The study also found that corporate culture, gender, easiness to use, and perception of usability did not affect the use of social media by B2B customers. Sułkowski and Kaczorowska-Spychalska (2016) investigated the adoption of social media by SMM Thai companies in the Polish textile-clothing industry. By interviewing seven companies representatives of small and medium-sized enterprises the study found that companies started implementing social media activities in their marketing activities.

Analyze And Iterate Your Efforts

Whatever your reality is, it’s a good idea to audit your current social media efforts to see what’s working and what’s not. Regardless of your stance, Facebook remains a key player in the world of social media. Worldwide, it remains the most-used social media app by marketers, with 89% reporting they use the platform to promote their business, and 80% reporting they use Instagram. A/B testing content is one of the most effective ways to test your content in real-time. Hootsuite users can also run A/B tests directly in their dashboard.

Lastly, remember that many social media scheduling solutions — as we reviewed earlier — also have built-in monitoring and analytics tools. Meanwhile, HubSpot’s marketing analytics software is an excellent choice if you want to get a unified overview of all your campaigns. This helps you gauge how each specific channel contributes to your overall marketing goals.

The significance of social media marketing lies in its capacity to connect businesses with their desired audience in an intimate, interactive manner. It’s a conduit for enhancing brand recognition, cultivating customer interactions, and nurturing brand allegiance. The advanced targeting, analytical, and advertising features of social platforms render it both cost-efficient and quantifiable. Facebook is the most popular social media platform, making it a smart choice for almost any business. You can use it to boost brand awareness, gain followers, generate leads and increase sales.

More importantly, brands need to find ways to create videos that entertain, educate or inspire in under 30 seconds. X, previously known as Twitter, remains a go-to platform for real-time discussions, news, memes and customer service. While some advertisers have pulled back, user activity remains strong, particularly for those seeking updates and fast-paced interactions.

When it comes to content formats, short-form video content has been among the best-performing types of content across platforms in recent years — and the trend is still on the rise. While some exciting X (Twitter) alternatives are gaining traction now, including Bluesky, Mastodon, and Instagram’s answer to microblogging, Threads, none come close to X’s current 500 million+ monthly active users. Analyzing millions of Instagram posts sent through Buffer revealed that Reels are the best content to post on the platform for engagement.

Later’s social listening tool makes it easy to track mentions, trends, and engagement across platforms. Social listening gives you the data to really, truly understand your target audience. You can combine your in-depth knowledge of your audience with social listening data to form a complete understanding of your target audience. The benefits of a strategic social media marketing plan are, to put it lightly, significant.

Doing social media marketing right starts with 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. 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 rates.

Social media users are there for entertainment, connection, and value – not to be constantly bombarded with sales pitches. When your content is purely promotional, it can come across as pushy and turn people away. Social media is not just a broadcasting tool – it’s a platform for interaction. Ignoring comments, messages, and interactions from your audience is a surefire way to lose their trust. If your followers take the time to comment on your posts or ask questions, acknowledge them!

Social media marketing brings your message directly to your customers, while allowing you to accurately measure how effective each post, comment, and ad is at achieving your goals. But, with the rise of social media, brands no longer need to wait around for someone to turn on the TV or open a magazine. Today, people spend approximately 2 hours and 23 minutes daily on social media. This, plus the ability to accurately track, analyze, and optimize on your results, is what makes social media marketing a truly unique marketing space. Social media marketing is about building relationships with your audience in the places they already spend their time online. This might look like promoting your latest product drop, or simply jumping in on a trend that your audience is interested in.

Dive Deep Into Social Media Analytics

Influencer marketing will be a driving force for brands in 2025 as they integrate influencer content more intentionally for a more effective multi-channel approach. This will include edutainment, i.e. content that educates and entertains, which is also poised to be the most engaging of all brand content on social. Rachel Karten is a social media consultant who has created super successful social strategies for brands like Bon Appétit and Epicurious. Her newsletter, Link in Bio, is a resource for social experts, featuring opinions and tips shared by practicing social experts. Over the years, it has evolved into an active community with a job board and a Discord channel. Or maybe you’re looking for social media post templates to get your content strategy out the door.

Social listening tools (like Talkwalker) can offer a wealth of valuable information about your followers. Dig into the numbers to understand demographics, geographical locations, and interactions with your brand. UTM parameters are another great tracking tool that will help you see which social networks are providing the most benefits for your business. Even if you haven’t been on social media this whole time, chances are, your fans and customers are… and your haters may be, too. Reviewing analytics emphasizes stats like follower growth, page views, number of posts, likes, shares, impressions, clicks, etc.

ROI is the relationship between profit and the investment that generate that profit. Some studies focused on the ways B2B companies can measure ROI and the challenges they face (Gazal et al. 2016; Michaelidou et al. 2011; Vasudevan and Kumar 2018). For example, Gazal et al. (2016) investigated the adoption and measuring of the effectiveness of social media in the context of the US forest industry by using organisational-level adoption framework and TAM. By using data from 166 companies it was found that 94% of respondents do not measure the ROI from social media use. McShane et al. (2019) proposed social media strategies to influence online users’ engagement with B2B companies. It was found that hashtags and text difficulty are connected to lower levels of engagement while embedded media such as images and videos improve the level of engagement.

Social media signals are among the less significant factors, but none the less can still impact your rankings. In the beginning, focus your effort on the social network(s) that are MOST relevant to your customer group, and give them your best shot. As a rule, I’d recommend picking your customer’s top 3 most frequented networks and sticking to them to start. With your data at hand, try to answer some basic questions, such as what is the overall sentiment for websites in this space, what audience categories are the most vocal about it, and so on.

And you simply can’t build your entire audience in rented spaces anymore. We’ve already seen turbulence across platforms, and it’s only getting worse. That thinking fuels these ideas to pivot your social media strategy to other avenues.

Take Kägi, the company that sells Swiss chocolate wafers around the world. They plan all their social media posts with the help of an external agency and use the Brandwatch suite to optimize their social media marketing strategy. One of the best ways to increase brand awareness is simply by posting high-quality, engaging content that tells your brand’s story. The trick is not purely promoting products and services – you want to give an insight into the values, mission, and unique character of your organization by humanizing your brand. Regularly reviewing performance metrics via a social analytics tool and occasionally switching up your tactics is a good way to keep your social media marketing strategy fresh and engaging. As we unpick the fundamentals of social media marketing, we’ll look at some tricks of the trade – like using specific strategies to enhance social media engagement or using paid advertising to boost reach.

Overall, this approach helps boost your organic reach and makes your social media marketing more effective. Providing valuable and diversified content is one of the key strategies for social media marketing. Additionally, diversify your content types to include a mix of videos, images, infographics, and blog posts to cater to different preferences and increase engagement.