shown that in a perceived social setting, such as social media, participants were less likely to fact-check information (Jun et al. 2017 ), and avoided information that didn’t fit well with their intuition (Woolley and Risen 2018 ). Schwarz and Newman ( 2017 ) state that misinformation might be difficult to correct, especially if the correction is not issued immediately and the fake news has already settled into the minds of users. It was also shown that even a single exposure to fake news can create long term effect on users, making their effect larger than previously thought (Pennycook et al. 2019 ).

Notably, some research has found that exposure to opposing views (i.e., removing online echo chambers) may in fact increase (versus decrease) polarization (Bail et al. 2018 ). Accordingly, more work from policy makers, businesses, and academics is needed to understand and potentially combat political extremism. For example, policy makers and social media platforms will continually be challenged to fight “fake news” without censoring free speech. Accordingly, research that weighs the risk of limited freedom of expression versus the harms of spreading fake news would yield both theoretical and practically meaningful insights.

The far future

In this section, we highlight three emerging trends we believe will have a have long-term influence on the future of social media. Note that although we label these trends as being in the “far” future, many of the issues described here are already present or emerging. However, they represent more complex issues that we believe will take longer to address and be of mainstream importance for marketing than the six issues discussed previously under the immediate and near futures.

Increased sensory richness

In its early days, the majority of social media posts (e.g., on Facebook, Twitter) were text. Soon, these platforms allowed for the posting of pictures and then videos, and separate platforms dedicated themselves to focus on these specific forms of media (e.g., Instagram and Pinterest for pictures, Instagram and SnapChat for short videos). These shifts have had demonstrable consequences on social media usage and its consequences as some scholars suggest that image-based posts convey greater social presence than text alone (e.g., Pittman and Reich 2016 ). Importantly however, a plethora of new technologies in the market suggest that the future of social media will be more sensory-rich.

One notable technology that has already started infiltrating social media is augmented reality (AR). Perhaps the most recognizable examples of this are Snapchat’s filters, which use a device’s camera to superimpose real-time visual and/or video overlays on people’s faces (including features such as makeup, dog ears, etc.). The company has even launched filters to specifically be used on users’ cats (Ritschel 2018 ). Other social media players quickly joined the AR bandwagon, including Instagram’s recent adoption of AR filters (Rao 2017 ) and Apple’s Memoji messaging (Tillman 2018 ). This likely represents only the tip of the iceberg, particularly given that Facebook, one of the industry’s largest investors in AR technology, has confirmed it is working on AR glasses (Constine 2018 ). Notably, the company plans to launch a developer platform, so that people can build augmented-reality features that live inside Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Whatsapp (Wagner 2017 ). These developments are supported by academic research suggesting that AR often provides more authentic (and hence positive) situated experiences (Hilken et al. 2017 ). Accordingly, whether viewed through glasses or through traditional mobile and tablet devices, the future of social media is likely to look much more visually augmented.

While AR allows users to interact within their current environments, virtual reality (VR) immerses the user in other places, and this technology is also likely to increasingly permeate social media interactions. While the Facebook-owned company Oculus VR has mostly been focusing on the areas of immersive gaming and film, the company recently announced the launch of Oculus Rooms where users can spend time with other users in a virtual world (playing games together, watching media together, or just chatting; Wagner 2018 ). Concurrently, Facebook Spaces allows friends to meet online in virtual reality and similarly engage with one another, with the added ability to share content (e.g., photos) from their Facebook profiles (Whigham 2018 ). In both cases, avatars are customized to represent users within the VR-created space. As VR technology is becoming more affordable and mainstream (Colville 2018 ) we believe social media will inevitably play a role in the technology’s increasing usage.

While AR and VR technologies bring visual richness, other developments suggest that the future of social media might also be more audible. A new player to the social media space, HearMeOut, recently introduced a platform that enables users to share and listen to 42-s audio posts (Perry 2018 ). Allowing users to use social media in a hands-free and eyes-free manner not only allows them to safely interact with social media when multitasking (particularly when driving), but voice is also said to add a certain richness and authenticity that is often missing from mere text-based posts (Katai 2018 ). Given that podcasts are more popular than ever before (Bhaskar 2018 ) and voice-based search queries are the fastest-growing mobile search type (Robbio 2018 ), it seems likely that this communication modality will accordingly show up more on social media use going forward.

Finally, there are early indications that social media might literally feel different in the future. As mobile phones are held in one’s hands and wearable technology is strapped onto one’s skin, companies and brands are exploring opportunities to communicate to users through touch. Indeed, haptic feedback (technology that recreates the sense of touch by applying forces, vibrations, or motions to the user; Brave et al. 2001 ) is increasingly being integrated into interfaces and applications, with purposes that go beyond mere call or message notifications. For example, some companies are experimenting with integrating haptics into media content (e.g., in mobile ads for Stoli vodka, users feel their phone shake as a woman shakes a cocktail; Johnson 2015 ), mobile games, and interpersonal chat (e.g., an app called Mumble! translates text messages into haptic outputs; Ozcivelek 2015 ). Given the high levels of investment into haptic technology (it is predicted to be a $20 billion industry by 2022; Magnarelli 2018 ) and the communicative benefits that stem from haptic engagement (Haans and IJsselsteijn 2006 ), we believe it is only a matter of time before this modality is integrated into social media platforms.

Future research might explore how any of the new sensory formats mentioned above might alter the nature of content creation and consumption. Substantively-focused researchers might also investigate how practitioners can use these tools to enhance their offerings and augment their interactions with customers. It is also interesting to consider how such sensory-rich formats can be used to bridge the gap between the online and offline spaces, which is the next theme we explore.

Online/offline integration and complete convergence

A discussion occurring across industry and academia is on how marketers can appropriately integrate online and offline efforts (i.e., an omnichannel approach). Reports from industry sources have shown that consumers respond better to integrated marketing campaigns (e.g., a 73% boost over standard email campaigns; Safko 2010 ). In academia meanwhile, the majority of research considering online promotions and advertisements has typically focused on how consumers respond to these strategies through online only measures (e.g., Manchanda et al. 2006 ), though this has begun to change in recent years with more research examining offline consequences to omnichannel strategies (Lobschat et al. 2017 ; Kumar et al. 2017 ).

Considering the interest in integrated marketing strategies over the last few years, numerous strategies have been utilized to follow online and offline promotions and their impacts on behavior such as the usage of hashtags to bring conversations online, call-to-actions, utilizing matching strategies on “traditional” avenues like television with social media. While there is currently online/offline integration strategies in marketing, we believe the future will go even further in blurring the lines between what is offline and online to not just increase the effectiveness of marketing promotions, but to completely change the way customers and companies interact with one another, and the way social media influences consumer behavior not only online, but offline.

