The 5 Pillars of Social Media Marketing

Would you like to know about the 5 pillars of social media marketing? If that is the case then you are going to be benefitted from this post.

Social Media has become a significant part of everyone’s lives in today’s world. 

Whether you are a business owner, a student, a housewife, a wage employee, or anything else, you can’t deny that social media is a major part of your daily lifestyle.

Most of us can’t seem to go through even a single hour without scrolling through the feed on our favorite social media platform.

According to a report by Data Reportal namely ‘Digital 2023: India’, India alone had around 467 million social media users in January 2023 which is equal to more than 32% of our overall population.

Taking the stats to the global level, a recent report by Forbes Advisor stated that there are currently 4.9 billion people globally who use social media. 

They further added that this number is expected to increase to 5.85 billion users by 2027.

People who use social media do use it for different purposes. 

Some people use social media to find funny and engaging content, some people use it to get motivation from the public figures they follow, some people use it to stay connected with their friends and family, and there are many other reasons for that.

Taking this to the business side, in this digital world, every other business is taking advantage of the five core pillars of social media marketing to grow their business.

The ones who were earlier skeptical about whether the 5 core pillars of social media marketing will help their business grow or not have also started taking advantage of the five pillars of social media marketing to grow their business because now they have understood its importance.

The number of people who access the Internet via mobile phone is higher than the people who access it from their desktop or laptop computers. 

And due to the fact that social media is accessible in a far better way on mobile phones as compared to computers, the number of social media users is also increasing rapidly with more people starting using the internet. And thus, more people are taking advantage of the 5 pillars of social media marketing.

With the rise of people who use social media platforms, businesses are taking full benefit of the 5 pillars of social media marketing to engage their targeted audiences and make them become interested in their products or services.

If you are a business owner who would like to take advantage of the five pillars of social media marketing to grow his business then you are going to be immensely benefitted from this post on the 5 pillars of social media marketing because, in this post, we are going to inform you about the 5 pillars of social media marketing that will help you understand how the strategic concept of social media marketing actually works, what are the actual steps involved in the process, etc.

If you are not a business owner then also you are going to be immensely benefitted from this post on the five pillars of social media marketing because by learning about the five core pillars of social media marketing, you will understand the strategic concept of social media marketing and with that understanding, you can help other businesses grow.

Aside from the 5 pillars of social media marketing, we are going to inform you about the 10 most popular social media platforms, why small and big businesses rely on social media marketing, what are the advantages and disadvantages of social media marketing, and much more.

What is Social Media Marketing?

Before learning about the 5 pillars of social media marketing, you should be well-informed about what social media marketing is.

Social Media Marketing refers to promoting a product, service, or business with the use of social media platforms.

Social Media Marketing is a practice used primarily by businesses of all sizes – small, medium, and large.

In today’s day and age, when nearly every other individual uses social media extensively, businesses of all sizes take full advantage of the five pillars of social media marketing to promote their products and services.

The reason social media is so popular among people is because of the diverse range of content that people get to see on social media platforms when they use them.

And the reason the five core pillars of social media marketing are so popular among businesses is that business people get to promote their products and services on social media platforms at a very low cost when compared to the other types of digital marketing channels.

Social media has something to offer to each type of individual. 

There are different types of social media platforms and in each social media platform, you will see a different sort of content provided.

For example – On Instagram, you will mostly see teenagers and people under the age of 25 uploading their voguish posts and engaging with posts of the same type. 

On the other hand, on social media platforms like LinkedIn, you will mostly see working professionals engaging with corporate-related posts and building connections with other working professionals.

Here are some of the reasons why businesses use social media marketing and the five core pillars of social media marketing:

• Drive traffic.
• Generate leads.
• Make sales.
• Increase brand awareness, and
• Build loyalty among existing customers.

Read Also: How to Become the Best Social Media Marketing Manager

Top 10 Social Media Platforms

Here, we are going to focus on social media platforms with the most users. Before being informed about the 5 pillars of social media marketing you should know these 10 platforms well.

S. No	Platform	Monthly Active Users
1	Facebook	2.9 billion
2	YouTube	2.2 billion
3	WhatsApp	2 billion
4	Instagram	2 billion
5	Tik Tok	1 billion
6	Snapchat	538 million
7	Pinterest	444 million
8	Reddit	430 million
9	LinkedIn	250 million
10	Twitter	217 million

In what ways does social media help in boosting your marketing campaign?

