Marketing Strategy
Social media marketing
Also known as: SMM
Social media marketing is the practice of using social platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest and YouTube to build audiences, earn attention and drive commercial outcomes. It covers organic content, community management, creator partnerships and paid social advertising. The work is judged on reach, engagement, demand created and revenue influenced rather than follower counts alone.
What it is
Social media marketing is the set of activities a brand carries out on social platforms to reach and influence an audience. It spans organic posting, short video, community replies, direct messages, influencer and creator collaborations, and paid campaigns bought through each platform's ads manager. In most teams it sits alongside search, email and PR rather than standing alone.
Why it matters
Social platforms are now a discovery surface in their own right, so people meet brands, compare options and form opinions there before they ever type a query into a search engine. That social footprint also feeds wider discovery: creator reviews, comment threads and brand-led explainers get indexed, quoted and summarised, and they shape the language buyers use when they eventually search. Ignoring social means ceding the part of the journey where preference is formed.
How it works
Practitioners define the audience and the job each platform does, then build a content mix around formats the platform rewards, usually short video, carousels and native text posts. They publish on a predictable cadence, reply in comments and DMs, brief creators, and put paid budget behind the organic posts that already earn attention. Performance is reviewed against platform analytics plus downstream site, lead and revenue data, and the mix is adjusted from there.
When it applies
It applies whenever your audience spends meaningful time on social platforms and your product benefits from demonstration, explanation or social proof. It matters most for consumer brands, local services and creator-led or founder-led businesses, and least where buying is entirely procurement-driven and closed to outside influence.
Examples
- A skincare brand runs a weekly TikTok series answering customer questions, then boosts the three best performing videos as paid ads.
- A B2B software firm has its founder post product teardowns on LinkedIn and repurposes the comments into FAQ content on the site.
- A local gym uses Instagram Stories for class schedules and a Facebook group for member retention and referrals.
How it is measured
- Reach and impressions by platform and format
- Engagement rate and saves or shares per post
- Referral sessions and assisted conversions from social in analytics
- Branded search volume and direct traffic trend after campaign pushes
Insights on Social media marketing
Related terms in Marketing Strategy
- Agentic marketingAgentic marketing is the use of AI agents that can plan multi-step work and take actions across marketing tools, rather than only generating text on request. It also covers designing marketing for a world where buyers delegate research and purchasing to their own agents. In practice it is a mix of workflow automation, tool permissions and human review.
- AI searchAI search is the use of large language models to answer a query directly, usually with a written summary rather than a list of links. It covers AI overviews inside traditional search engines and assistants such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot and Gemini. The visible outcome for a brand is being described and cited inside an answer rather than ranked on a results page.
- AI-generated contentAI-generated content is text, images, audio, video or code produced wholly or mainly by a generative model rather than written or made by a person. It ranges from fully automated output to drafts that a human edits and approves. Its value in marketing depends on editorial control, accuracy and whether it adds anything a reader cannot get elsewhere.
- Audience intelligenceAudience intelligence is the practice of gathering and analysing data about who your audience is, what they care about, and how they search and buy, then turning that into decisions. It combines first party behavioural data with research, search data, social listening, and customer conversations. The output is usually segments, messaging guidance, and content priorities rather than a single report.
- B2B marketingB2B marketing is the practice of promoting products and services to other organisations rather than to individual consumers. It typically involves longer sales cycles, multiple decision makers, higher contract values and a heavier reliance on content, sales enablement and relationships. Success is usually measured through pipeline and revenue contribution rather than immediate transactions.
- Brand voiceBrand voice is the consistent personality and language a brand uses across every channel, covering vocabulary, tone, sentence rhythm and the things it will and will not say. It is documented in guidelines so different writers, agencies and AI tools produce work that sounds like the same organisation. Voice stays stable while tone flexes with context.
Primary research · August 2026
How ChatGPT Shortlists Software Brands
An audit across 10 categories and 60 buying questions. I recorded what ChatGPT reads, throws away and links to when a buyer asks it which software to buy, and what that decides.
- 60
- Questions asked
- 10
- Software markets
- 2,680
- Results read
- 367
- Links shown
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