For brands, there are a number of possible trends in omnichannel marketing that are pertinent. As mentioned earlier, a notable technology that has begun infiltrating social media is augmented reality (AR). In addition to what already exists (e.g., Snapchat’s filters, Pokémon Go), the future holds even more possibilities. For example, Ikea has been working to create an AR app that allows users to take photos of a space at home to exactly , down to the millimeter size and lighting in the room, showcase what a piece of furniture would look like in a consumer’s home (Lovejoy 2017 ). Another set of examples of AR comes from beauty company L’Oréal. In 2014 for the flagship L’Oréal Paris brand they released a mobile app called Makeup Genius that allowed consumers to virtually try on makeup on their phones (Stephen and Brooks 2018 ). Since then, they have developed AR apps for hair color and nail polish, as well as integrating AR into mobile ecommerce webpages for their luxury beauty brand Lancôme. AR-based digital services such as these are likely to be at the heart of the next stage of offline/online integration.

AR, and similar technology, will likely move above and beyond being a tool to help consumers make better decisions about their purchases. Conceivably, similar to promotions that currently exist to excitse consumers and create communities, AR will be incorporated into promotions that integrate offline and online actions. For example, contests on social media will advance to the stage where users get to vote on the best use of AR technology in conjunction with a brand’s products (e.g., instead of users submitting pictures of their apartments to show why they should win free furniture, they could use AR to show how they would lay out the furniture if they were to win it from IKEA).

Another way that the future of online/offline integration on social media needs to be discussed is in the sense of a digital self. Drawing on the extended self in the digital age (Belk 2013 ), the way consumers consider online actions as relevant to their offline selves may be changing. For example, Belk ( 2013 ) spoke of how consumers may be re-embodied through avatars they create to represent themselves online, influencing their offline selves and creating a multiplicity of selves (i.e., consumers have more choice when it comes to their self-representation). As research has shown how digital and social media can be used for self-presentation, affiliation, and expression (Back et al. 2010 ; Gosling et al. 2007 ; Toubia and Stephen 2013 ; Wilcox and Stephen 2012 ), what does it mean for the future if consumers can create who they want to be?

In addition, when considering digital selves, what does this mean for how consumers engage with brands and products? Currently, social media practice is one where brands encourage consumer engagement online (Chae et al. 2017 ; Godes and Mayzlin 2009 ), yet the implications for how these types of actions on the part of the brand to integrate online social media actions and real-life behavior play out are unclear. Research has begun to delve into the individual-level consequences of a consumer’s social media actions on marketing relevant outcomes (Grewal et al. 2019 ; John et al. 2017 ; Mochon et al. 2017 ; Zhang et al. 2017 ), however much is still unknown. As well, while there is recent work examining how the device used to create and view content online impacts consumer perceptions and behaviors (e.g., Grewal and Stephen 2019 ), to date research has not examined these questions in the context of social media. Therefore, future research could address how digital selves (both those held offline and those that only exist online), social media actions, and if the way consumers reach and use various platforms (i.e., device type, app vs. webpage, etc.) impact consumer behavior, interpersonal relationships, and brand-related measures (e.g., well-being, loyalty, purchase behaviors).

Social media by non-humans

The buzz surrounding AI has not escaped social media. Indeed, social bots (computer algorithms that automatically produce content and interact with social media users; Ferrara et al. 2016 ) have inhabited social media platforms for the last decade (Lee et al. 2011 ), and have become increasingly pervasive. For example, experts estimate that up to 15% of active Twitter accounts are bots (Varol et al. 2017 ), and that percentage appears to be on the rise (Romano 2018 ). While academics and practitioners are highly concerned with bot detection (Knight 2018 ), in the vast majority of current cases, users do not appear to recognize when they are interacting with bots (as opposed to other human users) on social media (Stocking and Sumida 2018 ). While some of these bots are said to be benign, and even useful (e.g., acting as information aggregators), they have also been shown to disrupt political discourse (as mentioned earlier), steal personal information, and spread misinformation (Ferrara et al. 2016 ).

Of course, social bots are not only a problem for social media users but are also a nagging concern plaguing marketers. Given that companies often assess marketing success on social media through metrics like Likes, Shares, and Clicks, the existence of bots poses a growing threat to accurate marketing metrics and methods for ROI estimation, such as attribution modelling (Bilton 2014 ). Similarly, when these bots act as “fake followers,” it can inflate the worth of influencers’ audiences (Bogost 2018 ). This can also be used nefariously by individuals and firms, as shown in a New York Times Magazine expose that documented the market used by some influencers to purchase such “fake” followers to inflate their social media reach (Confessore et al. 2018 ). As discussed above in relation to influencer marketing, where it has been commonplace for influencers to be paid for posts at rates proportionate to their follower counts, there have been perverse incentives to game the system by having non-human “fake” bot followers. This, however, erodes consumer trust in the social media ecosystem, which is a growing issue and a near-term problem for many firms using social media channels for marketing purposes.

However, there are instances when consumers do know they are interacting with bots, and do not seem to mind. For example, a number of virtual influencers (created with CGI, as mentioned earlier) seem to be garnering sizeable audiences, despite the fact they are clearly non-human (Walker 2018 ). One of the most popular of these virtual influencers, Lil Miquela, has over 1.5 million followers on Instagram despite openly confessing, “I am not a human being... I’m a robot” (Yurieff 2018 ). Future research might try to understand the underlying appeal of these virtual influencers, and the potential boundary conditions of their success.

Another category of social bots gaining increasing attention are therapy bots. These applications (e.g., “Woebot;” Molteni 2017 ) aim to support the mental health of users by proactively checking in on them, “listening” and chatting to users at any time and recommending activities to improve users’ wellbeing (de Jesus 2018 ). Similar bots are being used to “coach” users, and help them quit maladaptive behaviors, like smoking (e.g., QuitGenius; Crook 2018 ). Interestingly, by being explicitly non-human, these agents are perceived to be less judgmental, and might accordingly be easier for users to confide in.

Finally, the Internet of Things revolution has ushered in with it the opportunity for a number of tangible products and interfaces to “communicate” via social media. For example, in what started as a design experiment, “Brad,” a connected toaster, was given the ability to “communicate” with other connected toasters, and to tweet his “feelings” when neglected or under-used (Vanhemert 2014 ). While this experiment was deliberately designed to raise questions about the future of consumer-product relationships (and product-product “relationships”), the proliferation of autonomous tangible devices does suggest a future in which they have a “voice,” even in the absence of humans (Hoffman and Novak 2018 ).

Going forward, we believe the presence of bots on social media will be more normalized, but also more regulated (e.g., a recent law passed in California prevents bots from masquerading as humans; Smith 2018 ). Further, consumers and companies alike will be become increasingly interested in how bots communicate and interact with each other outside of human involvement. This brings up interesting potential research questions for academics and practitioners alike. How will the presence of non-humans change the nature of content creation and conversation in social media? And how should companies best account for the presence of non-humans in their attribution models?

Future research directions and conclusion

This article has presented nine themes pertinent to the future of social media as it relates to (and is perhaps influenced by) marketing. The themes have implications for individuals/consumers, businesses and organizations, and also public policymakers and governments. These themes, which represent our own thinking and a synthesis of views from extant research, industry experts, and popular public discourse, are of course not the full story of what the future of social media will entail. They are, however, a set of important issues that we believe will be worth considering in both academic research and marketing practice.