Here are some of the ways through which social media help in boosting your marketing campaign.

• Social media is effective in boosting your brand awareness.
• Social media helps in driving traffic to your blog or website.
• Social media is constructive in humanizing your business.
• Social media helps you build relationships with new customers and improve relationships with existing ones.
• Social media assists you in generating qualified leads.
• Social media helps you in driving sales for your products and services.
• Social media is competent in turning your business into a well-known brand.

Read Also: The Importance of Social Media in Our Life

What are the 5 Pillars of Social Media Marketing?

These mentioned here are the 5 pillars of social media marketing that you need to be informed about.

Social Strategy | 1st among the 5 pillars of social media marketing

This is the first among the 5 core pillars of social media marketing.

The first thing you need to consider if you want to start social media marketing is social strategy. 

It is the first step.

It is the foundation of a successful social media marketing strategy and without it, your social media marketing strategy will not have a strong base.

That is why social strategy is ranked 1st among the five pillars of social media marketing.

Just like without a concrete base structure, a building never becomes strong, the same in that way, without a solid social strategy, your social media marketing implementation won’t be strong.

Now if you are wondering how to create a solid social strategy, here are some questions that we would like you to ask yourself.

• Ask yourself about your goals, WHAT ARE YOUR GOALS?
• Ask yourself which is a social media platform or which are those social media platforms that will help you in reaching your social media marketing goals?
• Ask yourself what are the different types of content through which your audiences will engage with you the most.

Planning and Publishing | 2nd among the 5 pillars of social media marketing

This is the second among the 5 core pillars of social media marketing.

If you are using social media for personal reasons, the scenario is different but if you are doing social media marketing for a business then you’ll have to have a planning and strategy in place for publishing posts on your social media account.

Each business has a specific range of audiences and those audiences usually have a precise time when they scroll through social media.

You need to be informed of that time and strive to publish your posts at that specific time only.

Now if you are wondering how to build proper planning for publishing purposes, here are some things that you need to be aware of.

• Be aware of the time when your audiences stay active the most on social media.
• Be aware of the analysis of your posts’ reach.
• Be aware of whether or not are your posts engaging.
• Be aware of the way through which you can carefully craft your social media posts.

Listening and Engagement | 3rd among the 5 pillars of social media marketing

This is the third among the five pillars of social media marketing.

This is a very crucial pillar.

However, the sad thing is, many businesses often neglect this pillar.

Businesses often don’t listen and engage with their audiences on social media and only focus on publishing posts.

Publishing high-quality posts regularly and consistently comes with its own advantages but if you’ll not listen and engage with your audiences who are trying to interact with you then over time, all your efforts will go in vain.

Listening and engaging is what actually makes us human and it is what actually makes our business humanize itself when we listen and engage with audiences on social media.

If you won’t listen or engage with people on social media then people are not going to put trust in your products and services and may start unfollowing you from their accounts after some time.

When you are in the early phase of social media marketing, at that time it’s quite easy to engage with your audiences in the comment section and text messaging because, at that time, you don’t receive many texts and messages.

But with the passage of time, when you continue creating and publishing high-quality engaging posts, you start receiving a lot of text messages, comments, and shares. 

At that time it gets difficult to engage with your audiences and at that time only you need to do this.

The more you positively engage with your audiences, the more good word of mouth they will spread about your business.

Therefore, make sure to always listen to your audiences and engage with them. 

If they have found an issue with your product or service, resolve it by coordinating with them over text messages. 

If they are appreciating you in the comments section, do thank them for that.

If they are sharing your post, put a screenshot of their shared post in your social media story.

Read Also: Will Digital Marketing Ever Rule the World?

Analytics and Reporting | 4th among the 5 pillars of social media marketing

This is the fourth among the 5 core pillars of social media marketing.

Analytics and Reporting mean that you will have to analyze the metrics of how your social media is doing or how your social media marketing efforts are performing.

This makes total sense. 

Let’s say you have made a social media marketing strategy or plan and now you are working in accordance with the plan.

Now, if you won’t analyze the results of your social media marketing efforts, you won’t know how well you are going with your social media marketing strategy.

You analyze the metrics or results in order to perform some alternations in your strategy in case they are not working the way you thought they would work. 

And when you analyze the data well, you optimize the strategy for enhanced results.

After you are done with the analytics part, you report the analyzed data to the stakeholder or to the person you report to.

