With the rise in popularity of social media, social media marketing has become a broad category of marketing. Whenever a company uses social media, it can be seen as a form of social media marketing. This kind of reach can happen on any social media platform, be it Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or whatever. Social media marketing services are also very diverse due to the versatility of marketing. 

Marketing reach can take many different forms, from direct advertising to more subtle ways of building relationships with potential customers. Likewise, they can be simple advertisements for products or services, or they can be a vehicle for developing business relationships. 

Depending on your short or long-term needs, you can create a single or unified social media marketing strategy. On some unique platforms or markets, but keep in mind that this requires more resources as each social media application has its own standard messaging format and content. However, this approach can also have a greater impact.

Popular Social Media Platforms

Social media is a relatively new technology, so platforms and popularity are constantly changing. However, the popularity of platforms can be measured in points. 

According to a 2019 Pew Research survey, YouTube is the most popular platform, with 73% of US adults using it. Here are the adult usage statistics for the other five platforms listed below. Included in the survey: 

• Facebook: 69% 
• Instagram: 37% 
• Pinterest: 28% 
• LinkedIn: 27% 
• Snapchat: 24%

Pros and cons of Social Media Marketing

In the early 2000s, popular sites such as Flickr, MySpace, Match.com, and YouTube emerged in 2005 along with Facebook and Twitter the following year, and now their social networks have hundreds of millions of users. Platforms, like the average user, companies have found ways to advertise their products and services.

Advantages

Customer Data Analysis

Sites like Facebook have third-party vendors that specialize in data segmentation software and services, and companies using the data are rewarded with SMM ads that their intended customers see.

Raising brand awareness  

Statista predicts that over 3 billion people will be using social media in one form or another by 2021, so since most people have a smartphone, desktop or laptop, they spend a lot of time on social media doing whatever activities. If implemented correctly, SMM will at worst increase your company’s brand awareness.

Better customer satisfaction

Generally, most people seek attention and recognition, and websites encourage this. Selfie is a standard activity that includes sharing photos and videos of using the product and more.

Profitable

Social media marketing can be profitable if you know how to do it right with the optimization of social media profiles (SMO).  Creating a new profile and first logging in is free for most social media platforms, so setting up doesn’t have to be a huge investment or risk. Use up your marketing budget quickly by trying to do it yourself without the help of an SMM expert.

Increased inbound traffic

Internet marketing will increase traffic to your site. With SMM, when a campaign is professionally designed with one-click action from your funnel to your website and ideally a product page, visitors will come and stay on your site if they like what they see. They see, so make sure your ad has a call to action and on the landing page avoid filling it with noise, pop-up banners, and unintuitive features.

Disadvantages

Social media has been around for almost a couple of decades, so now we feel more comfortable with them and trust them more. However, this is not always the case. Take Facebook for example, using it is a steep learning curve. and too many software updates that alter the display and usability. After that, the user’s privacy setting was set to “public” by default, and after the user’s Facebook response, it still took 5 years for it to become visible to friends

Exposure to competitors

Social media marketing allows for the study of competitors’ strategies, however, they can still research your business practices through social media platforms, putting your business at risk.

Needs qualified personnel

Social media marketing allows for the study of competitors’ strategies, for example, to get the most out of your WhatsApp Business multi-user account, start with the Business Platform API. You have to invest the skills of a social media developer or marketer.

Slow returns on investments

Social media marketing is a long-term investment that is, planning campaigns to run continuously.

Tarnish brand name

If negative information makes it to a social media platform, the public will have an opportunity to voice their complaints tarnish your product name and prevent potential customers from building relationships and doing business with the brand.

Time-consuming

People may deliberately ignore your site because they might be interested in other pages. It can take a long time for your articles to be appreciated and distributed. For this reason, it is necessary to allocate resources in the form of money and time to ensure the regular publication of aesthetic publications.