To stimulate future research on these themes and related topics, we present a summary of suggested research directions in Table 2 . These are organized around our nine themes and capture many of the suggested research directions mentioned earlier. As a sub-field within the field of marketing, social media is already substantial and the potential for future research—based on identified needs for new knowledge and answers to perplexing questions—suggests that this sub-field will become even more important over time. We encourage researchers to consider the kinds of research directions in Table 2 as examples of issues they could explore further. We also encourage researchers in marketing to treat social media as a place where interesting (and often very new) consumer behaviors exist and can be studied. As we discussed earlier in the paper, social media as a set of platform businesses and technologies is interesting, but it is how people use social media and the associated technologies that is ultimately of interest to marketing academics and practitioners. Thus, we urge scholars to not be overly enticed by the technological “shiny new toys” at the expense of considering the behaviors associated with those technologies and platforms.

Finally, while we relied heavily (though not exclusively) on North American examples to illustrate the emergent themes, there are likely interesting insights to be drawn by explicitly exploring cross-cultural differences in social media usage. For example, variations in regulatory policies (e.g., GDPR in the European Union) may lead to meaningful differences in how trust and privacy concerns manifest. Further, social media as a political tool might be more influential in regions where the mainstream media is notoriously government controlled and censored (e.g., as was the case in many of the Arab Spring countries). While such cross-cultural variation is outside the scope of this particular paper, we believe it represents an area of future research with great theoretical and practical value.

In reviewing the social media ecosystem and considering where it is heading in the context of consumers and marketing practice, we have concluded that this is an area that is very much still in a state of flux. The future of social media in marketing is exciting, but also uncertain. If nothing else, it is vitally important that we better understand social media since it has become highly culturally relevant, a dominant form of communication and expression, a major media type used by companies for advertising and other forms of communication, and even has geopolitical ramifications. We hope that the ideas discussed here stimulate many new ideas and research, which we ultimately hope to see being mentioned and shared across every type of social media platform.

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The authors thank the special issue editors and reviewers for their comments, and the Oxford Future of Marketing Initiative for supporting this research. The authors contributed equally and are listed in alphabetical order or, if preferred, order of Marvel superhero fandom from highest to lowest and order of Bon Jovi fandom from lowest to highest.

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Appel, G., Grewal, L., Hadi, R. et al. The future of social media in marketing. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. 48 , 79–95 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-019-00695-1

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Many people consider social media as a new marketing tool. An organization can utilize online social platforms to either market or promote its goods and services. Online social platforms centre on relations with friends, prospective clients and existing clients.

Basically, when an organization begins to embark on social platform, it is unsure where to begin. This paper explains ways into which B2B organization is utilizing social media like Twitter and Facebook in promoting its products (Johnson, 2009).

Online social platforms play significant roles in marketing, but these roles depend on the business as well as how the business matches the needs of its customers. They, in addition, depend on the resources the organization is willing to use in order to market and/or to promote its products.

Implementing social media promoting has not been simple. A 2009 research found that about 68% of B2B organizations utilized social platforms so as to grow their businesses and improve on their decision making (Goodwin, 1991).

Organizations are certainly gaining extensively from clients move towards emerging media platforms like social online sites as a method of obtaining data. At first, organizations appeared on the online platforms with conventional specific business websites. But the emergence of new social networking sites has altered the way organizations promote their products.

Currently, numerous organizations have turned to dynamic social sites like Twitter and Facebook in order to promote products. At present, it appears that if an organization is not engaging social platforms, it is at risk of remaining uncompetitive and missing an opportunity of engaging many consumers.

Given the economic slowdown, it is no shock that emerging social platform marketing is the sole rescue for numerous organizations’ marketing attempts. Ideally, businesses do not have $2,000,000 for advertising but they can inject about $50,000 towards online sweepstakes that can be promoted via diverse platforms and advertising methods (Goodwin, 1991).

Besides, there are other online social sites and techniques for promotion that could be efficient and less expensive. For instance, growing and local organizations have started creating Facebook profiles and blogs rendering occasions regarding their grand activities, advertising and promotion almost free.

Overall, from an organizations’ view, emerging media promotion and campaigning is a half-half position. Organizations have the opportunity of accessing and reaching out to many people while reducing their budget share on advertising (Johnson, 2009).

Facebook and Twitter present an opportunity for organizations since they allow people to create business profiles that comprise images of products and details regarding these products. An organization can market its products on a full page on Twitter and Facebook with no additional costs.

Businesses use social media to remain linked to their customers. An organization can utilize a social platform to draw users to their products. Easy emails are enough to contact prospective consumers, and allow them to view products that the business deals with (Johnson, 2009).

Through social media organizations can develop worldwide relationship that aid them in discussing product strengths, need for improvement, or quality concerns and make necessary adjustments. An organization can keep its customers updated via social media. For instance when an organization is introducing a new product, it can test the product based on an online market and request response from consumers via social sites.

A company is capable of communicating and getting responses from its clients in all phases of product development. Businesses use this approach so as to minimize cost incurred during product development instead of testing the new product in an actual market (Goodwin, 1991).

The clothing sector has numerous rivalries especially with the emerging renewal of classy jeans. Currently, different B2B brands are joining the jean market. The competitors are Blue Cult, Diesel, Earnest Sewn, True Religion and Rock. Although Diesel began operations as a jeans clothing product and also that denims are still fashionable to date, jeans are viewed not like denim brand anymore but as the urban classy brand.

Among the brands and apparel firms that aim the sporty smart people only Diesel and Rock brands can be said to be direct competitors. Rock is a Japanese firm that manufacturers and distributes denim clothing as well as other fabric options, not very fashionable in design but, in addition, likeable to middle age people (Eric, 2005).

Diesel is an American brand which targets informal fashion sensitive individuals that require denim and other fabrics coupled with increased details and differentiation, both in fashion and fabric of the clothing (p. 67).

Basically, Diesel has been operational for decades and has dealt with concerns in a manner that no other organization could shine it out.

The fact that Diesel and Rock were expanding so much could have damaged their status as non conventional brands but nowadays the companies are struggling to defend their reputation by establishing company based network of clothing outlets where they are capable of controlling the setting where their products are sold (Eric, 2005).

Besides, Diesel and Rock companies are keeping their products away from large trading stores where the products share similar setting with other brands (p. 68).

The advertising framework engaged by Diesel differentiates it from its rivalries whereas Rock portrays framework utilizing the clothing in a semi levelled situation. Diesel performs well at generating tales regarding its brands. In the youth clothes market, the sensitivity to a brand by users principally depends on the promotion campaigns especially through social media.

The value displayed on the brand is determined by the technology utilized and the advertising approach that is initiated semi annually. Rock may alter its adverts for each collection but the technology does not change: models posturing in action and inscribed information about the clothing.

An easy and old concept of clothing adverts. Rock applies also models of urban setting and all placed along tarmac surfaces and being alert (Eric, 2005).