When it comes to analytics, you’ll have to analyze the following:

• The first thing you’ll have to analyze is, whether your posts got more reach than the previous month or not.
• The second thing you’ll have to analyze is, how many positive mentions have you received in a month from your audiences on social media.
• The third thing you’ll have to analyze is, how many users are using your hashtag and company name.
• The fourth thing you’ll have to analyze is, how much growth there has been in the likes, comments, and shares of your posts since the last month.
• The fifth and last thing you’ll have to analyze is, how much your social media followers list has increased since the last month.

Read Also: Get to know India’s Top 10 Bloggers and their Earnings

Advertising | 5th among the five pillars of social media marketing

This is the fifth among the 5 core pillars of social media marketing.

Social media marketing is a strategy under the digital marketing domain from where you can reap the benefits of it organically, without spending any money.

One drawback of that is, although you will be able to grow your account, increase brand awareness, make your audiences interested in your products and services, and build a loyal following by applying an organic social media marketing strategy, it could take a lot of time.

If you want to reap the benefits of social media marketing at the earliest time possible then you’ll have to consider social media advertising for your business, which brings us to the 5th pillar of social media marketing.

ADVERTISING

By taking advantage of advertising for social media, you can reach a lot of targeted audiences on social media and make them aware of your brand just instantly.
Read More: A Look at How Instagram’s Algorithms Work for Stories, Feeds, Reels, and Explores

How does social media help businesses?

Businesses of all sizes use social media for marketing purposes and here is how social media and the five core pillars of social media marketing help businesses.

Social media platforms help in increasing brand awareness

Many people think social media is just a place for people to connect and socialize with their family and friends but that isn’t the case.

Social media is heavily used by businesses of all sizes to reach new audiences on a daily basis and increase brand awareness.

A recent report by Meta showed that more than 80% of all Instagram users got aware of new businesses and brands through the platform only.

Social media platforms help in driving website traffic

With the use of social media platforms, businesses drive traffic to their website or landing page.

In Facebook posts, you can attach your website’s URL in the captions of your posts, and on Instagram, you can provide a link in your bio section, so that whenever users will click on your account name, they will see your website’s link right in front there.

On LinkedIn, you can attach the link to your website in the articles that you will publish there.

One piece of advice that we would like to give you here is to write your posts so much more compelling and give a hint of your business’ USPs in your posts (not in every post but in posts that could relate to your USPs) so that people would feel inclined to click on your website link and browse through your website.

Social media platforms help businesses better understand their customers

There could be a chance that you don’t understand your customers well or maybe you are unaware of a different segment of your targeted audience that could potentially become your paying customers.

Social media platforms in that case could help you better understand your customers as a business owner.

Social media platforms like Facebook can help you be informed about your different sets of target audiences and potential customers by presenting you with aggregated data.

The fact that one can better understand customers by leveraging social media is already known by those business owners who take advantage of social media and is only unknown to those who are still skeptical about using social media for their business growth.

Social media helps businesses in staying ahead of their competitors

Social media is a platform where a business can show its emotional side to its customers.

And by far it is the only platform where business can show its human side.

As humans, we are emotional beings. 

We want to connect with those around us who provide us with a positive emotional drive, whether it’s a real human being or a business.

By being active on social media and by engaging with customers regularly, businesses show their human side to their audiences.

They show they have not gotten established just to make money, instead, they are there to help their customers.

That is why businesses that remain active on social media and continuously engage with their customers receive a huge competitive advantage as compared to those who don’t have an active social media presence and those who don’t even have a social media account.

Another way how social media helps businesses in staying ahead of their competitors is that if you are a business owner, you can see what your top competitors are doing and can decide how can you do better than them.

Many of a business’ targeted audiences use social media

Doesn’t matter which industry a business belongs to, it has several potential customers that regularly use social media. 

At the start of this post, we informed you that India alone has around 467 million social media users.

Now taking the knowledge to a further level, you should also be informed of the fact that Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp, India has the most number of users of all these three major social media platforms.

This data clearly states that in India the number of people who use social media is huge. 

So, no matter which industry your business belongs to, you are going to find your business’ target audiences on social media.

The items that customers see on social media are more likely to be purchased

Nowadays people have gotten hooked on the habit of purchasing products from social media.

Unlike earlier times, today, most of the product ads that we see on social media are very appealing and also worth giving a try.

People like browsing stuff on social media and purchasing them. 

