What the Heck is Social Media Marketing?

What the Heck is Social Media Marketing?

Social media is here to stay. With more and more people joining a slew of social media platforms worldwide, it has become an essential piece of marketing strategy. And an effective strategy makes a huge difference. It can gain more awareness for a company’s product or service, connect with customers, and boost sales.

Many social media sites have an analytical tool to help businesses monitor and track their progress. It monitors the engagement with customers, the types of people that have shown interest in their products, and sales made because of social media advertisements.

The social media marketing component of companies deal with current and potential customers, employees, the general public, and bloggers using these analytic tools through social media sites.

When joining a social media marketing team, you need to have a basic knowledge of current news and trends to “keep up with the times” and adequately reach the targeted audience.

With social media being such a vital tool for a business to bring more customers to their company, having a social media marketing team is an obvious necessity for any company in the 21st Century.

My middle and high school friends would often sell bracelets, keychains, old clothes, etc. to earn extra cash for candy, more clothes, and whatever teenage girls spend their money on. With a basic knowledge of social media marketing that I had picked up on over the years, all I saw were dollar signs. I thought if we created an Instagram or Facebook page for their products, follow a few of our friends, plus some other people that we thought would be interested in our products, our sales would have most likely skyrocketed! But of course, my friends didn’t see bracelet-making as a business opportunity. They just saw it as a hobby and a way to make a couple of extra bucks.

Knowing who your audience is, where to find them, how to reach out, and catching their eye, are some straightforward steps in becoming successful in social media marketing.

As I’ve become more intrigued by social media marketing and its inner workings, I’ve started noticing different businesses using different advertising strategies. A couple of years ago, I can still remember a swimsuit company “giving out” free swimsuits to whoever reposted one of their posts. Of course, it seemed like every teenage girl in the world posted that picture everywhere. Great advertising! It caught the eyes of many people. I mean, who doesn’t want an adorable swimsuit that’s also free??

A couple of years ago, I decided to take a couple of classes at my local community college. One of my favorite courses was Comp & Rhetoric.

When making an advertisement, you want the audience to crave your product. They HAVE to have it! It helps to know your audience and what your goal is. How do you want your audience to feel when they see your advertisement? What do you want them to think about when they see your post?

One of my favorite activities in class was when we split into three groups, and we each represented the three modes of persuasion- ethos (use of authority or credibility), logos (logical appeal), and pathos (appeals to emotions). We then had to find an advertisement that depicted our assigned rhetoric device. Some examples for these groups from social media platforms are:

Ethos: Your favorite celebrity posts a video about their skincare routine to promote a new moisturizer. Their skin looks SO lovely and pristine, and if it works for them, it should work for you too, right? The company uses the celebrity’s credibility to promote their product, which is an example of ethos.

Logos: With so many things going on in this political climate, you want to get all the facts, right? Over the past couple of months, I have seen so many posts regarding specific political movements. I have seen mostly two types of posts, one with a loud and closed-minded opinion and another with facts. Which do you think I am more inclined to pay attention to genuinely? The facts. Logos means using an advertisement to appeal to a person’s sense of reason by using statistics and facts from trustworthy sources.

Pathos: I think all of us have, at some point, been scrolling through Instagram or Facebook and stopped to watch a video or read a post about the conditions of our oceans. Seeing so many animals that have been affected by pollution are incredibly saddening. What does this make you want to do? Personally, it makes me want to do better about recycling and try to do my best to improve the environment. When using pathos, people use particular word choices, pictures, videos, and expressive language to appeal to their audience’s emotions.

There are so many strategies that can help someone become successful in a social media role and so many questions to ask yourself to improve your social media profiles. What do you want your social media platforms to look like? How do you want to speak to your audience? What type of rhetoric device do you want to use to persuade your audience? Find out what works best for you. The internet is your oyster. Explore!