Diesel brands have retained their stories for decades and consumers even expect the company to generate winning tales rather than the classy persons posturing with descent clothing. Basically, Diesel consolidates in single setting clothing, nature and the brand.

The theme and topic selected for the adverts make Diesel’s campaigns even more unique. Of late, its themes are not as original as before but still the business remains peculiar in the choosing and the intention of the advertising themes (Eric, 2005).

Both Rock and Diesel clothing stores present their collection semi annually. This keeps consumers waiting for good ads regularly. The invention runs on all adverts, form necklaces to clothes and a consumer is ever anticipating different and newly generated ads from Diesel.

In addition the advert initiated by the two stores is a stuff to be desired since consumers, after decades of winning adverts, do expect something impressing and/or surprising through the newly developed campaign (Eric, 2005).

In conclusion, like the other firms operating in the clothing sector, Rock and Diesel are struggling to retain their market share. Any time, a rival or an emerging clothing firm may penetrate the market and begin producing clothing as good as that produced by both stores and recruiting an advertising group in order to generate competitive marketing strategies.

Eric, G. (2005). Diesel Case Study. Journal of Communication Planning , Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 66-72.

Goodwin, C. (1991). Privacy: Recognition of a Consumer Right. Journal of Public Policy & Marketing , Vol.10, No.1, pp.149-166.

Johnson, G. (2009). Computer Ethics . New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall.

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Social Media Marketing Strategy Tips For 2024

Published: Aug 15, 2024, 8:25am

Table of Contents

What is social media marketing, why social media marketing is important, 11 tips to build your social media marketing strategy, bottom line, frequently asked questions (faqs).

Social media marketing was born in the mid-2000s with the rise of platforms such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter, but did not start hitting its stride until Facebook introduced “Facebook Flyers Pro” in 2007. Since then, it has revolutionized the marketing landscape by allowing companies to reach an unprecedented amount of potential customers worldwide.

But how exactly do businesses harness the power of the 5 billion-plus people using social media? In this article, we will dive into what exactly social media marketing is, why it is important and provide tips for you to up your social media marketing strategy in 2024.

Social media marketing is all about using social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, X and TikTok to chat with your audience, get your brand recognized and increase sales. It involves creating posts, images and videos that your audience will love, interact with and share. This method capitalizes on the interactive nature of social media to foster engagement, allow businesses to showcase their products and build a community around their brand. Creating an effective social media marketing campaign requires setting clear objectives, choosing the right social media platform or platforms, using analytics tools to track performance and adjusting strategies accordingly.

Traditional marketing methods such as print ads, television commercials and billboards often hoped to grab interested customers from a broad reach. The digital age of social media marketing has ushered in an era of personalization and precision targeting. Social media allows businesses to gather insights into user behavior, preferences, disinterests and online activities. Marketers can then create social media campaigns that target the direct audience that they want to attract. This new level of personalization has transformed the way businesses interact with their audiences.

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Social media marketing is a game-changer for businesses because it allows you to reach so many people around the world in real time. It is no wonder why so many businesses have ditched old-school marketing strategies such as billboards or radio spots in exchange for comprehensive social media campaigns. Some of the biggest advantages of social media marketing include:

• Increase brand awareness: You can expand your brand’s awareness by consistently posting on social media sites. This is especially useful for small or new businesses to be able to introduce themselves and their business personality to a new audience.
• Drive traffic: Creating intriguing content with compelling calls to action can drive followers to visit your website. You can funnel users directly from your social media platform to your website by including tailored links in your posts, stories or reels. For example, promoting a new blog post on X with a “Read Now” button can bring followers onto your site.
• Generate leads: Social media platforms provide tools for lead generation such as Instagram’s “Swipe Up” feature or LinkedIn’s lead-generation forms. Let’s say you’ve launched a new e-book. You can gather new leads to expand your email list by advertising the e-book on Facebook and attaching a direct download link in exchange for an email address.
• Real-time discovery of industry trends: Social media serves as a live feed for market patterns and trends. You can capitalize on viral topics by watching trending hashtags or popular discussion points within your industry.
• Cost-effective: In comparison to traditional marketing channels such as print or TV ads, social media marketing offers ways to publicize your product without spending a fortune. Social media marketing can be completely free if you do not have a marketing budget. You can, however, leverage your reach through sponsored content or ads on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.
• Humanize your brand: Consumers appreciate brands with authentic personalities. You can create a relatable brand by sharing “behind-the-scenes” content or telling your company’s story through posts or stories. For example, Patagonia regularly shares posts highlighting its commitment to environmental conservation, which strongly resonates with its customer base.

At first glance, social media marketing might appear straightforward, but to truly make an impact it requires more than just a few posts online every now and again. Along with any successful marketing strategy, it involves meticulous planning, consistent content creation, thorough analysis and strategic adjustments. Here are 12 tips on building a comprehensive social media marketing strategy to help you harness the full potential of social media for your business.

• Set S.M.A.R.T., relevant goals: Before starting your social media marketing strategy, make sure to set S.M.A.R.T. goals. S.M.A.R.T. stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. Begin by outlining clear, actionable goals using this criterion. For instance, instead of vaguely aiming to “increase sales,” strive to “increase sales by 15% over the next quarter through social media referral traffic.” This will provide a precise path for your strategy.In addition, set goals that are relevant to your business. Do you want to increase brand awareness? Do you want to increase your social media footprint? Do you want to drive traffic to your website? Reach, impressions and engagement rate are among the 13 essential social media metrics to measure in 2024 . Make sure the goals you set are relevant to your business’s objectives.
• Identify target audience: Before you begin, it is important to know who you are talking to. Create a sketch of your ideal customer. Describe their demographic traits including age, location and gender as well as psychographic traits such as interests, problems and values. If you deal in luxury watches, your audience likely consists of older, affluent individuals with an interest in style and status. Or if you have a boutique yoga studio, your ideal audience is probably a woman between 25 and 50 who prioritizes health and wellness.
• Choose the right platforms: The big seven social media platforms are Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest and LinkedIn. Each platform attracts a different type of audience. Analyze where your core audience spends the most time online and target those platforms. For example, if your brand caters to professionals or B2B clients, LinkedIn may prove more beneficial than TikTok.
• Create valuable content: Never publish content just to post something. Always create content that your audience will find beneficial. Aim to inform, engage or inspire. For a fitness brand, this might include workout tips, healthy recipes or motivational posts. In addition, it is a good idea to occasionally incorporate interactive elements such as Q&As, polls or challenges to engage your audience actively and foster a sense of community.
• Consistent branding: Maintain uniform design elements such as logo and brand colors and voice, whether it is formal or casual across platforms. This consistency will help with brand recognition.
• Use visual content: As the old saying goes, a picture is with a thousand words. Make use of visuals—photos, infographics or videos—to increase engagement. Leverage visual storytelling in order to convey your brand’s personality. For example, a bakery might post mouthwatering photos of its cupcakes or a step-by-step video tutorial on dough kneading. Additionally, incorporating user-generated content such as customer photos or reviews can add authenticity to your feed.
• Automate scheduling: Use social media management tools to schedule posts in advance. Not only will this help you save time, it will also ensure your content is delivered on a consistent basis. A regular posting schedule helps keep your brand’s presence fresh in the minds of your audience. Buffer, Hootsuite and Zoho Social are three of the best social media management software platforms on the market.
• Engage actively: Join conversations and reply promptly to comments. Don’t be afraid to show a human side to your interactions. Chipotle, for instance, has more than 30 million followers on social media. The company is renowned for its witty, engaging responses in its social media interactions.
• Collaborate with influencers: Partner with relevant influencers to get your brand in front of new eyes. Collaborating with these partners can help you tap into specific communities and boost your credibility by leveraging the trust they’ve established with their followers. A children’s clothing brand might collaborate with parenting bloggers while a new restaurant might collaborate with a local food blogger.
• Analyze and adapt: Use analytics tools to track your performance. If Instagram Stories drive more engagement than regular posts, for instance, shift your focus accordingly. This data-driven approach allows you to understand your audience better so you can tailor your strategy for maximum impact.
• Monitor trends: Social media trends evolve rapidly. Keeping up to date can unlock new avenues—be it new features such as Instagram Reels or trends such as the sustainability movement—to align your strategy with broader user behavior. Adapting to the latest trend helps keep you relevant and can even open doors to innovative methods of customer engagement and user-generated content.