In order to make audiences buy their products, businesses need to make their product ads compelling enough that the targeted customers would feel compelled to buy them.

Social media offers a cost-effective way for businesses to market their products

As we told you earlier, social media is not like some other marketing platforms where what only you can do to reach your customers is spend money.

In social media, you can also grow organically with your efforts and creative intelligence without implementing any paid social media marketing strategy.

Delta and Cisco are two of those brands that have grown exponentially on social media by having a solid organic marketing strategy in place.

Even if you will just spend time as less as 45 minutes to 1 hour a day researching the trends in your industry, seeing what your competitors are doing, and deciding upon what type of content from you would be best for your audiences to view next, you will do far better than how you are doing right now.

Conversion rates are high with social media marketing

When a business does social media marketing, it has the advantage of converting more targeted customers into paying customers.

It happens because, through social media marketing, the customers get to see the business’ real nature, they get to see its values.

And if the audiences feel connected to the nature and values of a business, they feel more inclined to buy its products and services.

Audiences analyze the nature and values of a business through what language a business uses in its social media posts, through what message the business consistently delivers, and through how a business engages with people.

What are the best ways to boost your social media marketing strategy?

Now that you have received the knowledge of the 5 core pillars of social media marketing, here are a few ways using which you can boost your social media marketing strategy.

• Understand what your goal is with your business’s social media marketing. If you keep moving forward without any goal in mind then you would hardly see any results.
• Develop a social media content plan in advance. This should include what you will write in your social media posts, what different types of social media posts you’ll publish, which platforms will you focus on, and on which days will you publish the post.
• Before developing the social media content plan, analyze your market and be well aware of the current trends in your industry.
• Pay your utmost attention to maintaining consistency in your brand image. This consistency should be visible in both your posts and content.
• Attach relevant links in the captions of your posts.
• Never miss even a single day of seeing what your competitors are doing. Miss it, and you could lose out on a huge opportunity to expand your customer base.
• Don’t just publish one type of post continuously and regularly on social media platforms, otherwise audiences might get bored seeing that from you again and again. Make different varieties of posts including infographics, videos, photos, etc. to see a satisfactory level of engagement from your audiences.
• Never give all your attention to just publishing your posts. Give attention to other aspects of social media marketing as well like engaging with your audiences and listening to the opinions and suggestions of your audience.
• Keep track of how well each of your social media posts is performing and develop your further strategy based on the results gathered.
• Always strive to make your posts so appealing and seductive that the audiences would feel compelled to engage with them through likes, comments, and shares.

Benefits and Drawbacks of Social Media Marketing

Benefits of Social Media Marketing

The points mentioned here are also the benefits of the five pillars of social media marketing.

• It has a positive impact on your brand.
• It engages the audience.
• It promotes customer service.
• It impacts sales.
• It impacts conversion rates.
• It makes your brand appear as a thought leader.
• It helps businesses in understanding their customers well.
• It helps businesses in understanding their target audiences well.
• It improves a business’s search engine result page presence.
• It boosts website traffic.
• It attracts high-quality and qualified leads.
• It helps businesses in generating an effective return on investment.
• It retargets missed customers.
• It helps a business to build partnerships with other businesses and not only that but it also helps a business to build connections with social media influencers.
• It helps in keeping up with industry trends.
• It helps a business in finding top talent to work in it.
• It helps businesses in making a direct connection with their customers.
• With its use, businesses deliver in-depth knowledge about their product to their targeted customers.

Drawbacks of Social Media Marketing

The points mentioned here are also the drawbacks of the five pillars of social media marketing.

• It could get hacked.
• If you as a business owner make even a tiny mistake after making your business popular on social media, it could result in hatred and negativity spreading among people.
• If you are not implementing successful social media marketing strategies on social media, you might not see concrete results from your efforts.
• If your competitors do better than you, your audiences lose interest in engaging with your brand.
• To build a loyal audience on social media platforms, a lot of time requires to be invested.
• Growing on social media organically requires a lot of time, work, and dedication.
• In case ignorantly you copy some other business’ content, you could get into trouble and sometimes legal issues.

Actions that should be avoided while doing social media marketing

After you’ve learned about the 5 core pillars of social media marketing, here are some of the actions that you should refrain from while carrying out social media marketing.

Moving forward without developing a social media strategy

Social media is a big thing.

You can make a lot of customers through it and even you could lose out on your customers through it.

