Just creating a social media profile for your business and then kicking back won’t cut it. In reality, letting your social media accounts go inactive and gather dust could backfire and tarnish your brand’s image.
When you fail to engage with your followers, you risk losing potential customers to your competitors who are actively engaging with them online.
That’s why your business needs social media marketing.
But what is social media marketing for businesses? Let’s answer this and more in this blog as we cover:
• Social Media for Business: What Is Social Media Marketing?
• How Does Social Media Help Businesses: The Benefits of Social Media Marketing
• The Best Ways To Promote Your Business: Tips for Using Social Media for Business
• Top Social Media Platforms for Businesses To Explore
• Top Social Media Tools To Try
• Social Media for Business Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
A quick overview of the tips for using social media for businesses:
1. Have clear objectives.
2. Be on the right platforms.
3. Experiment with different content.
4. Double-down on visuals.
5. Reply to comments and messages.
6. Manage your online reputation.
7. Practice consistency.
8. Repurpose top-performing content.
9. Capitalize on user-generated content (UGC).
10. Run paid social media.
11. Champion your team members.
12. Partner with other brands or influencers.
13. Dive into analytics.
14. Monitor your competitors.
15. Use social media tools.
Social Media for Business: What Is Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing is digital marketing done through social media platforms to promote and grow a business.
The modern marketing approach of using social media for businesses involves more than just setting up profiles on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn or TikTok.
It’s about crafting compelling content that resonates with your audience, engaging in meaningful conversations and building a community around your brand.
How Does Social Media Help Businesses: The Benefits of Social Media Marketing
So, how does social media help businesses, exactly?
Here are four ways using social media in business operations can bolster your brand’s growth:
Humanizing Your Brand
A presence alone on social media sends a clear message to your target audience that you’re eager to connect with them on a more personal level. Through social media, you can creatively showcase your brand’s personality, values and the people behind the logo.
You can make your business approachable on social media even as you deliver professional or technical content. An approachable brand fosters deeper loyalty and trust among your audience. When people feel seen, heard and valued by a brand, they’re more likely to develop a strong connection to it, recommend it to others and remain loyal customers over time.
So, although it’s needed for businesses to position themselves as a trusted authority in their respective industries, this shouldn’t overshadow the consumers’ longing for human connection.
Building Relationships With Customers
Connecting with your customers via social media shifts the old-school, one-directional marketing talk into a two-sided engagement. Social media engagement is not just about promoting products or services but creating meaningful connections, wherein customers are free to ask questions.
Social media enables businesses to listen to customer feedback, understand their preferences and respond in real-time. Similarly, customers can ask questions, share feedback and even help spread the word about your offerings through likes, shares and comments.
With consumers overwhelmed by a constant flood of marketing messages every day, offering them the chance to interact with you on social media is a breath of fresh air.
Promoting Your Products or Services
It’s undeniable that promotion remains one of social media’s major advantages, even though we’ve just highlighted above that social media serves purposes beyond merely pushing products or services. Social media enables businesses like yours to present their products or services in a more relatable and engaging manner.
Through creative posts, live demonstrations, customer testimonials and behind-the-scenes looks, you can highlight the value and uniqueness of what you offer in a way that feels less like a sales pitch and more like an invitation to a conversation.
Particularly for small businesses, you can capitalize on the enormous user base of social media platforms to amplify your brand visibility.
Collecting Market Insights
Powerful analytics – you get this from every social media platform of your choice. By analyzing this data, you can tailor your business’s content, advertisements and overall strategy to better match your target audience’s interests and needs. Moreover, social media analytics can help identify market trends and consumer sentiment toward your brand or industry.
For example, social media analytics can help you discover the types of posts that are most popular with your followers, the best times to post for maximum engagement and how your audience interacts with different forms of content. You can also track mentions, hashtags and conversations related to your business to get a real-time view of your brand’s perception and the broader market dynamics.
The analytics and feedback loop you get through from using social media in business are not mere numbers and charts. They’re actionable insights that inform product development, marketing strategies and customer service practices.
Supplementing Search Engine Optimization Efforts
A social media presence can significantly elevate your brand’s visibility online. When potential customers search for your brand, your social media profiles are likely to appear prominently in the search results. Such visibility is due in part to the keyword-rich content that populates your social media pages, making them relevant to search queries.