Since its inception in the early 2000s, social media has revolutionized the marketing landscape by offering businesses an unprecedented ability to reach audiences, prioritize personalization and build real-time connections between brands and consumers. It helps businesses ramp up brand visibility, drives traffic, pulls in potential leads and catches the wave of trending topics—all while being budget-friendly. If your business wants to ride the social media wave, you should focus on creating clear and achievable goals, targeting your ideal audience and creating valuable content. Mix in some smart scheduling tools, actively engage with your followers and use analytics to continually fine-tune your strategies and you can significantly amplify your brand’s online impact.

What are the five Ps of social media marketing?

The five Ps of marketing—Product, Price, Promotion, Place and People—form the cornerstone of marketing strategies. “Product” refers to what a company sells, whether it is tangible goods or intangible services. “Price” is the cost consumers are willing to pay. “Promotion” is all communicative tactics used including advertising, PR or social media engagement. “Place” is the channels or physical locations where the product or service is sold. “People” refers to everyone involved in the business including customers, employees, vendors and partners.

What are the seven Cs of social media marketing?

The seven Cs of social media marketing are the guiding principles for building a robust social media marketing plan. They include “Community,” referring to the group of people your brand brings together, while “Collaboration” and “Communication” refer to the value of working alongside users and other brands to collaborate and share valuable insights. “Constraints” acknowledge the limitations that social media platforms can present to marketers. “Connectivity” and “Channels” focus on establishing a seamless link between social media platforms and choosing the right mediums to reach your target audience. “Content” is central to attracting an audience through relevant, engaging and high-quality content.

What is the golden rule of social media marketing?

The golden rule of social media marketing is to foster genuine interactions that build trust and community. Crafting content that initiates conversations enables brands to spark conversations and build a community. This strategy emphasizes authentic connection with the audience to help brands achieve enduring marketing success through active participation.

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information

What is social media? It is the websites and applications that are planned to permit individuals to share substance rapidly, proficiently, and in real-time. Numerous individuals characterize social media as apps on their smartphones or tablet.

If we see social media from the 2000s. Facebook, which has been the biggest social media stage within the world, has 2.4 billion clients. Other social media stages counting YouTube and WhatsApp moreover have more than one billion clients each. This implies social media stages are used by one-in-three individuals within the world, and more than two-thirds of all web clients. Social media has changed the world.

The primary social media location to reach a million month-to-month dynamic clients was Myspace – it accomplished this milestone around 2004. Typically, arguably the starting of social media as we know it.

In common, youthful individuals are more likely to utilize social media than more seasoned individuals. But a few stages are much more well known among more youthful individuals. The breakdown of social media utilized by age bunches within the US: for Snapchat and Instagram, the ‘age gradient’ is amazingly soak – the notoriety of these stages drops much quicker with age. The larger part of individuals beneath 25 utilize Snapchat, whereas as it were 3% of individuals over 65 utilize it. Since these stages are generally modern, it is difficult to know how much of this age angle is the result of a cohort effect. If they do, the age angle would contract.

From a back-of-the-envelope calculation, on the off chance that Facebook has 2.3 billion clients, at that point at slightest 30% of the world employments social media. This can be of course fair and normal – for a few world districts, and particularly for a few populace bunches, utilization rates are much higher. Young individuals tend to utilize social media more habitually. In truth, in wealthy nations, where get to the web is about all-inclusive, the endless lion’s share of youthful grown-ups utilizes it. If today’s youthful grown-ups proceed to utilize social media all through their life, at that point it is likely that social media will proceed to develop quickly as web appropriation grows all through lower-income countries. Within the US, grown-ups spend more than 6 hours per day on digital media. There is proof that in other wealthy nations individuals moreover spend numerous hours per day online. The normal for the OECD is more than 4 hours per day, and in a few nations, the normal is over 6 hours per day.

Let us see Social Media Platforms That was Born from 2010 to 2019. Instagram is one of the greatest social media stages within the world right presently. The image-sharing app was propelled in 2010 by makers Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger and was procured by Facebook in 2012. It appreciates over one billion months to month dynamic clients and has 500 million clients who utilize Instagram Stories each day. The app was moreover the moment most downloaded free app on the App Store in 2018 (2019 stats still not accessible). Instagram permits clients to share photographs and recordings, lets you take after companions and influencers, and indeed post 24-hour bits called Instagram Stories. As of now, Instagram competes with Snapchat and TikTok within the social organizing space. Snapchat arrived at a time when Facebook and Twitter were as of now greatly prevalent, and Instagram was picking up force as well. This includes has since been taped by Facebook in all its properties – counting WhatsApp and Instagram. TikTok has nearly 500 million dynamic clients and was the third most downloaded app in Q1 2019 with 188 million downloads. The most recent information from App Annie recommends that TikTok proceeding its hazardous development around the world, with the experiences company positioning TikTok fair behind Instagram in terms of month-to-month dynamic clients through the third quarter of 2019. And finally, Pinterest, as of 2019, the stage has come to 300 million dynamic clients.

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L’Oréal Social Media Marketing Strategy and Plan

Executive summary.

L’Oréal Paris is a well-known makeup brand with a massive presence in the total beauty care industry that comprises all modern technology and possesses the highest quality of luxury beauty. As the most prominent beauty brand, L’Oréal has the best commitment to technology, innovation, and massive breakthroughs. It has the highest-quality products for men, women, and kids, regardless of age and background. This Company is mainly subjected to celebrating the diversity of beauty because of the wide range of spokespeople worldwide. It is genuinely a worldwide beauty brand with huge products. The make-up brand has five main beauty categories: hair color, hair care, hairstyle, skincare, and cosmetics. This social media marketing plan aims to improve L’Oréal Paris’s beauty brand digital association, drive brand awareness, and increase customer trustworthiness. Via numerous targeted measures, the business plan will leverage countless social media platforms to reach the brand’s specific target market and outdo its competitors.

