Social media marketing platforms are designed to ease the workload and simplify processes, so you can stay on top of your social media channels.

The idea is to bring all your social accounts into one place, create content and post from the same platform, and use data to improve your future marketing strategies.

Eight out of 10 companies already invest in social media marketing. Some use free platforms like the Meta Business Suite to improve their Facebook and Instagram marketing efforts. Others opt for paid-for platforms that offer a wider range of services, including social listening and AI-generated content creation tools.

No matter what your business does, it's important to find a social media marketing platform that can support your strategy.

This guide will take you through the key considerations for social media managers when picking marketing software. Each platform has its own benefits and costs, so it's important to understand what you want from software before diving in.

Evolution of social media marketing

We'll go into further detail about what social media marketing platforms actually do and how they can help you run multiple accounts at once. Before that, though, it's worth exploring how we got to the stage where marketing efforts on social media platforms has become such an integral part of business.

The rise of social media platforms

Two decades ago, platforms such as MySpace and Friendster were primarily used for personal connections. Social media was just that: social.

Others soon came along, with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn becoming the big hitters in the early 2010s.

The problem was, a social media platform needs money in order to operate effectively. Users can sign up for free, so where does the money come from to support each social site?

The answer is through advertising. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram understood this better than others and became commercial hubs for thousands of businesses. Very soon, brands realized social media sites were different to traditional commercial mediums like TV and billboards. Not only can you advertise, you can also interact with your audience and be far more specific in your marketing.

Integration with digital marketing strategy

Today, social media marketing is part of a wider digital strategy. Social platforms are often a big focus for brands because target audiences spend so much time on Facebook, Instagram, X, and TikTok.

What's more, eCommerce now makes up almost 20% of all global sales. A digital marketing strategy's objectives often include selling products or services, either via a website or directly on a social media platform.

No wonder social media marketing has never been so important!

In this guide

Use the links above to jump to each section of this article. Our aim is to provide readers with a comprehensive introduction to social media marketing and how software can help make life easier.

If you'd like to know more, read our Complete Social Media Marketing Guide here.

Types of social media platforms

Let's start with the basics. Most of us know what types of social media platforms are out there, but we may not know the core differences between each one.

It's important to be aware of these so you can decide whether your brand needs to be on multiple platforms, or whether it would be smarter to focus resources on certain ones.

Social first: Facebook

Facebook remains the heavyweight in the world of social media marketing, although there is plenty of competition from the likes of Instagram and TikTok. With billions of active users, it is a crucial platform for businesses to build and maintain a strong social media presence.

After all, you can create a Facebook business profile that acts as a shop front if you don't want to operate a website. There's no shortage of possible customers!

However, users likely see Facebook as a social-first platform – a place to go to converse with each other but not necessarily brands.

News and views: X

X (formerly Twitter) has undergone a lot of change recently with a change of ownership and algorithm tweaks.

X remains the home of news and views. Brands will use the social media site to launch their marketing initiatives or make announcements but probably don't expect financial returns directly from X. Instead, brand recognition and media hype is often the goal social media marketing on X.

Visual and creative networks: Instagram

Instagram, and to a lesser extent Pinterest, are platforms that highlight visual content and inspire creativity.

They often attract a younger demographic than Facebook or X, and Instagram in particular is at the forefront of social media marketing innovation. Stories and Reels have become huge hits, while direct sales via Instagram means brands can cut the sale funnel to just one or two steps.

However, social media marketing on visual-led sights must be creative. Dull or badly-designed imagery won't resonate with audiences and could result in embarrassment for the brand.

Perhaps the most all-consuming of the social media networks, TikTok is a non-stop deep dive into what's hot right now. Trending videos quickly go viral and produce millions of spin-off posts.

Doing TikTok right requires a dedicated social media employee who can shoot, edit, and post engaging video. Quick, creative thinking is a must, because trends come and go in a flash.

You'll need the right tools to implement an effective social media strategy for TikTok.

Professional networks: LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the go-to platform for professional networking. It provides businesses with opportunities to target professionals based on their job title, industry, company size, and more.

We often overlook how important LinkedIn is. Brands and employees become thought leaders in their industries, even if the company doesn't dominate the market.

It serves as an ideal platform for businesses in the B2B sector to target and engage with potential clients and industry influencers.

It's a great place not only to share campaign content, but also to show off your marketing prowess.

Say, for example, you launch a campaign on Facebook and Instagram that seeks to target two demographics and generate leads for your product. The campaign goes well and you smash your goals in the first three days. This is the good news story you can spread on LinkedIn, showing others in your industry how great you are at social media marketing!