Search engines such as Google often prioritize content from social media sites, especially those pages that are verified, as they acknowledge their credibility and the up-to-date information they provide.
The relationship between social media and search engine optimization (SEO) is synergistic. This means that maintaining active and verified social media profiles can directly influence how your brand is perceived and how easily it is found online.
Here are key social media statistics from last year that illuminate the power of social media in business marketing today:
• About 90% of people in the U.S. follow online influencers or content creators (Statista).
• Facebook and Instagram are the two most preferred social shopping platforms in the U.S. (Statista).
• More than 106 million Americans are social buyers (Statitsa).
• U.S. shoppers predominantly turn to YouTube and Facebook for researching products before making a purchase (Statista).
• Nearly 60% of shoppers in the U.S. make a purchase after discovering a product on social media (Statista).
• Short-form videos are the top social media content type, offering the best return on investment (HubSpot).
• Over 20% of people in each of the Gen Z, Millennial and Gen X demographics purchase directly through a social media app (HubSpot).
The compelling statistics from the past year further underscore the centrality of social media in today’s marketing ecosystem, highlighting its role not just as a platform for engagement but as a critical driver of consumer behavior and sales.
The Best Ways To Promote Your Business: Tips for Using Social Media for Business
So, what are the best ways to promote your business on social media?
Here are 15 tips for using social media for businesses that can elevate anyone’s social media game:
1. Have Clear Objectives
Goals serve as an anchor that helps your business not veer away and pursue undertakings that will not contribute to its growth. Common goals of using organic and paid social media for business could be to boost brand awareness, increase engagement, drive website traffic, generate leads and get more sales.
But you could also have social media goals that are more specific, short-term or both. Such goals could be supporting social causes to improve brand appeal or collaborating with influencers to expand your reach. Or, you could crowdsource project ideas that actively involve your community, deepening their loyalty and sense of belonging.
Keep in mind that practical objectives are ones that are in line with your brand, specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound (SMART). Practicing the SMART principles is key to tracking progress. A SMART social media goal example would be: “Increase our brand’s Instagram followers by 20% within the next three months by posting daily engaging content, running weekly contests and collaborating with two influencers in our industry.”
2. Be on the Right Platforms
The popularity of social media platforms can change over time as new features emerge and older ones become less relevant. So, when choosing the right social media platforms for your business, you should avoid unthinkingly following the majority to the latest and greatest channels.
Instead, understand where your target audience is most active and engaged. To do this, you need to have a clear picture of who your audience is and what their preferences are. This involves researching demographic information, such as age, interests and behaviors and matching this data with the user profiles of various social media platforms.
Younger audiences, on the other hand, may gravitate towards platforms like TikTok or Instagram, while a more professional audience might be found on LinkedIn.
3. Experiment With Different Content
If you’re still unsure about which type of content works for your audience, you have a lot of options. From short-form videos, Stories, carousels and infographics to long-form articles, social media platforms offer you incredible opportunities to experiment and discover what truly resonates with your target demographic.
And while it’s essential to watch for trends, not every type of content, no matter how popular, will work for every brand. For instance, a healthcare brand shouldn’t copy other brands that do well with memes, getting tons of likes, reshares and comments.
Other businesses, like those in fashion, might find success with snappy short-form videos to showcase products, while those in tech might find longer, in-depth videos explaining the latest innovations more beneficial.
4. Double Down on Visuals
Social media platforms are predominantly visual spaces where users engage more with what catches their eye. Instagram and TikTok require a media of some sort for each post. And with the abundance of content on social media, your visuals could be the only thing that sets you apart from others.
Investing time and resources into creating quality visual content also demonstrates your brand’s commitment to providing value. Whether it’s infographics, behind-the-scenes videos or stunning product photography, visuals can convey complex information that is more digestible and engaging than text alone.
When a viewer sees an image, video or graphic that strikes a chord—whether it’s joy, nostalgia, inspiration or even curiosity—it creates a memorable experience that they want to share with their friends.