L’Oréal makeup brand was founded on 30 th  July 1909, by Eugene Schueller. Its headquarters are in Clichy, France. It is one of the largest global cosmetics companies majoring in makeup, skincare, and hair color. L’Oréal Paris’s makeup brand holds an extensive social media presence. It has active Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook, YouTube, and Pinterest profiles. Beauty is rapidly enhancing in the market, and consumers play a crucial role. Thus, modern channels such as social media play a significant duty in promoting the brand. It is via the numerous canals that the L’Oréal brand expresses itself to consumers and allows them to share experiences and opinions. The brand can understand its users through the media platforms and reach them accordingly. However, with the increase in the number of consumers, the brand might face challenges while managing the rapid interaction among consumers. Thus, due to the modern social media channels, the brand might be forced to change its marketing, advertising, customer reach, care, and engagement. As a result, a competitive analysis will be carried out to identify the main L’Oréal Paris brand competitors and strategies to enact. The goals of this plan are increasing brand awareness, promoting product launches, and promoting user or customer care and engagement. The system will focus on content creation, influencer partnerships and customer association. The plan targets beauty enthusiasts, makeup artists, and people interested in giant quality cosmetics. Various tools like social media care and engagement platforms and analytics tools will highly uphold this plan’s application, monitoring, and budgeting.

Fig 1: L’Oréal Company Products

Social Media Audit

L’Oréal has one of the most significant social media presences of all the brands globally. Besides its media strategy, L’Oréal upholds social media profiles for many nations where the products are sold with the presence of various product pages. Its

From the above audit, L’Oréal brand products majorly did well on Facebook, followed by Instagram. Photos drive many interactions on Facebook. To determine which media platform had the most significance regarding individual care brands, this plan looked at various interactions of different posts across each network. The results were that all the interactions per post across the social networks were always high in Facebook. Having 71,000 interactions per post on the Facebook page, Durex generated approximately four hundred times more interactions compared to the average personal care brand. Neutrogena and Wella further generated 15 and 77 interactions per post. Per the audit, private care brands put two-thirds of their content into photos and the rest goes to video. For instance, in 2017, the video content was doubled from the 2016 (Ippalapelli, 2018). This indicated that the brands were taking various steps to embrace content.

Nevertheless, the audit found that photos took the bigger part when it came to interactions per post. There was a high number of interactions per post on Facebook. Most of the responses were positive, and the users commented on the effectiveness of the L’Oréal brand products. Most of the customers made inquiries for the products via the same platform and understood the platform. Facebook pages are said to be better gateways for brands to market their products to their users. Being a public presence similar to an individual profile, Facebook allows people to like a brand or a business. Many users or fans receive content updates from the Facebook platform on their current needs, and the brand is, therefore, able to promote its awareness, track advertisements, and interact with the users who enquire about customer services.

Fig 2: High user interaction on Facebook

Fig 3: Audience growth by size and channel.

Competitive Analysis

With L’Oréal being among the most prominent brand names in the worldwide cosmetics company, it faces continuous competition from various organizations. Its main competitors are MAC, Maybelline, Chanel, Dior and Clinique, among others. These companies are giant competitors of L’Oréal. As per the latest statistics, on 30 th  June 2023, L’Oréal company sales amounted to 20.57 billion euros. Its annual income in 2022 was $6B., and its yearly gross profit for 2022 amounted to $29B. As of September 2023, L’Oréal net worth amounted to $235B. However, besides all these successes, the enterprise still faces stiff competition from other organizations (Hitesh Bhasin, 2018).

Top L’Oréal competitors

MAC is a famous cosmetics producer with headquarters in New York City in the United States of America. It is said to be the most significant professional makeup authority globally. It manufactures various products for all individuals regardless of their age. Their products meet the needs of the people and professional makeup specialists. The Company’s products are Prep + Prime, Lightful C, mineralize, and Pro Longwear. Its assets net worth is approximately 57 212 British pounds. Regarding the beauty and health of its users, brand awareness lies at 52% in America. As a result of its diverse products, MAC is categorized as one of the significant L’Oréal competitors

Fig 4: MAC products

Maybelline is among the leading beauty industry in America. It assists ladies in discovering modern looks and exhibiting their own skills and personality. The Company provides scientifically-updated formulas and radical fixtures to promote ladies’ beauty. It produces different products of lips, faces, and eyes. Its diverse products include eyeshadows, eyeliner, powders, blushes, lipstick, and lip color,. Its net worth is approximately $46 million. Hence, it is considered a major L’Oréal competitor due to its advanced products.

Fig 5: Maybelline Company and its products

Christian Dior founded this great company in 1946. The Company’s fashion stores are globally distributed. It is involved in the manufacturing and distribution of goods to the people. Its net worth is EUR 1756 B. It provides different face, eyes, nails, and lips products. As a result of the wide availability of its products, Dior is a top L’Oréal competitor.

Dior Company Products

Chanel is a private company of French and is considered one of the major luxury brands globally. Its total brand value is $7 billion. It manufactures products such as ready-to-wear clothes, makeup, and fashion accessories. It further manufactures makeup products for nails, lips, eyes and face. Due to its brand values and global accessibility via online and offline markets, Chanel is said to be a significant L’Oréal competitor.

Fig 6: Chanel Company Products

Clinique is a well-known United States brand, a personal care and cosmetic organization that manufactures toiletries, cosmetics, fragrances, and skin care products. Its different skincare products include masks, lip care, hand and body care, removers, and cleaners. The brand’s value is approximately 4.8 billion U.S. dollars. In terms of brand awareness, it is 74 % in America. Being the fastest-growing personal and cosmetic company, Clinique is a top L’Oréal competitor.

Fig 7: Clinique Company Products

The above cosmetic industries, among others, are rushing to attain their business goals and objectives.

Goals, Objectives, and Metrics

The main goal is to promote L’Oréal’s social media engagement and increase its brand visibility and awareness.

Resources, Roles, and Responsibilities

Beauty is the powerful force that drives the L’Oréal company forward. It gives confidence in who the Company is and what it wants to be in building its relationships with the people. The goal is to increase the Company’s media engagement, visibility, and awareness; the Company should aim at the best quality, efficacy, and responsibility in satisfying all the individual’s beauty needs and desires globally. Since beauty is permanent and elusive, the company should harness the power of innovation to enhance its performance in terms of production and distribution of its services. It should further value diversity and leverage its products to meet all the broad expressions of beauty.

