What is Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing uses different social media channels to promote products and ideas. As businesses have moved online, social media marketing has become a popular career. In this overview, you’ll learn more about what social media marketing is, what it can do, who uses it, and how to learn it so you can determine how to add this skill to your professional toolbox.

What Can You Do with Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing is a powerful way to get the word out about your product or message, and one of the best things is you can do it for free. It doesn’t cost anything to open accounts on the different social media platforms, and many of the digital marketing tools you need are free to use or have a free version.

Data analytics tools allow you to research the market, identify a target audience, and tailor your message directly to them. Engagement tools let you interact with potential customers, get important feedback, see what your competitors are doing, and change your campaign as you need to. Social media marketing creates and maintains a community through regularly posted, high-quality content.

It can take a bit of time to see organic results, but you can use paid advertising to speed things up. Advertising increases engagement and is a good investment. Social media marketing tools allow you to pinpoint your audience and advertise just to them.

How Do You Get Social Media Marketing Tools? How Much Do They Cost?

Social Media Marketers use various tools to collect data in order to plan campaigns. These tools can help you identify a target audience, engage with customers, research competitors, publish content, and plan future strategies. Here are an array of social media marketing tools to check out.

Google

Search engine giant Google provides many tools for digital marketers to use, and many of them are free. Go to Google’s website to get started.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics (GA) is the most widely used analytics program on the internet. You can use GA to track website visitors, collect data on what they do there, and get numerous reports on users and their actions. GA identifies problems with your web pages to improve performance and sales. Google Analytics can be complicated to learn, but it is free to use.

Google Ads

Google Ads is a paid online advertising platform that allows you to purchase targeted ads on Google’s search pages. These are Pay Per Click (PPC) ads, where a business sets a limit on how much they want to spend, and Google charges a small fee every time someone clicks on the ad. People focus more on attracting organic search activity because they don’t have to pay for it, but PPC is the fastest way to see digital marketing results. Google Ads is free to use, but you have to open an account and pay for the ads.

Google Data Studio

Google Data Studio allows you to take the data from other Google tools and turn it into reports and data visualizations to help plan digital marketing strategies.

Google Business Profile

Google Business Profile is connected to Google Maps, a tool that provides street view photos and directions. Business owners can provide information on brick-and-mortar locations as well as create a free website. Your business will come up in searches for the business name or description. Google Business Profile is free.

Social Media Tools

HootSuite

HootSuite helps you plan content and schedule posts on social media. You can monitor and manage comments and messages, promote organic content, manage paid ads, and collect data across all of your social media channels. After a 30-day free trial, HootSuite costs $49 monthly for the Professional level, $129 monthly for the Team package, and $739 per month for a Business account.

Platform-Specific Tools

Each social media platform has its own analytics tools. Twitter and TikTok each offer free analytics tools. Meta Analytics covers Facebook and Instagram, and YouTube data can be collected through Google Analytics. It is free to post on social media, but you can buy ads on all of the platforms.

SEO Tools

SEMRush

SEMRush is a powerful SEO tool to help you with content marketing, market research, advertising, and social media marketing. Digital marketing depends upon driving organic traffic to your website, and SEO helps you do that. SEMRush offers a seven-day free trial, and after that, there are three levels: Pro for $119.95 monthly, Guru at $229.95 monthly, and Business for $449.95 a month.

Moz

Moz is another SEO tool that does similar functions. Moz offers a less powerful free version and a pro version. After a 30-day free trial, you can purchase Moz at four different levels: Standard for $99/month, Medium for $179/month, Large for $299/month, and Premium for $599/month. There is a 20 percent discount if you pay for a year upfront.

What Are the Benefits of Learning Social Media Marketing?

As businesses have moved online, social media marketing has become a popular career. In order to become a successful Social Media Marketer, you need to understand how the different social media platforms operate and their focuses. You need to have skills like clear communication, organization, flexibility, writing, creativity, and data analytics. You also need to know how to build a brand and use quality content to increase sales.

Read more about why you should learn social media marketing.