Using platforms for crafting a social media marketing strategy

A social media marketing strategy is required if you're going to use your social presence correctly. Some companies 'open' social media accounts simply to act as place holders. You might, for example, have an account on Facebook that does nothing but prompt readers to navigate to your main website.

If you want to be proactive on social media then you need to create a strategy. Here's how to start:

1. Define business goals and target audience

To create an effective social media marketing strategy, you must first define your business goals and target audience.

Consider what you want to achieve through your marketing efforts, such as increasing brand awareness, generating leads, or boosting sales. Can you do this on one platform? Do you need software to help?

You'll certainly need tech support to identify or define your ideal audience, considering factors like demographics, interests, and online behavior.

Once you have your goals and audience nailed down, you can move on to the next step.

2. Content creation and diverse content formats

Developing a dynamic content strategy is key to capturing your target audience's attention. You can do all the research you like into your audience but if you create uninteresting content then you won't make any impact.

Focus not only on crafting compelling messages, but also on incorporating diverse content formats. TikTok requires smart, quick videos for example, while LinkedIn and Facebook may be more suited to text-based posts.

You could even dive into the audio sphere and publish talks on your X or Instagram accounts that help build brand awareness.

Of course, experimentation is key! And what works best on each platform can change over time.

3. Using influencers

Influencer marketing can significantly boost the visibility and credibility of your brand. It can be as simple or as complex as you like.

So long as you collaborate with influencers whose values align with your brand then you'll be able to create content that resonates with your target audience.

Keep in mind that micro-influencers (10,000-100,000 followers) and macro-influencers (100,000-1 million followers) can often prove more effective than celebrity influencers with millions of followers due to their strong specialities and highly engaged audiences.

Influencer marketing can become the focus of your social media strategy if you get it right. For more advice, see how Brandwatch Influence can help you today.

4. Social media advertising

The last part of your strategy should look at advertising. Paid social media ads go straight to your target demographic.

This means you can pinpoint the people that would be most interested in your brand or offering and connect with them more deeply with messaging that resonates.

Social ads can come in the form of written content, images, or videos. Most brands go for a combination, such as a tweet that outlines the brand's marketing statement alongside an eye-catching video or image.

Social media platforms for effective management

Once you have your overarching social media marketing strategy in place, you can begin to look at the tools and platforms available to help deliver on your goals.

Since social media is such a popular marketing platform, there are a lot of social media marketing software solutions out there.

Let's take a look at some of the top platforms available today.

Using social media marketing software

Social media marketing platforms are designed to help you manage each social media account in one place. These platforms, such as Brandwatch, Hootsuite, and Statusbrew, provide you with a one-stop solution for managing multiple social media accounts across different networks.

What they offer

The ability to create, schedule, and publish social media posts across multiple accountsEngagement management by monitoring comments, likes, and mentionsAccess to tracking data and in-depth analyticsOptions to use social listening to better understand audiences (available at Brandwatch)Your software enables you to operate and manage social media marketing campaigns in one place, from start to finish. What makes these platforms so valuable is the access they have to social media data and the ability to pull multiple accounts into one place. You won't need to hop around multiple tabs to get a full view of your social media marketing.

Monitoring and social listening

We mentioned social listening in the list above – and it's worth us talking a little more about this.

Social listening opens the door to an entirely new social media landscape. No longer are brands constrained to data directly related to them (such as likes, shares, and mentions). Now, you can hear what people think about your brand, what they're saying about competitors, and what's trending in the industry.

Brandwatch Listen allows you to conduct thorough research into billions of social media data points and feed the insights you've gathered into your strategy. You can then create smarter marketing campaigns that truly resonate with audiences.

Analytics and performance tracking

Social media companies like X and Meta give users access to basic data that is directly relevant to their channels. This data can be useful for giving a general overview of a brand's success on a social platform. However, it's not enough in an era where competitive analysis and performance tracking can make or break a marketing campaign.

That's why tools like Brandwatch and Statusbrew exist. These platforms dig into the data, so you know exactly how well your Instagram Stories, tweets, and LinkedIn posts are doing.

Analyzing data with advanced analytics

It's advanced analytics that provides the most value when you use software like Brandwatch. Whereas the Meta Business Suite gives a good overview of your Facebook analytics, you need a much more powerful tool to see the whole picture.

Types of advanced analytics include:

  • Identifying how users interact with your content
  • Finding posts with the highest engagement
  • Discovering optimal posting times
  • Tracking referral sources
  • Analyzing user demographics

You can then layer audience sentiment data to understand not only what's said about your brand, but whether it's good or bad. Then, dig into different social networking sites to pinpoint where conversations and trends started.

Suddenly, your social media management software is showing you a complete picture of your channels and the broader market.