It is being a large organization comprised of various divisions such as Administration and Finance, Digital, Human Resources, Communications, and Corporate responsibility. Thus, to ensure its development, all these divisions should work hand in hand to promote the organization’s media engagement, visibility, and awareness. It should empower all the teams and improve its relevance to its consumers. It should focus on developing a global network research, innovation, and marketing strategies. To achieve this goal, the organization should be responsible for all communications or advertisements of their products by building a solid communication team. Thus, with the availability of many resources such as electronic devices like tablets, laptops, and smartphones, L’Oréal Company should utilize this opportunity since consumers spend most of their time on the internet. Thus, the Company should put more effort into internet usage by strengthening its media networks to sell its products. Moreover, with the availability of other resources such as media platforms, the Company should strengthen its interaction with the consumers via texts and immediate responses to its users. Social media full engagement will ensure 100% love for their brands. Consumers engage in online platforms for trend and advice, searching for product look and recommendation.

First, to attain these objectives, the Company should initiate a vision on their brands I.e., have strong communication with the people. It should encourage intrapreneurship within the organizations and allow the members to initiate innovative measures and award them accordingly. The Company should entertain its consumers with stories and other content at the right piece and meaningful time. Second, the organization, should have a large social media team of approximately a thousand people. The media has many online platforms, and many can attend to all the users across the various platforms compared to a small number. The Company should have around ten social media managers to control the whole team and ensure they play their roles to satisfaction. The managers should be well-skilled and trained to guide the members. The social media team should be well distributed across the different platforms, each having different roles. There should be a section of the team posting the products, another one responding to the user’s questions or inquiries via texts, another acting as customer care via calls, and the rest analyzing the progress of the whole media platform through updating the websites and allowing more consumers to access the services via easy registrations and logins to the Company’s websites. The Company should engage the whole team in different workshops to improve their skills and build entrepreneurship culture within the organization.

The Company should further work on its budget from the previous one to meet all the needs of the new social media marketing techniques.

Fig 8: L’Oréal’s advertising and promotion budget globally from 2007-2022 in billion euros.

Based on the above statistics, L’Oréal Company has consistently been increasing its budget. However, to meet the new goals with the increase in the social media team, the organization has to put more effort into increasing its budget by making it more sizable. To attain the best, more has to be spent. From the graph, in 2022, L’Oréal spent 12.1 billion euros on its advertising budget. Thus, from 2023 onwards, a sizeable budget of approximately 15 billion euros has to be improvised to meet the organization’s needs and cater to the increase in the advertisement team.

L’Oréal brand Tone of Voice

L’Oréal’s brand personality reflects the character of being competent and sophisticated. The Company has six values that drive its activities. They include passion, innovation, open-mindedness, entrepreneurial spirit, responsibility, and the quest for excellence. These values are shared by all the consumers of L’Oréal’s products globally. These values shape the mindset of the Company. The priority is to open various modern trends and ideals globally. The Company should uphold passion, which is associated with culture and humanity. Since manufacturing beauty products means understanding the needs of others, the organization should be passionate about anticipating the needs of consumers. Innovation is a significant value for any progress in a business. Since scientists founded the Company, innovation has always been a continuous quest and needs improvements and more performance. Listening to the people, knowing their culture, being open to them, and advancing from their differences should be a quest to attain the Company’s goals and objectives. A sense of responsibility is always crucial in an organization. The brand would further speak to its customers via social media monitoring. Monitoring would help the Company understand the demands of its customers and speak a similar language with them. The Company should conduct traditional research and ask questions directly to the people. It is also necessary for the Company to conduct SML research to find out what the consumers say about the brand and its products. The opinions of the customers will enable the Company to implement the results via communication.

If the brand can enact all these measures, the customers would see it as a unique organization that captures, understands, and respects the differences among people. L’Oréal’ Company acts as the future of beauty through bying the best science and technology, that i more ins by nature. The Company has both an inspiring and friendly character. Being part of the Company means becoming part and parcel of a team of talented and inspiring individuals. The Company believes in teamwork, and teams are the Company’s heroes. Teamwork build and strengthens friendship. L’Oréal’s brand aim is basically to engage, educate, sell, and delight. The organization aims to engage its people via innovative enterprise techniques and media campaigns. Moreover, it aims to educate people on measures to protect and care for their skin, hair, and other beauty needs via information. The Company also aims to sell good beauty products by distributing delightful products to the people and making them enjoy better experiences.

L’Oréal’s brand tone can be said to be personal, honest, and scientific. The Company aims to link with many people at an individual level by communicating openly and honestly with them. In 2014, L’Oréal brand company was listed among the top trusted brands globally. It is an ethical company that recognizes long-term commitment and applies ethical measures to its products, sales, and culture. The Company is also scientific because it emphasizes scientific innovation and technology for their goods. It uses the power of technology and innovation to manufacture and advertise their products in due time. It also discovers, develop and give ongoing feedback to the beauty necessities of the people. Moreover, the Company co-creates the future of beauty through open innovation and partnership with other companies. In addition, L’Oréal’ brand language can be cultured and serious and emphasizes on expertise and innovation. The Company focuses on communication via a sense of quality and luxury. Its language is complex and classy thus helping the Company resemble its position as a worldwide top beauty organization.

Platform Selection

Even though L’Oréal’ brand is active in social media network, the various platforms its uses do not guarantee its success and worth for the audience. Regardless of the accounts created, the Company has to asses and select specific networks where their products will be highly active on. For the L’Oréal’ makeup bard company the best preferable selection for networking social media platforms are:

Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are the major social media platforms where most of people engage online (Thompson, 2020). They are also better sites for marketing of products and other goods. With approximately 11 million followers in Instagram, the Company should more target the young individuals. Having several Instagram accounts such as makeup, hair and skin, the Company should increase more accounts to attract the best people through the best products. Having the largest engagement on Facebook, the Company can still reach more people, including the young and the old.

Fig 9: L’Oreal Facebook Advert

Distribution and Content Strategy

This distribution strategy determines the network the, frequency of posts, and the type of content information that will be published on each network. On the other hand, the content strategy outlines the planning, development and management of the social media content. The world of beauty is continuously changing, and L’Oréal should seek to adapt and thrive. The presence of the business landscape gives chances to engage in the rising trend of online beauty market. As sustainable measures gain momentum, L’Oréal can well improve its efforts to attain the user’s needs through friendly products. In the presence of the many threats in the beauty industry, market saturation can hinder growth and navigating the various regulations and standard is always not easy. Thus, L’Oreal should remain agile and adapt quickly to the consumer preference.

L’Oréal’s distribution strategy should be composed of a comprehensive approach that can engage and reach the targeted people via different social media platforms. Firsts, L’Oréal Company should focus on its network selection. It should focus on the three main social media platforms Fa,cebook, Twitter, and Instagram, to ensure a wide reach to its audience. The three platforms should serve various duties based on the people or consumers. They should also focus on how the consumers take and adapt to the message. Secondly, the frequency of posts is a crucial part to consider. The posts should be posted continuously and in a responsible manner that cannot overwhelm the people. The posts should be motivative and entertaining to entice the consumers. The frequency of posting can differ depending on the platform used. For instance, Facebook may need a continuous posting compared to Instagram because of its capability to host a large number of people. Third, the type of content should also be considered keenly. L’Oréal Company should combine different content inclusive of informative, educative, entertaining and engaging material. It should make use of tutorials, users testimonies, the people content, the hidden scenes sight and the influencer partnerships. Besides, this, the Company should improvise highly quality images and videos that are attractive enough to describe and advertise the Company’s products effectively. The content should be more interactive to entertain and engage the people. It should comprise of questions, polls, virtual sessions and a united society to increase its awareness. Moreover, the Company should initiate a data-driven approach whose main aim is to analyze the performance of different content types and the distribution platforms. This technique can give more insight into the best things for the people and it will allow the organization to fit in the modern beauty technology effectively. Through enacting mixed distribution measures that focuses on the network selection, continuous posts and the content, the Company will cultivate and expand in this digital era.

