Social Media Marketing is a form of digital marketing that leverages social media platforms to increase traffic to websites, increase sales, improve brand positioning, function as customer service, or support other marketing efforts such as SEO and Email Marketing. Due to the nature of how most social media platforms work, Social Media Marketing most often relies on building an audience of users on that platform and then finding ways to market to that audience.

Social Media Marketing often requires a few things to be effective;

• A sizeable audience that uses the platform on a regular basis and is somehow attached to your profile
• The ability to generate various pieces of content frequently
• A personality for the brand / product / service / company

Because a vast majority of social media websites are free to use, they rely on advertising to make a profit. However, social media users are not keen on ads that look like more standard internet banner ads and respond far better to ads that are more incorporated to the style and features of the platform they are on. Social media platforms also largely arose of users to connect with other human beings and not brands, products, or services. Due to these factors social media platforms frequently encroach upon the ability for commercial accounts to reach their audiences without paying the platform.

This creates a sort of decay in the value of a social media audience over a large period of time. When a platform is young and relatively small brands that are able to build an active audience will likely find greater value in that audience than at a later period of time when the platform works to make it more difficult to reach the audience.