Measuring success and ROI

The other big benefit to external tools that look beyond social media posts is their ability to accurately measure ROI.

For example, a brand might plan to spend $750,000 on a marketing campaign with videos posted on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook.

Using one of the top social media marketing platforms, the brand will be able to see which campaigns are generating the most clicks as well as the most engagement.

Your software allows you to see all this data in one place and match it to your overall marketing strategy.

How to optimize social media presence

Social media can become a black hole of time and resources if you don't optimize your work on it. Marketing professionals can spend months posting to business accounts without having any real strategy for what they're doing.

The insatiable need for social content means marketers often can't escape the loop and take time to create a social media strategy.

So, what can you do? Below are ways to optimize your presence while working on a strategy, so you can begin to publish better content across your different social media platforms.

1. Use search engine optimization methods

This is a quick win but optimizing your social media presence can be done using search engine optimization (SEO) techniques.

By using targeted keywords, building quality backlinks, and creating shareable content, you can attract more users to your social media accounts.

Likewise, by being smart with your hashtags, alt text on images, shareable links, and general content, you can make your social media accounts much more engaging.

Social media marketing, like SEO marketing, is all about understanding the tech behind each platform and aligning your content with it.

2. Build brand awareness and identity

You can save a lot of time trying to court attention on social media if you have a brand identity that actually resonates with your audience. For example, a soccer club that launches a new jersey might have general interest from its own fans. However, a soccer club with a strong mission statement that launches a new jersey alongside a social impact sponsor can generate global interest way beyond its fanbase.

Here are some steps for building brand awareness and identity on socials:

  1. Define your brand: Start by establishing a clear and unique brand identity that represents your business and values. Consider aspects such as color schemes, logos, and a consistent tone of voice.
  2. Choose the right platforms: Select the social media platforms that align best with your target audience and brand identity. Focus your efforts on the platforms where your audience is most active and engaged. You can do this by performing a simple volume analysis to find out where people are talking about your brand, competitors, or industry most.
  3. Consistent messaging: Maintain a consistent message across all platforms. This ensures that your brand is easily recognizable and memorable. Try to bring old accounts in line too – you don't want audiences to get confused.
  4. Engage your audience: Interact with your target audience, respond to their comments, and encourage dialogue. Building strong connections with your followers can encourage brand loyalty and increase brand awareness.

3. Cross-pollinate with software

A third way to optimize your social presence is to use software to cross-pollinate between each social media site. For example, content creation tools like Canva allow you to repurpose images and video content for different mediums.

So, your Instagram Reel can easily go on TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Likewise, you can resize graphics so they display better on individual platforms.

Cross-pollination of content only works well if you know your target audience will respond in kind on various platforms. So, be sure to do your audience research before replicating posts for each of your social platforms. Replication for the sake of it is just lazy.

Advertisements and paid marketing on social media

Each social media platform has an ads or paid-for option that is intended to help brands widen their reach. Using these services correctly can be hugely beneficial. Advertising on social media is nothing new but marketers are always figuring out fresh ways to get the most from their investments.

A platform like Brandwatch can help you manage your paid marketing efforts so you don't waste money.

But marketing in this way requires a lot of expertise if you want to secure a worthwhile ROI.

Understanding paid ads across platformsIndeed, as you venture into social media advertising, it's important to understand the different types of paid ads across various platforms.

Generally, there are three main formats of social media ads:

  1. Sponsored posts: These are promoted versions of regular posts that appear in users' feeds, giving your brand more visibility. They're commonly found on Facebook and X, although they're not always effective.
  2. Carousel ads: These allow you to showcase multiple images or videos in a single ad, with viewers swiping through them. They're popular on Instagram and X.
  3. Story ads: Short-lived, full-screen ads that usually contain images or short videos, which appear between user-generated stories on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat. They have become a go-to option for brands on TikTok in recent years.

You can use a social site's own business platform – such as the Meta Business Suite – to coordinate your ads. Or you can use tools like Advertise from Brandwatch, which lets you manage your ad campaigns in one place.

Exploring key features of social media ads

What is the point of social media advertising? It's something many marketers wonder, especially when you have to pay large fees with no guarantee of return.

Well, advertising on a social media platform isn't just about making money. It can greatly enhance a brand's reputation and help it pivot into a different industry, or target a fresh demographic.

If you think social ads are right for you then here are some things to consider when establishing your paid-for plan.