5. Reply to Comments and Messages
Social media fundamentally transformed the way brands and consumers interact. It allows for a two-way conversation, yet it’s up to brands to make the engagement happen and nurture it. Your social media presence becomes real and meaningful when you take the initiative to respond to comments and messages.
Addressing issues or answering questions publicly not only helps the individual who raised the issue but also demonstrates to onlookers on the platform that your brand is dedicated to customer satisfaction. This transparency can help build trust and credibility with a wider audience.
(@discord_support on X; Discord’s official customer support X account)
Ultimately, when a brand responds, it reassures the audience that there is a real person behind the screen, not just a faceless corporate entity. So, respond to feedback, questions and concerns and make consumers feel heard and valued.
6. Manage Your Online Reputation
Pay attention to specific features on social media platforms that particularly impact your reputation. For example, Facebook’s review section is where customers can leave feedback about their experiences with your brand. Actively monitoring and responding to these reviews, whether positive or negative, shows that you value customer feedback and are committed to improving their experience.
More than that, Social listening through the search feature on social platforms provides valuable insights into public perception. By tracking mentions of your business, products, services and even top team members like C-level executives, you can gain a broader understanding of how your brand is viewed.
Another effective ORM strategy is promoting the review websites your business is featured on to your social media followers. Regularly sharing these sites encourages your audience to read about others’ experiences and contribute their own reviews. This way, you build a richer base of customer feedback and trust with your audience.
7. Practice Consistency
Brand consistency should be seen by your audience across the board. While different platforms have different features, it’s important for your business to keep the same energy wherever it shows up to foster brand recognition. Your social media channels should look and feel like an extension of your website.
Consistency should also be experienced in the sense that you should be there for your followers regularly. Keeping an eye on your @nameofyourbrand notifications to respond timely and following a posting schedule to set expectations can make all the difference for your audience.
Your followers crave reliability, and showing up regularly with fresh yet relevant content can turn casual viewers into loyal fans. Still, don’t shy away from occasionally surprising them, like with a promo launch, to keep things interesting.
8. Repost and Repurpose Top-Performing Content
Some content is just too good to share only once, especially the evergreen pieces that never seem to lose their relevance. There’s no harm in bringing them back into your newsfeed every now and then. Plus, not everyone might have seen it the first time around.
But it’s not just about giving old content a rerun; it’s also about giving it a fresh twist, like turning a high-performing blog post into an engaging video. By doing this, you’re not only reaching people who prefer reading over watching (or vice versa) but also reinforcing your message through different mediums.
Reposting and repurposing your content isn’t cutting corners; it is a clever strategy that allows you to maximize the reach and impact of your best work.
9. Capitalize on User-Generated Content (UGC)
User-generated content (UGC) refers to any form of content (text, videos, images and more) that’s produced by individuals instead of companies or brands. Since UGC comes directly from customers, it carries a layer of trust and personal touch that traditional marketing can’t quite match.
To ensure you’re never short on UGC, actively encouraging your customers to leave reviews is key. You can do this through follow-up emails after a purchase, offering incentives for leaving a review, or by creating a community around your brand that promotes sharing experiences.
(@apple and @tanco3.snap on Instagram)
Come up with a catchy and memorable hashtag that resonates with your brand and market to encourage participation. Even a giant like Apple leverages UGC with its #ShotoniPhone hashtag. You can also feature specific praises or comments from UGC in your posts to spot how you satisfy customers and add a personal narrative to your brand. Positive UGC is like word-of-mouth advertising in the digital age — highly effective and incredibly persuasive.
10. Run Paid Social Media
Far from being a shortcut or a “lesser” approach, paid social media is a powerful tool that can amplify your reach, target your audience more precisely and accelerate your results. Paid social media campaigns allow you to cut through the noise and place your content directly in front of the people who are most likely to find it valuable, even if they didn’t discover your brand organically.
Combining the authenticity and trust-building power of organic content with the targeted, accelerated impact of paid campaigns can be the most effective way to achieve your social media goals. It’s not about choosing one over the other but about using each method’s strengths to create a more holistic social media strategy.
Such an approach is particularly important since optimizing for organic reach can sometimes fall short due to algorithm changes and the sheer volume of content being shared.
