Social media

That includes consumers researching products and services, buying products and services, using products and services, and sharing their experiences of those products and services with others.

Marketers, naturally, respond to this changed behaviour by leaning more heavily on digital channels, and the share of digital in the overall marketing mix is growing year on year compared with what we still call traditional media. The key, though, is not to treat digital channels as the answer to every marketing question but as part of the company's overall marketing strategy.

Any marketing activity that uses digital channels to deliver marketing messages and measure their impact counts as digital marketing, and it can take many forms: online video and ads, web banners, search engine marketing and, last but not least, paid ads and sponsored posts on social media.

Social media are websites and apps designed to let people share content, news, images and opinions (or anything else they want to share) quickly, easily and in real time. While many social platforms trace their roots back to the last decade of the previous century, it was Facebook, YouTube, X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram that opened the eyes of companies and brands to the marketing potential of these channels, channels that today are an indispensable part of a healthy media mix in a company's marketing communications with its audiences.

The ability to share images, opinions and events in real time has transformed individual lives and, at the same time, how companies do business. Social media are an excellent way to market new products and build buzz and interest around brands, and just as importantly to connect with consumers in a way that brands have never been able to before.

Facebook used to be a godsend for marketers. That was when there was little competition for attention on social media, which is no longer the case. Today brands can spend hundreds of thousands on social campaigns without seeing much return. The problem is that social media are fundamentally built on short attention spans, where it's harder to grab people's attention with a Facebook post, an image or a tweet than it is with ads in larger media like television, radio and newspapers. Part of the reason is simply that it's harder to write a headline or a piece of copy that grabs attention on social, where you might have one or two seconds at most.

Social media marketing

Social media marketing covers the activities a company carries out on social platforms to reach consumers and lift the value of its brand, for example on Facebook and Instagram. These can be both paid and unpaid activities.

It's fair to say that the Meta platforms, Facebook and Instagram, are really just another form of search engine. Unlike a traditional search engine like Google, where the user is looking for specific words or phrases, Meta surfaces users based on a wide range of attributes it knows about them and that advertisers want to match against.

Globally, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are the most popular social platforms, followed by LinkedIn, YouTube, Snapchat and TikTok. In Iceland, Twitter and LinkedIn have never gained the same kind of foothold as Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Snapchat and TikTok have been difficult advertising channels in our market because Icelandic brands cannot run direct ads on them the way they can on the other platforms. Instead, Icelandic brands have to rely on organic distribution of their own content and on working with influencers who feature the product to their followers.

Running social campaigns

Social media management is the process that covers shaping a social media strategy, analysing and developing tailored activity for defined audiences on social platforms, picking the platforms that reach those audiences, creating content for them, setting up campaigns and monitoring the conversations they generate, alongside reviewing, analysing, measuring and reporting on the performance of social activity.

1. Social strategy

How does the company plan to use social media for marketing? What's the goal on social? There can be plenty of reasons to be on social media. Some companies use social to support their other marketing activity on traditional channels, while others rely almost entirely on social to sell their products and services. Some use social to elevate their image by creating content whose main purpose is to build stories around the brand or its users and then push those stories out across the channels.

A social media strategy is essential before you start creating content and publishing it on the channels. The strategy answers what, when, how and why we are publishing on the company's social channels. It's the plan, the mix of ideas, the purpose and the route to the goals we're trying to reach.

2. Defining target groups

Social media lets us aim our marketing messages directly at specific audiences. We can tailor those messages to each audience we want to reach, with different messages that speak to each group. That requires an understanding of who our audiences are, what they need, how their needs align with our goals, and ultimately how we can pull them in with benefits compelling enough to get them on board.

Some of the things we need to think about: Who are we talking to? How do we want our brand to be perceived? What kind of content do we want to share? Which social channels are we going to use? And what are the goals or results we want to achieve?

3. Channel selection

Just as with traditional advertising channels, we need to decide who we want to see our marketing messages, and the right channel choice matters. First, decide which platforms the brand will maintain an active profile on. Is the company going to set up a Facebook page, for example, and keep it going with regular updates and information? The same applies to Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube and so on. These are pages users can visit, like, follow and so on. As far as users are concerned, the most common place our posts will show up is in the news feed or in stories.

Second, which platforms is the brand going to advertise on to reach its audiences? At this point it matters very little whether the brand has an active profile or not, because the goal is simply to use the platforms' ad systems to put ads in front of their users and direct them to the company's website or online shop for more information or to complete a purchase.

4. Content creation

Content creation is, first and foremost, about producing entertaining and engaging marketing content that shows what the company does, what products it makes, or what services it provides. The content is then pushed out to consumers in the hope that the relationship between user and content turns into business at some point. The key here is to create and distribute content that is interesting, substantive and worth something to the consumer.

But what kind of content are we talking about, and how is it different from what companies have been producing since advertising began? It's a fair question, because companies have always been making content and putting it in front of consumers, whether that's TV ads, print ads, or content for social media. For digital channels, we mean things like blogs, articles and editorial, video, podcasts, webinars, talks, interviews, customer testimonials, motion graphics and so on.

5. Campaign setup

Ad campaigns are set up inside Meta's ad systems for Facebook and Instagram, and Alphabet's ad systems for Google and YouTube. These platforms can be confusing for anyone who hasn't worked with them extensively, and it's sensible to put campaign setup in the hands of people who know them well, both to prevent major problems and to make better use of the marketing budget.

6. Monitoring

One of the most important parts of a social media campaign is monitoring the ads that are running, not just at the end of the campaign, but throughout it. The ad systems let you track performance in real time and see what's working and what isn't, so you can react and adjust as needed. The platforms hold a huge amount of statistical data that makes comparison between campaigns straightforward, and it's important to draw lessons from each campaign before setting up the next one.