  1. Targeting: Each platform offers diverse targeting options based on demographics, interests, behaviors, and more. Make sure to segment your audience and tailor your ads accordingly. Use social listening to find your audience and go from there.
  2. Ad placements: Experiment with different ad placements (feed, stories, etc.) to see what works best for your campaign. You can always start cheap and then invest more money into the best-performing format later.
  3. Bidding and budgeting: Social media advertising platforms typically use an auction system, allowing you to set bid caps and daily budgets to control costs. This is important if you want to target specific events, like music festivals or sports games. Assess your budget before bidding!
  4. Be creative: Develop attention-grabbing creative ads that resonate with your audience, and test different variations to optimize performance. Creativity is vital in advertising and is often rewarded on social media.
  5. Tracking and analytics: You can use the built-in analytics tool of each social media platform to track key performance metrics such as impressions, click-through rate, and conversions. Or go bigger with powerful software like Brandwatch Advertise and get a full picture of how your ads have fared.

Social media platforms and targeted reach

One of the main benefits of using social media management platforms is you get hands on a lot of data. You can use this to boost your reach with specific targeting. Never again will you simply throw out a Facebook post and hope some attention comes back.

Identifying the right audience

So, how you do perform targeted reach on social? The first step is to identify the right audience for your products or services.

To do this, you'll need to look back at your strategy and understand who your target audience is. Remember to consider factors such as gender, age, location, and interests when creating these personas.

From there, you can use social media analytics tools to gain insights into their online behavior and identify user subsets that match your target audience.

Your software will help you do this and allow you to send targeted messages to those subsets.

Of course, as a marketing campaign rolls out you might redefine or recategorize your target audience – perhaps broadening or making it more specific. If this happens, you'll need to crunch the data again and find new subsets.

Advanced techniques in social media marketing

Finally we come to the futuristic side of social media marketing. Below are three advanced techniques marketers use to supercharge their campaigns, grab more attention, and generate leads.

You don't necessarily need a presence on all social media platforms to apply these advanced techniques.

They are:

  1. Running competitive intelligence analysis
  2. Integrating E-commerce
  3. Engaging with a broader audience

Let's take a look.

1. Running competitive intelligence analysis

Competitive intelligence has always existed in marketing but it's only become a big factor on social media platforms over the last decade. There are some huge advantages to be gained from watching how your rivals launch and operate digital marketing campaigns.

For a start, you see their successes as well as their failures. You can spot what to avoid and, crucially, what gaps are there to be filled in the industry. It's competitor research without speaking to your competitors!

Using analytics tools like Brandwatch and Sprout Social helps here, because you can directly compare your social media efforts against others.

Want to know more? Our guide to competitor analysis will help.

E-commerce within social media platforms has become a lot easier over the last few years, yet you still have to find a relevant audience before you can sell anything this way.

The trick is to conduct the usual background research into your target audiences and build relationships with them, before then launching purchase opportunities directly from the social network.

Instagram, for example, requires a brand to have 1,000 followers before it can sell products.

Another trick to boost e-commerce opportunities is to use a link in bio tool. These tools, like Linktree, give users a menu of where they want to go once they've clicked on it. It means one Instagram user can go to your online shop, and another to the 'about us' page on your website.

Your online store also needs to be optimized for social media. Most e-commerce platforms, like Shopify and WooCommerce, offer social media integration options.

This means you can:

  1. Use high-quality images for product listings.
  2. Include "buy now" buttons to streamline the checkout process.
  3. Provide a secure, mobile-friendly experience.

3. Engaging with a broader audience

Brand seek to widen their audiences all the time in order to generate more interest and sales. Being able to analyze data on your own audience is one thing, but assessing the entire social landscape gives you the opportunity to capture a broader audience.

Now, listening tools like Brandwatch are at the forefront of this development. You can hear what people are saying on social sites across the world. Discover what they're talking about, analyze conversation sentiments, and predict future trends.

Armed with this data, you can now begin to look for bigger audiences.

Say a sportswear company is trying to figure out how to appeal to women in their 30s. They notice thousands of social media accounts in that demographic are talking about a very specific niche sport. Launching an ad campaign about the multi-sports use of their equipment, including the trending sport, might be the sort of thing that attracts this new audience.

The last word on social media marketing platforms

You should now be ready to enter the world of social media marketing, armed with knowledge on what to expect across the industry. Marketing on social media requires software to help streamline your efforts and ensure consistency across all channels.

From creating images and building a content calendar, to sourcing the right audiences and keeping apace of brand monitoring – you can do it all with the right tools.

Your next step is to develop the strategy we mentioned toward the top of this guide and calculate what you need to execute it. You might not need a universal marketing tool if you realize what's available as standard within social networks can handle all your tasks.

However, you might find that as your brand grows, the workload for managing your social media marketing campaigns increases. If this happens, consider trialing external software to see if it can help.

You never know, it might revolutionize how you work on social media.