11. Champion Your Team Members
Your team is not just the backbone of your operations – they’re also a powerful resource for showcasing the human element of your brand. Through employee advocacy, your employees can act as brand ambassadors by sharing their experiences, celebrating milestones and talking about their work life on social media.
Employee advocacy is particularly prevalent on professional networks like LinkedIn. Encouraging your team to post about their promotions, achievements and day-to-day successes not only highlights their individual contributions but also casts your brand in a positive, authentic light. This approach helps break down the corporate facade and allows your audience to see the passionate individuals behind the products or services you offer.
(Sissie Hsiao on LinkedIn, Google’s head of the AI products Bard and Assistant, shared an update, and Google’s own page reposted it)
Moreover, when employees share content about your brand, it extends your reach beyond your company’s official social media pages, tapping into each employee’s unique network of contacts. People are more likely to engage with and trust content shared by someone they know personally rather than a faceless corporate entity.
12. Partner With Other Brands or Influencers
Forget chasing mega-influencers: In influencer marketing, quality trumps quantity. Instead of aiming for the biggest names, focus on finding the perfect fit for your brand. This means going beyond follower count and delving into an influencer’s content and their community.
Look for engagement, not just follower size. Does their audience actively interact with their posts? And most importantly, do their values and online image align with your brand’s DNA? A genuine partnership built on shared values leads to stronger results.
(NordVPN influencer marketing program)
Like NordVPN, you can also start an influencer marketing program where influencers can apply, and you can set criteria like follower count and other requirements.
For small or niche businesses, the allure of partnering with high-profile influencers might seem like the fastest route to get results. But, the magic often happens with micro-influencers, as they are known to be particularly effective at not just raising awareness but actually driving sales.
13. Dive Into Analytics
Instead of skimming the surface, go deeper. Don’t take the numbers you see at face value. Track trends to see how metrics evolve over time, identify patterns and ask questions. What’s driving those changes? Are there external factors at play? Is your latest campaign showing early signs of success or does it need a course correction?
Remember, context is king, so wield the native analytics tools of each social media platform. By examining user behavior alongside demographics, comparing website visits to social media activities and aligning sales data with customer opinions, you can piece together the actual narrative that the data is trying to tell.
The deeper you dive, the more valuable insights you’ll surface. Asking questions and actively looking for answers in your data is key to unlocking insights that are both meaningful and actionable.
14. Monitor Your Competitors
Knowledge is power, and nowhere is that truer than in understanding your competitors. Keeping an eye on your competitors helps you refine your messaging. As you analyze how they communicate with their audience, the language they use and the promises they make, you can identify opportunities to make your own messaging more compelling.
Perhaps there’s a unique value proposition they’ve overlooked, or maybe you can address customer pain points in a more relatable way. The goal is to make your brand stand out by speaking directly to the needs and desires of your target audience in a way that your competitors aren’t.
(Meta Ad Library)
You can keep an eye on your competitors by exploring Meta’s Ad Library. This tool lets you search by keyword or advertiser name to discover ads they’re currently running on Facebook or Instagram.
What’s more, monitoring your competitors can reveal gaps in the market. These gaps could be unaddressed customer needs, underserved market segments or even product features that haven’t been fully exploited. By identifying these opportunities, you can tailor your offerings to fill these voids, providing your customers with solutions they’ve been seeking but couldn’t find elsewhere.
15. Use Social Media Tools
Embracing social media tools is essential in a world where artificial intelligence (AI) and automation are reshaping how we work. From scheduling content to going live at the most opportune moments to streamlining the approval process and neatly organizing incoming messages, automation tools are indispensable for anyone looking to maintain an active and engaging online presence without being overwhelmed.
The manual management of social media accounts directly through each platform can be feasible, but it often falls short when it comes to efficiency and scalability. There’s almost always at least one aspect of social media management that you can improve through automation.
Popular examples of these tools include Loomly, Buffer, Hootsuite, SocialPilot and Sendible. Each offers unique features, but all are designed to make the task of social media management more manageable. They can help you plan your content calendar, collaborate with team members, analyze performance data and engage with your audience more effectively.
Top Social Media Platforms for Businesses To Explore
Choosing the right social media platforms for business marketing depends on where your audience spends their time, as we’ve mentioned earlier.
