Social Media and its Role in Your Marketing Strategy

Tracy Scheckel
Nov 14, 2024
6 min read

Updated: Mar 11

I’ve talked about earned media, identifying your audience, and mail (both USPS and email). Today it’s an overview of social media. Ultimately, before mid-December, I want talk about getting your 2025 editorial calendars together. In the real world, I would want to see the calendar complete by early October, but I’m going for better late than never here.

Those of you who know me are well aware of my opinions about social media in general and as a necessary evil in a marketing strategy. Although I’ve softened a bit and am much more open to the benefits of using social media marketing, I still have reservations and am very deliberate in how I use the various platforms. So, here’s social media marketing 101 according from a self-described skeptic, and just one person’s opinion.

Lets look at the major social media marketing platforms

Each social media platform attracts different demographics and offers distinct marketing and engagement options. I selected LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Nextdoor, X and TicTok for a deep dive. X and TicTok are not part of my personal social media footprint so my thoughts on them are based on some research rather than firsthand experience.

Personally, I post to LinkedIn business and business related-non-profit information and articles. I have also used the platform for recruitment, and now as I’m growing TS2, I also use LinkedIn to find consulting opportunities that interest me.

Professional services are well represented on LinkedIn as is the population n between 25 and 34 years of age. This creates a perfect environment for B2B marketing and brand promotion. This is a platform designed for networking and professional development making it critical to your marketing efforts.
Even if your business doesn’t fall into the professional services category, you should have a complete and up-to-date profile on the platform. Potential customers and certainly potential employers use LinkedIn to vet candidates all the time. While data for the general public is hard to come by, it is estimated that 90% of recruiters and hiring managers use the platform. Personally, I do a LinkedIn search on pretty much everyone I consider hiring from professional services to trades-persons: a professional LI profile goes a long way with me.
Aside from professional networking, recruitment posts, event promotion and advertising opportunities, I think thought leadership and professional advice / information articles are hugely beneficial to any marketing strategy and should be included in that editorial calendar we’ll talk about in the near future.

Facebook

If I’m being honest, I originally created a Facebook account to stalk my grown children and otherwise had no interest in maintaining ‘friends’ that way when telephone and in-person worked just fine for me. As the FB population grew, it became a marketing tool just for the shear size of the audience.

Today FB has 3+ billion users all over the world with a large portion of its users between 25–54 years old.
Remember Facebook was founded to connect people at Harvard via the internet and soon grew well beyond. Ultimately, the platform became a tool for community building and engagement. That created a perfect environment for the FB we know today where businesses of all sizes capitalize on the member engagement, promote their brands, market their products and communicate with their customers and prospective customers. Unlike the B2B nature of LinkedIn, Facebook is really a business to consumer (B2C) tool.
Facebook provides ease of entry for small and niche community groups to establish a web presence, and for many of these groups, the platform is adequate to get information out and build consensus around an initiative. The mistake some of make is to think that a Facebook business page will replace a website in a marketing strategy. Simply put, it does not, but is a good way to augment marketing reach.
Facebook paid advertising can be really efficient because Meta has SO much data on all who use the platform that it can provide targeted ads based on age, gender, language, geography, education level, income, relationship status, hobbies, life events, job titles, and countless others.
Facebook has become a one stop shop to share video content, photos, and to promote, stream, and share of live events along with 2-way communication through comments and messaging.

Instagram

I have only recently started to explore Instagram for a food blog I write and am still learning the ropes and trying to grow followers (that’s marketing speak for I know just enough to be dangerous). It’s a great way to showcase beautiful photos of the recipes I share, and it’s been quite an education to see how many of my friends and acquaintances are using the platform.

The Instagram audience is 18 to 34-year-olds and is what I call visual-forward using imagery to tell stories and influence consumer behavior.
The platform is best suited for fashion, beauty, travel, food, and any other industry where photos can tell the story.
Instagram offers the ability to share images, reels, live videos, and stories along with the ability to engage via polls and other Q&A and e-commerce.
Influencer partnerships and user-generated content are another mechanism that Instagram employs, but that will take an entire post to explain.

Nextdoor

Nextdoor is a digital space where Welcome Wagon meets the old-fashioned community bulletin board at the local supermarket or library. I joined after relocating to Ellsworth, ME in the middle of COVID. It was a nice way to engage a bit when we were still in lockdown.

Google tells me that most Nextdoor users are aged 35 and older. In my experience, that makes sense because it’s mostly homeowners and families. The platform is neighborhood-centric and your “Neighborhood” is based on your home address that you provide when you join the platform.
Aside from the social aspect – particularly for newcomers to a neighborhood, it’s a great conduit for hyper-local marketing, and information sharing for small businesses, local events, and community services.
Users can form topic specific groups for things like book clubs, play groups, etc. There seems to be a constant stream of users looking for everything from childcare to landscapers in my Neighborhood, so one of the members started the group Ellsworth Connections that has become a clearinghouse for those of us who want to share info about our local businesses.
Similar to Facebook, Nextdoor has a provision for users to launch a business page as well.

X (formerly Twitter)

I never really engaged with Twitter when it launched, and I certainly have not had any experience with X. But in fairness, I’ll share what I do know and what some research has turned up.

The platform has a diverse but slightly male-dominated audience whose age range is skewed toward the 25–49-year-old set. Users are often urban and tend to be news-savvy and engaged with current events.

X is known for real-time updates, news-driven marketing, and customer engagement. It is a good tool for brands that want to provide live customer service and or engage in conversations around trending topics.
Overall, I feel like X is a great way to keep your brand at the forefront of customer’s minds through timely posts, real-time interactions, and trending topics and hashtags – assuming you have the bandwidth and human resources to maintain the account so that content is always fresh.

TikTok

Again, I’m including TikTok out of fairness. I have no professional or personal experience with the platform, mostly because the video forward platform doesn’t really lend itself to products and services I have marketed.

TikTok seems to have become the platform of choice for the 18 – 24-year-olds who think that Facebook is for Boomers. It has a global audience and is widely popular for entertainment.

The platform is best suited to Short-form video marketing, viral content, and influencer collaborations for a broad audience and can be highly effective for brands looking to create engaging content and appeals to lifestyle, entertainment, beauty, and fashion industries. It is not a great tool for hyper-local marketing.
Influencers, and influencer wannabes are likely to use TikTok as their platform of choice for its ability to provide a conduit for creative videos, including product demos, reviews, and tutorials