Just like every time you leave your home, you leave it with a plan of where you have to go and when you are going to come back, every time you do social media marketing, you need to have a clear goal of what you want to accomplish through your social media marketing efforts and a plan or strategy of how you are going to accomplish that.

The strategy needs to be in place in every aspect of social media marketing you perform whether it is a paid one or an organic one.

Thinking everyone is your audience

This is a major mistake that we see every new business owner make.

Even when we ask those business people who enroll in our digital marketing course who are your targeted customers, they reply with ‘everyone’ and when they give an explanation on this, they say ‘everyone is my target audience because my product could be used by everyone’.

As the most promising digital marketing training company in India, we feel sad to see such unawareness of fundamental business and marketing concepts among people.

No wonder why so many new businesses fail.

Every business in the world, whether it is World’s biggest technology company ‘Apple Inc.’ or a new startup, it has its target audiences that they intend to sell their products and services.

You’ll have to be well aware of all the different segments of your target audiences so that you can target each of them separately in your social media ad campaigns.

If you won’t know your target audiences deeply, it would not be practicable for you to address their fears, motivations, and pain points while showing them your promotional content.

Using inappropriate and ineffective hashtags in your posts

Hashtags are very important to use in a social media post as it helps your business gain visibility among new people.

Let’s say an event is currently trending a lot in India and you post something related to that event and use a hashtag related to that event.

You might think that if you do this activity, you will start receiving a lot of traffic instantly.

It is not as easy as it may sound.

A lot of businesses other than you would also be competing to come to the top of that hashtag other than you.

What you need to have in this case is a proper hashtag approach.

You need to analyze your business’s reputation on social media and the content effectiveness that you are posting and use hashtags based on that analysis.

Not paying attention to the audience’s comments

This is the rudest mistake that we see businesses making all the time.

First, they put their efforts into expanding their audience base and gathering engagement from audiences.

And when finally the audience starts engaging through comments, they ignore them and give no reply to their comments.

Imagine yourself being a user and commenting on a post published by a business. 

Even after writing so many comments from your side, will you bother writing any comments again?

Hopefully, the answer is NO.

Neither will you write any comment again nor you are going to suggest that business to anyone.

When your business is small, you have enough time to give replies to all the comments that land on your posts. 

And you must give a reply to all of them due to the fact that they are not so many.

Even when your business becomes big and you start to receive a lot of comments on your posts, you should be replying to some of the top comments. 

By doing this, you will show your audience that you care about them and those people who you didn’t give any reply, they will also understand that having received a lot of comments, it is not practicable to give a reply to all of them.

When you constantly engage with your audiences in the comments section, the social media platform’s algorithm starts to promote you organically as well.

Deleting dismissive and hateful comments

On social media, there is hardly any company that doesn’t receive negative comments, no matter how good of a product or service they offer.

Your loyal audiences are not concerned about the dismissive comments that you are getting unless you choose to delete them.

The best practice to follow when you get hateful comments on your social media account is to address the concern of the commenter directly and politely without using any harsh language and trying to resolve the issue with the best of your efforts.

However, in a rare case, if the commenter is toxic for no reason, it is your duty to just ignore him without deleting his comment.

The more honest and truthful you will seem to your audiences on social media with your activities, the more likely they will be to become a loyal follower of yours.

Conclusion

We hope that the in-depth information that you have received on the 5 pillars of social media marketing through this post will prove to be valuable for you and that you are going to take your business’s social media marketing to the next level with the knowledge of the 5 pillars of social media marketing that you have now.

Social media plays a crucial role in today’s day and age for businesses.

Without a robust social media presence, businesses could lose out on a huge number of customers that would have become their paying customers if they would have a presence in social media.

Well, having a social media presence is crucial but it is not all.

A business also needs to have a solid social media marketing strategy in place because, without that, it would fail to entice its audiences and achieve the goals for which the social media marketing plan was actually made.

At the Delhi Institute of Digital Marketing, it is our mission to empower people with the skillset of digital marketing so that they could take their business to the next level and help other businesses too in growing them with the use of digital marketing strategies like social media marketing, search engine optimization, content marketing and more.

Join DIDM’s digital marketing course if you would like to learn about the 5 core pillars of social media marketing in greater detail and grow your business to an ascending level. Dial +91 8800505151 today.

Frequently Asked Questions About the Five Core Pillars of Social Media Marketing