Here’s a brief guide to what different social media platforms offer:
Meta (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp)
Meta’s suite, including Facebook and Instagram, reaches billions monthly. Businesses can run cross-platform ads, manage campaigns, add live chat via Messenger and even open digital shops.
TikTok
A powerhouse with over a billion users, TikTok is perfect for engaging with trends organically or through ads. Its Creator Marketplace is ideal for partnering with influencers.
X
X is a platform for engaging conversations that can inspire purchases. It offers targeted advertising, customer service through DMs and monitoring tools like X Lists.
With 465 million users, Pinterest is great for businesses looking to expand their online presence, drive traffic and encourage conversions through visually appealing pins.
YouTube
More than just entertainment, YouTube serves as a social network where users can follow brands and creators, engage with content and even use live features. It offers various ad formats and allows creators to earn from ads on their videos.
Snapchat
Popular among the under-35 crowd, Snapchat offers unique advertising opportunities like AR lenses, geo-filters and various ad formats to connect with a younger audience.
To add: Google Business Profile, while not necessarily a social media platform, is essential for businesses with physical locations. The platform showcases your business directly in search results, offering customers a quick snapshot of your brand through photos, reviews and updates.
In a nutshell, select platforms where your target audience is most active and which align with your marketing goals.
Top Social Media Tools To Try
Let’s look at more social media tools that you can try, including those we mentioned earlier. Here are social media tools that you can use for management and more:
Loomly
With Loomly, users have the capability to oversee all their content from a single platform. It enhances collaboration and ensures team members are always in the loop, owing to its comprehensive notification system.
Whenever someone updates or comments on content, Loomly sends alerts through various channels, including email, push notifications, Slack and Microsoft Teams, keeping the entire team connected and informed.
Features: Scheduling, content library, collaboration, analytics, reports
Pricing: Starts at $39/month for 10 social media profiles
Free trial: 15-day free trial (no credit card required)
Buffer
Buffer initially carved its niche in the social media management space with a focus on scheduling content. Its unique selling point was its ability to seamlessly integrate posts into a predetermined queue based on a user-defined schedule, effectively “buffering” content for automatic posting.
Over time, Buffer has broadened its suite of features, including a notable integration with Canva.
Features: Scheduling, analytics, engagement, AI assistant, Pablo image creation tool
Pricing: Limited free plan available; paid plans start at $5/month for 1 channel
Free trial: 14-day free trial (no credit card required)
Hootsuite
Hootsuite Inbox is a highlight for users managing social media, offering a comprehensive overview of interactions across networks.
It simplifies searching past conversations for quick information access and allows for customized alerts to prioritize messages and posts needing immediate action.
Features: Scheduling, analytics, engagement, team collaboration, custom reports
Pricing: Starts at $99/month for 10 social media profiles
Free trial: 30-day free trial (credit card required)
Sprout Social
Sprout Social‘s Smart Inbox streamlines the task of continuous customer support and social media management by consolidating various types of incoming messages from all your channels into a single view, ensuring no engagement opportunity is missed.
Setting specific keywords, such as your brand name or frequent misspellings, also reveals unique chances for interaction, even without direct mentions.
Features: Scheduling, analytics, content management, engagement, team collaboration, link-sharing
Pricing: Starts at $249/month for 5 social media profiles
Free trial: 30-day free trial (no credit card required)
SocialPilot
SocialPilot‘s Approvals-On-The-Go feature streamlines the content review process, enabling clients to approve posts from their smartphones, tablets or P.C.s with just one click, bypassing the need for multiple logins.
This functionality facilitates collaboration on draft posts directly within the SocialPilot app, ensuring the smooth preparation of every concept, image or content piece by team members.
Features: Scheduling, analytics, engagement tools, collaboration, white-label reports, AI assistant
Pricing: Starts at $25.50/month for 3 social media profiles
Free trial: 14-day free trial (no credit card required)
Sendible
Sendible’s white-label software offers agencies advanced social media management capabilities, allowing them to retain full brand recognition and credit. It enhances brand identity through customizable features such as colors, tabs, support pages, personalized email notifications and a unique web domain.