On the other hand, L’Oréal should develop a content strategy to support its goals and objectives to engage the diverse targeted audience well. Ladies aged between twenty-five to forty-five years are mostly interested in skincare and can offer an expertise skincare advice to build the Company’s awareness. Most of the men and women seeking hair care tips highly benefit from L’Oréal products educative content. The content demonstrates how the products can be used and the different styles applicable. The Company should emphasize its bard status and sustainability measures via content that showcase their environmental initiatives. The Company should further showcase a good planning, development and management of the social media content. There are several ways in which L’Oréal can improve its content strategy for social media. They include planning, development and management of different contents like written posts, blogs, videos and infographics.

First, the Company should carry out an audience research and insight. It should carry a serious study to examine the preference and behaviours of the targeted people. The information collected can assist in creating content that matches the audience as a means of improving engagement. Secondly, to manage the content strategy, the Company should create a content calendar that will help in planning and organizing the media information well. Different topics, themes, and dates of content release should be well included in the calendar. This act will increase the anxiety among customers. Tools such as buffer and hoot suite will well help in managing the content more effectively. Thirdly, having a diversifying content formats will further assist in distributing the content globally. The Company should initiate better formats of content diversification like tutorials, advertise shows and videos. Content in the form of stories is highly applicable. L’Oréal brand should include stories and emotions that will help in linking with the people in an easy way. These stories can include the audience testimonials inclusive of emotions like joy to give a strong linkage with audience. Community engagement is also crucial in management of the content. This includes a two-way conversation via social media through chats and responding to comments as well as sharing the peoples content. Through enacting these techniques, L’Oréal makeup brand will be at a point of managing its content strategy, thus increasing the association and brand awareness. All these will lead to the accomplishment of the Company’s set goals and objectives.

Employee Advocacy Program

A suitable employee advocacy program for L’Oréal company would need to meet the organization’s values, culture, and objectives. To meet the needs of the targeted audience, the program should first have training and guidelines. Employees should receive good training, such as social media best practices and guidance on the company messaging. The program should also have recognition and incentives. The Company should be able to appreciate employees who work for the betterment of the organization. Employees should also have a content exchange platform where they can access and verify the pre-approved social media content. Moreover, the program should monitor and give responses. L’Oréal brand should implement ways of monitoring the advocacy program as well as tracking the worker’s performance. By using these elements in the employees’ program, the Company will create a brand that is well-known and it will further strengthen and motivate the employee engagement.

Social Media Policy and Crisis Response Plan

In all unprecedented crisis, it is the responsibility of the L’Oréal Company to contribute collective efforts in all means possible. For instance, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Company made efforts to contribute and conquer the crisis in all ways possible. The availability of all brands product types distribution calls for a better way of allowing the Company to offer its services efficiently as per the customer’s privileges. The department concerned anticipates to adapt to the different changes to have a good development of online sales inclusive of different partnerships.

Social Media Policy

This social media policy applies to all the workers of the L’Oréal Company inclusive of all those responsible for controlling and managing the media accounts and those who use individual media accounts related to the Company. All the professional in the Company are expected to uphold a respectful tone on all technology platforms. They should refrain themselves from taking part in inflammatory conversations that can express the organization negatively to the people. Moreover, when advertising the Company’s products, all workers should incorporate official branding and messaging as per the guidelines set. The use of Logos and trademarks should align with the Company’s branding measures. Workers should also adhere to the best safety practices. They should not share sensitive company information via social media or to other competitors.

Crisis Response Plan

To manage or overcome different crisis that may occur, the Company should well identify all possible issues on social media that may negatively portray the Company. It should also focus on handling the customers complaints and handle any misinformation. To ensure effective handling of these problems, all workers should be well trained. The organization should well manage both internal and external communication in the occurrence of a social media crisis. For the case of internal communication. The organizations should initiate a crisis response team that will give the desired feedbacks on the levels of crisis. On the other hand, for the case of external communication, the Company should have a spokesperson who is responsible for giving public statements and feedbacks to the social media questions in case of crisis. The Company should further employ monitoring tools that can detect potential barriers that can lead to crises.

L’Oreal Influencer Program

The objective of this L’Oréal program is to initiate partnerships via influential voices within the beauty industry with the aim of showcasing the Company’s products as well as expanding audience engagement. First, the program should begin with an influencer identification where influencers having strong character within the makeup sector can be identified. The influencers values should go hand in hand with L’Oréal’s terms and regulations. Second, the programs should include a partnership outreach where the Company can reach capable influencers to have conversations on the business opportunities as well as majoring on the benefit of the partnerships. Third, the influencer program should focus on content creation in order to create genuine content that portrays the real Company’s products and their nature. Lastly, the Company should focus on creating long-term relationships with the top performing influencers. This will showcase continuous unity and advocacy of the organization’s products.

Advertising strategy

L’Oréal Company should utilize paid advertising on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to strengthen its content, improve product launches and reach a large audience. Since the Company’s segmentation is based on demographic factors, the consumers mostly belong to the middle and upper class. Thus, it advertising strategy should target the middle, upper-middle-class and high-income people for them to outdo their competitors.

Results and Recommendation

The social media plan targets at meeting the audience needs. The desired results are to bring up an organization that is unique and able to satisfy all the customers in the beauty industry. It further aims to enhance digital engagement and brand awareness to improve customers’ loyalty. Through the above strategies of leveraging the social media platforms, the Company will attain it targets and outdo its main competitors. I therefore recommend the L’Oréal Company to put this plan into action and consider all the strategies in order to enhance natural beauty, initiate self-confidence and empower the customers in unique ways. With strong focus on this plan, the Company will enhance social media engagement and increase the brand’s visibility and awareness.

Hitesh Bhasin. (2018, July 22).  Top 14 L’Oreal Competitors Explain – L’Oreal competitor analysis . Marketing91. https://www.marketing91.com/loreal-competitors/

Ippalapelli, P. (2018, November 25).  L’Oréal’s Social Media Presence . L’Oréal’s Social Media Presence. https://lorealmedia.home./#:~:text=In%20addition%20to%20Instagram%2C%20L

L’Oréal Finance. (2020). Cosmetics market. L’Oréal Finance: Annual Report

L’Oréal. (2020, January 23). L’Oréal group: Strategy & model.

Thompson, V. (2020). Influence of Advertisement on Women & the Attitude Toward Cosmetics. CHRON

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