Social Media Marketing Careers

Social Media Marketer is an interesting and lucrative career. Social media marketing skills can lead to jobs in digital marketing, content strategy, data analytics, social media management, and consulting. An understanding of social media is also useful for entrepreneurs or small business owners.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics expects that jobs in the marketing industry should increase by 10% by 2026, which is above the average for all careers. With demand for online presence continuing to climb, social media marketing job prospects are likely on the higher end. According to Glassdoor, social media marketing professionals can earn a yearly salary between about $42,00 and $140,000. This is quite a wide range of salaries and can also vary depending on position, location, company size, skill set, and experience.

How to Learn Social Media Marketing

How you choose to learn social media marketing is up to you. You can watch free video tutorials like Noble Desktop’s Intro to Social Media Marketing to get an overview, but after that, the best plan is to sign up for a class. You can take live in-person classes or choose online instruction. Some people prefer to attend brick-and-mortar sessions when learning new information, but that isn’t always available. Live online classes have a similar set-up to in-person classes with a real-time, remote instructor who can answer questions and take control of your monitor—with permission—to answer questions and demonstrate techniques. You can sign up for part or full-time classes on weekdays, weeknights, or weekends.

Some companies offer asynchronous online classes that you can take according to your own schedule. You can watch the videos from work or home and move at your own pace. Udacity offers a class called Become a Digital Marketer, and Udemy offers VIP Digital Marketing Master.

One advantage to asynchronous video classes is that you can go back and watch the material as many times as you need to if you are having trouble with a concept.

If a full class feels like too much right now, you can attend free online seminars like Noble Desktop’s Intro to Facebook Marketing or free digital marketing seminars on Coursera, Constant Content, or CopyBlogger. These free seminars will give you an idea of what social media marketing is about and whether you want to explore it further.

Read the full guide on how to learn social media marketing.

A Brief History of Social Media Marketing

Social media networks grew out of email lists and online bulletin boards. Six Degrees, a profile uploading service, was launched in 1997 but didn’t last long. Linked In was founded in 2003 and became the first real social media site where you could have a profile and post content. Linked In focused on professional communication and job searches. MySpace came along in 2003 and Facebook in 2008. Today, 72% of the adults in the U.S. use social media, with 69% on Facebook, 73% on YouTube, and 75% on Instagram.

Comparable Fields

A comparable field to social media marketing might be brand marketing. Brand Marketers track how a brand performs on the internet and develop strategies to build or improve that performance. While Social Media Marketers usually focus on promoting a particular product or organization, Brand Marketers promote a brand. They need to be able to work closely with different teams such as marketing, advertising, and sales departments to research industry trends and public perception and create marketing and advertising campaigns to strengthen brand identity.

Learn Social Media Marketing with Hands-on Training at Noble Desktop

Noble Desktop’s social media marketing courses teach skills that can help you start a career in the industry. Classes are small, with expert instructors, and you can retake a course for free up to a year after you take it. Those ready to dive into the field can attend in-person classes at Noble Desktop’s New York City location or attend live online social media courses from anywhere in the world.

In Noble Desktop’s Social Media Marketing Certificate, you can master successful social media marketing tools and techniques. You will learn about strategy development, content creation, brand building, analytics, and conversion optimization.

Noble Desktop also offers more detailed courses for those looking to hone their skills on specific channels, such as Facebook Marketing, email marketing, Social Media Content Marketing: Blogs & Twitter, and Video Marketing: TikTok & YouTube, or go for a Social Media Marketing Certificate. Other Noble Desktop resources that can help prepare for a career in digital marketing include its digital marketing blog, which has detailed articles about social media marketing, SEO, and other essential tools for digital marketers. Further resources include Noble’s seminar on YouTube entitled The Pillars of Digital Marketing Success.

Key Insights

• Social media marketing is a powerful way to promote products and ideas on the internet.
• It is possible to create and implement a social media marketing campaign for free.
• Social Media Marketers use many tools to gather data to help them make decisions. These tools include:
• Google Analytics
• Google Ads
• HootSuite
• SEMRush
• Moz
• Social media marketing is an interesting and lucrative career, and jobs are expected to increase by 10% over the next ten years.
• If you want to learn social media marketing, you can watch free video tutorials, attend in-person or live online classes, or on-demand classes.
• You can receive comprehensive social media marketing training through an in-person or live online course with Noble Desktop.