Social Media Marketing works by building an audience, creating content, sharing that content to your audience, and having your audience spread your message for you – which in turn should generate revenue.

While this sounds simple in theory, it can be complex in actual execution due to the nature of social media platforms being places where people communicate with each other and due to how frequently changes occur either on a specific platform or within how consumers/users use social media in general within a society, region, or target audience.

One of the most complicated and grueling parts of Social Media Marketing is building an audience with which you wish to engage. While many modern era businesses (i.e. those founded since 2000) are more easily adaptable to this part of Social Media Marketing, companies founded earlier (especially small businesses) either before the internet or during the early years of the internet find it harder to build an audience on a platform. This is rarely due to the platform itself and more often due to how those business prioritize their marketing needs having previously relied upon local newspapers, radio stations, or TV stations to build the audiences and paying them to advertise. There is also little guidance on what represents a good audience size on a platform and the fact that many followers of a page or account could be fake or uninterested in a businesses offerings. For example consider a person on vacation who visits a restaurant and follows the restaurant’s Instagram account in exchange for a small discount. While this action grows the audience size, it doesn’t aid the restaurant in future endeavors as that person has a low probability of returning and thus will no longer engage with the restaurant once they return home.

Subscription Driven vs. Algorithm Driven Social Media Platforms

When talking about how Social Media Marketing works we need to also have a decent understanding of how these platforms display content to users. Today there are two different types or buckets of social media platforms.

Subscription Driven social media platforms allow users to ‘subscribe’ to other users (or topics) in some fashion and provide a feed or other mechanism where users get updates from their subscriptions. YouTube started out operating this way, allowing users to subscribe to a channel in order to get notifications for new updates when that channel released new videos.

Algorithm Driven social media platforms determine what content a user sees in a feed or is otherwise notified about by leveraging a computational algorithm often combined with some type of subscription (following, liking, joining etc..). These algorithms can be simple using only a few data points for input, or they can be incredibly complex using thousands of data points as input to determine what content a user sees. Algorithm Driven social media has been accused of being the root cause of rising political unrest and for creating “filter bubbles” in which a specific users biases are constantly supported and confirmed by the content they are given.

Types of Social Media Feeds or Notification Systems

We also need to understand the types of notifications or feeds a platform users to have a deeper understanding of how Social Media Marketing works on that platform.

There are various types of “Feeds” users are shown on social media platforms or other ways in which users are shown or notified of content. The type of feed or notification system a platform users will greatly impact how your marketing will work on specific platform. Some social media networks use more than one type of feed for various parts of their platform.

Algorithm Feed – This is a type of feed where everything a user sees in their feed is controlled by an algorithm with very little or no way for the users to change or adjust how the content is shown or displayed in the feed.

Algorithm-Modified Feed – This is a type of feed that is largely algorithm driven but will allow users to have some manual input such as stating they always want to see content from one user.

Chronological Feed – One of the most popular types of feeds to users is the Chronological feed, which shows a list of content to a user from their subscriptions in the order in which that content was posted to the platform with the most recent content first.

Chronological-Importance Feed – This type of feed is largely chronological but may insert older content if the platform’s algorithm(s) determine that the older content is more important or relevant to the user.

Homogeneous Feed – This is a feed where all users on a platform see the exact some content. These feed types can use algorithms, subscriptions, votes, or a mixture of those to determine what content all users see.

Randomized Content Feed – This type of feed shows a user random content matching a topic or from other users / accounts that user has subscribed to. The content can be shown one at a time or in a list format. These feeds might use subscriptions or voting to determine what content to show.

Related Content Feed – This is a type of feed where content related to a current piece of content being viewed by a user or matching other content seen by a user in the recent past can be shown.

Specified Notifications Feed – This is a feed of only content from other users someone has specifically requested to be notified of or matching rules a user creates to find content to be notified of.

Vote Based Feed – This is a type of feed where votes of users determine what content is shown to other users on the platform. The more votes in a specified time frame the more users who follow or subscribe to a user or topic will see the feed.

Types of Content Social Media Users Want

Finally, to understand how Social Media Marketing works we need to know what type of content users want and in what formats they want it. Users on social media go through phases and jump on trends just the same as they did prior to social media, but at a much faster pace. Some of those trends end up having staying power for a long period of time, some of the trends hang around for a few years before dying off, and others quickly fade into obscurity. Your audience on social media could be politically ‘woke’ one day and apolitical the next, they could love fail videos one day and want how to videos the next. Keeping up with these fast changing taste and preferences on social media is a difficult task.

Largely social media users want to be entertained not sold to. That means compelling content that is funny, inspiring, deeply informative (but not boring), or emotionally appealing. For most businesses you’ll probably want to blend funny, inspiring, and deeply informative content and avoid emotional content as it could have longer-term impacts on your user base (such as getting heavily religious or political).

Here are some types of content that have proven to work well on social media for brands.

Static Memes – Static Memes are non-moving images with text on them. Sometimes they are just all text. They are often used in an attempt to be funny.

GIF Memes – Like static memes, but they move in a loop like a GIF image (or as a GIF image).

Video Memes – Like static / GIF memes but in video format and non-looping.

High-Quality Photography – Never underestimate a great photograph.

High-Quality GIFS – Think GIF Memes, but usually in higher quality (and funnier). See the subreddit /r/HighQualityGIFs

Animation Shorts – Animated video shorts.

Drone Video Shorts – Videos shot from a drone doing something interesting or unique (getting harder to do).

Video Podcasts – Videos made from podcast audio and a still image.

Vlog – Video blogging, typically requires a nice mic and adjustable mic stand. The video is usually of one person talking into the mic while looking at their computer and occasionally looking at the camera with cut scenes to their laptop.

How To / Tutorial Videos – Videos that tell and show people how to do something in step-by-step instruction format.

Data Visualizations – Charts and graphs generated with software and often touched up to look nice.

Moving Data Visualizations – Videos of charts and graphs moving, often showing change or growth over time.

Content Curation Videos – Videos that tell a story, update, or a news story.

How To Graphics – Graphics telling users how to do something in step-by-step format.

Infographics – Long or Wide graphics displaying lots of data or information on a topic.

Articles With Sensational Headlines – Not quite clickbait, not exactly old newspaper headlines either.

Quote Graphics – A nice graphic with a famous (or not) quote on it that supports your overall messaging.

Fail Videos – Short videos or compilations of humans / animals failing at doing things.

Unboxing Videos – Open something up and show the entire process.

Listicle Videos – Top 10 countdowns or list of things in video format.

Topical Recap Videos – Videos that recap news or events about a certain topic during a specific time period.

Game Streams – Live streaming video game content. Probably not relevant for you business, but included since it’s a huge industry.

Live Streaming Videos – Live videos of something of interest or importance. The NFL has done a great job of doing these for press conferences before and after games via Facebook.

Summary

In a simplified explanation Social Media Marketing works by building an audience that could become your customers or are your customers on a specific platform, understanding how that platform works, creating content to engage that audience that will make them laugh / inspire them / educate them / or appeal to their emotions, and then use that audience and their engagement with you to sell products, sell services, or promote your events.