7 Most commonly used Online Social Media Marketing (SMM) platforms

Social media marketing (SMM) is a type of Digital Marketing. it is an inexpensive way to increase your company's visibility, and achieve success through regular updates. Read the expert's top tips for social media.

Marketing on social media is a good and cheap way to get more visibility for the company and that way also new customers. For small and medium-sized companies, in particular, it pays to use social media in marketing if the budget is limited.

Social media marketing platforms 

Social media marketing is much more than just creating posts and responding to comments. In order to succeed, a more strategic approach with clear and measurable targets is required in many cases.

Advertising via Facebook

Facebook now has an average of more than 2.8 billion social media marketing active users on its platform, which provides great opportunities for advertisers.

At the same time, it is easy to get lost in the amount of information where both advertisements and posts of a more private nature are mixed.

Facebook

Nowadays, it is more or less a matter of course for companies to have their own company page. It's easy to set up and gives your company or online store a good contact surface, which is also free.

The company’s page on Facebook also gives your company credibility and you can also maintain contact with your customers and also potential customers via, for example, a Facebook group.

It is different from Facebook advertising, which, first of all, is not free. On the contrary, it can become a relatively expensive marketing channel for those who do not know how to market themselves with Facebook in a cost-effective way.

A tip for entrepreneurs and individual companies can be to test you with an extremely small daily budget, solely for the purpose of learning how Facebook ads work.

Instagram

Instagram is owned by Facebook and is a social media marketing channel that is close at hand for those who are already experimenting with Facebook for marketing purposes.

A common mistake can be to think that Instagram is a social media channel suitable for reaching mainly young people. On the contrary, it has been shown in statistical surveys that a full 47% of everyone in the 30-49 age range actively uses Instagram.

Instagram

Instagram app

To get started with Instagram, just like with Facebook, you need to register a business account. You can similarly share self-created posts in the news feed and of course, also paid so-called "sponsored posts" and thus advertise on Instagram.

Another common strategies are to generate "leads" via Instagram stories, which is a time-consuming but in some cases effective method. Instagram stories are only up for 24 hours but can be saved and recreated at a later stage.

Twitter

More than 330 million people use Twitter actively per month on average. Twitter is therefore one of the largest marketing channels in the world of social media. One difference from other social media platforms is that posts on Twitter are limited to a maximum of 280 characters. Posts or so-called "Tweets" must therefore be formulated in a way that is both short and concise.

Twitter

Tweet with the app

Of course, you can also use both images and videos to get your message across on Twitter. Like other social media channels, you can attract followers and also pay for advertising on Twitter.

This channel is extremely suitable for attracting people in your target group to, for example, your webshop or company website with clicks that you pay for. Twitter is also ideal for sharing thoughts and ideas or asking questions to people in your target group.

Twitter is also a good social media solution to reach out with blog posts or other "content" or to create interest in events.

YouTube

YouTube is owned by Google and is considered to be the second largest service in popularity for searching information on the Internet after Google's search engine.

A third of all time spent online is spent streaming videos and watching movies, according to Hubspot. Youtube offers a fantastic opportunity for companies that want to get their message across via videos. Similar to regular SEO, YouTube can be successfully used for marketing purposes without:

• You as a marketer need to pay for your viewers.
• Without your marketing actually being perceived as marketing.

It is of course possible to argue that other social media offer opportunities for free marketing, but the difference with Youtube (and Google) is that people in your target group search for information on their own and land on your URL.

Youtube

The conversion possibilities are thus much higher and you have the opportunity to reach your target group with your message on a more personal level than with other social media.

Youtube app

Of course, you can also pay for advertising on YouTube, which can be an interesting alternative to other paid services.

A disadvantage of Youtube is that apart from the fact that you have to produce and publish really good video material, you also have to have knowledge of search optimization.

This social media platform can of course be an opportunity for those who know how to optimize search on YouTube and end up high in the search results. If you do not have knowledge about this, you should learn more via our courses.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn began as a platform to match the needs and demands of companies against the qualifications of job seekers. Nowadays, however, the service has transformed into a social networking platform for professional careerists.

Of course, the platform is still used for job matching, but nowadays Linkedin offers completely different types of services such as The possibility for users to broadcast live videos and publish video posts.

Linkedin is an effective channel for social media marketing B2B because the platform's users are mainly company representatives and professional careerists in various fields. Linkedin is considered to be more effective than other marketing channels within social media. According to Kinsta, an average of 80% of all B2B leads come via Linkedin!

Pinterest

According to statistics from Statcounter, Pinterest's market share in the Swedish market is more than 8%. This means that Pinterest, second only to Facebook, is the largest channel for marketing in social media in Sweden.

Pinterest, social media marketing, focuses on visual media rather than long pieces of text. Pinterest is therefore an ideal channel for marketing, for example, products.

Via so-called "Pins", users can publish images, videos, and infographics.

Every piece of media shared on Pinterest links back to the publisher's online store or website. An additional advantage of Pinterest, differentiating it from some other social media, is that your "pins" have a relatively long life and can be active for several months.

Snapchat

Snapchat is an app that gives users the opportunity to share "snaps", i.e. short video clips and pictures. Snaps shared on Snapchat have a relatively short life cycle and, unlike many other social media marketing channels, users cannot track how many people have seen one's posts (“snaps”).

Downloadable Snapchat app

Snapchat is built around a messaging service, which means that the channel is more intimate, private, and even personal in its communication method than comparable channels.

Snapchat

An old truth in digital marketing is that it's easier to sell products via messaging services because they are more private.

In particular, messages sent between friends and acquaintances among themselves provide a greater degree of exposure and conversion than marketing between companies and recipients who have no previous relationship.

Snapchat is a non-profit channel to create a more intimate feeling with your target audience. The service is suitable, for example, for showing off your company's work in order to strengthen your brand.

TikTok

The Chinese-developed service Douyin, better known as TikTok, has been in turmoil in 2020 as the Trump administration tried to get TikTok banned.

But the fact is that the service is still widely used by users in more than 155 countries around the world.

Tiktok app

TikTok has simply explained a video recording app that allows users to create and share shorter videos (max 60 seconds). TikTok is considered one of the world's fastest-growing social media marketing platforms with close to 850 million users around the world.

Tiktok

TikTok offers businesses to advertise through paid advertising but TikTok is essentially a medium that lends itself to starting viral trends. For that reason, TikTok is an interesting marketing option for companies investing in collaboration with influencers.