The platform simplifies the management of multiple brands by providing separate client dashboards for each, streamlining the approval process for social media posts and facilitating final adjustments through comments when necessary.
Features: Scheduling, analytics, content library, collaboration, engagement, white-label reports
Pricing: Starts at $25/month for 12 social media profiles
Free trial: 14-day free trial (no credit card required)
Later
Originally an Instagram-centric tool with a focus on visual content, Later now also accommodates other social media channels, including YouTube. It offers a Media Library for organizing content, complete with details and notes and separates used from unused media.
Its higher subscription tiers feature a Conversations module, simplifying the process of managing Instagram comments directly from a desktop and facilitating better engagement.
Features: Scheduling, link-in-bio, analytics, first comment feature, hashtag suggestions
Pricing: Limited free plan available; paid plans start at $16.67/month for 1 social set (1 account for each platform)
Free trial: 14-day free trial (credit card required)
Linktree
Linktree offers a customizable platform where users can consolidate and share key links with their audience through a single, personalized page.
The link-in-bio tool is versatile and compatible with social platforms, including Instagram, TikTok, Twitch, Facebook, YouTube, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn and others, making it an ideal solution for centralizing your online presence.
Features: Link-in-bio, analytics, customizable buttons, payments, newsletter signups
Pricing: Free plan available; paid plans start at $4/month
Free trial: 30-day free trial of the PRO plan (credit card required)
Bit.ly
Bitly, popularly known as a URL or link-shortening tool, now offers a suite of solutions that can help your business.
Beyond its core feature of link shortening, Bitly now provides QR Codes, Link-in-bio pages, Analytics and 2D Barcodes. These additions enable users to generate and share custom links for their digital marketing efforts while also offering advanced tracking capabilities to gauge their success.
Features: Link shortening, URL tracking, custom domains, branded short links, click analytics.
Pricing: Limited free plan available; paid plans start at $8/month.
Free trial: Not available.
Related article: The 10 Best Social Media Management Tools for Businesses
Expert Social Media Marketing: Drive Real Social Media Results
“Thrive’s social media team is made up of industry experts who work together to bring your social media strategy to life,” said Alyssa Tear, Thrive’s senior social media manager.
“With Thrive, you are not just working with one individual, but you have a robust team working behind the scenes to bring you the highest quality copy, visuals, strategy and overall social media management,” Tear said.
Our team is here to set you up for success on social media with our services:
•
• Digital Marketing Strategy Development
• Social Media Marketing (including creative or graphics design)
• Social Media Management
• Social Media Advertising
• Social Media Brand Management
• Social Media Reputation Management
• Video Production
• Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
• eCommerce Optimization
• Local SEO
• SEO
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Talk to us — drive real social media results.
Social Media for Business Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
In this section, Thrive’s creative content lead and social media expert, Nada Khafaga, shares her expertise by answering social media marketing FAQs.
| Social Media for Business FAQs | |
| Q. | How Often Should I Post on Social Media for My Business? |
| A. | Aim for 3-5 times a week for most platforms. Think of it like having a conversation with a friend. You wouldn’t bombard them with messages, right? Consistency matters more than frequency, so find a schedule that works for your company, industry and target audience behavior.. |
| Q. | What Type of Content Performs Best on Social Media? |
| A. | Visuals — pictures, videos and things that catch your eye. Visuals are what stop users from scrolling past your content. Still, the answer may vary according to each industry and your end goal for social media, but mainly, visuals are the highest-performing posts. |
| Q. | Should My Business Be on Every Social Media Platform? |
| A. | Choose the platforms where your people hang out the most. Don’t stress about being everywhere. If you’re B2B, it’s better to stick to where other like-minded professionals would engage, such as LinkedIn and sometimes X. That being said, if you’re B2B and you’re targeting architects, fashion designers and overall creative B2B, you might consider running a TikTok account or even a Pinterest account. |
| Q. | Can Social Media Impact My Business’s SEO? |
| A. | Yes, indirectly. While social media signals themselves are not direct ranking factors for search engines, a strong social media presence can contribute to increased brand visibility, which can drive more traffic to your website. This, in turn, can positively impact your search engine rankings over time. |
For more questions about social media marketing or how to use social media for business, send us a message.
