This article, 3 Key Social Media Marketing Tips, is intended to provide an overview on Social Media Marketing and provide tips on best practices and how to get started.

1. Social Media Marketing – Background

While most methods of marketing are geared toward selling goods or services, the “product” in social marketing is human behavior.

For example, in the early 1980’s, a brief but powerful commercial started airing on network television. We are pretty sure you still remember it. The 15-second spot showed a sizzling frying pan, and a voiceover narrator announces, “This is drugs.” An egg is cracked into the pan, and the narrator continues, “This is your brain on drugs. Any questions?”

2. Social Media Marketing – Provide Value to your audience

For small businesses today, social marketing is used to build and engage an audience. It is used to provide value to your business audience. It is used to strengthen brand awareness. The intent is to create know, like and trust with your business audience. The result is that you are creating loyal, repeat customers.

Let’s use Facebook as an example. 2.7 billion people use Facebook every month to connect with friends and family and to discover things that matter. This is a free service which enables you to cultivate new customers and build lasting relationships with them.

---

Social media is primarily intended to influence behavior with less emphasis on selling a product.

---

3. Social Media Marketing – Tips

All you need is a personal Facebook account. From your personal account, you simply set up a Facebook Business Page. Facebook Pages help people connect with your business. They establish your business’s presence on Facebook so people can find out about you and connect with you.

We highly advise that you keep your Facebook personal page separate from your Facebook Business Page.

Rather than try to sell products and services on your business page, provide value to your audience. Use your page to educate people about the services you provide.

For example, if you are a plumber, you might want to post about the life-cycle of a water heater. If you are a dentist, you might want to post on the type of sedation or local anesthesia you use.

Here is the really cool part. The content you post is virtually unlimited, especially for businesses that have a website. We like to explain it this way: Do not always try to write new content. Do not try to reinvent the wheel. Use what you already have. Work smarter, not harder. Simply copy and paste a piece of content from your website into your post.

There is yet another major advantage of Facebook. Every Like you receive on a post serves as social proof that others appreciate your post.

Furthermore, Facebook enables people to share your post with all their friends. This can have a viral effect if your post contributes enough valuable information.

In summary, this article should serve as a baseline tutorial on Social Media Marketing. Social media is primarily intended to influence behavior with less emphasis on selling a product. It is used to strengthen brand awareness. The intent is to create know, like and trust with your business audience. The result is that you are creating loyal, repeat customers.

Creating a Facebook Business Page is a great way to get started, but there are many more ways to engage your audience and provide them value on other social media platforms. We explained how you can work smarter rather than harder by simply using existing content on your websites in your posts.

There are plenty of resources on how best to implement Social Media Marketing. Marketing expert Neil Patel has an excellent primer here.

In a future article, we will explain how to be successful in social media by posting a nonstop stream of relevant content to engage even more potential customers across other social channels through automation.