The beginner’s guide to social media marketing

Like any form of marketing, you can’t succeed on social media without a solid strategy. This beginner’s guide will help you get started.

This piece used to exist as one of our gated resources. We've unleashed and now you can read an updated version here, for free. 

Inform your strategy

Before you jump in, you need to think carefully about where you post, your tone of voice and how often you share your content.

Know your persona

If you’re unsure what a buyer persona is: familiarise yourself. They’re a very important part of your marketing strategy.

‘Buyer personas (sometimes referred to as marketing personas) are fictional, generalised representations of your ideal customers. Personas help us all — in marketing, sales, product and services — internalise the ideal customer we’re trying to attract, and relate to our customers as real humans.’

— Hubspot

For more information on personas, see here.

Put yourself in their shoes

Once you have a better idea about the process, consider the following questions:

• How busy are your personas? Do they have time for more content-heavy platforms such as LinkedIn? Or perhaps a more visual social media platform, such as Instagram or Pinterest. Or short-form content-sharing platforms like TikTok (or any video platform that has developed a 'shorts' functionality).
• Where are they most likely to spend their time? A sociable, family-and-friends-loving persona is likely to spend their time on Facebook, but don’t assume that this social network is strictly for consumer brands. Facebook can help B2B companies network and find potential customers. Of course, LinkedIn is very much the 'default' platform for business social media networking.
• What content do they want? If you’re trying to target a CEO of a company, a more formal and business-oriented platform like LinkedIn might be more suitable. If your business can share lots of interesting images that will attract your customers, you’ll want to use Instagram or Pinterest, which are especially effective for B2C organisations.
• Proactive problem-solving. Use social channel listening tools to watch out for comments or concerns around your brand, product or even general area of expertise. Customers won't always mention you directly in a post, and may not even be expecting anyone to solve their problem - so if you can spot their issue and jump in before they even realise you can help, you'll be creating a very happy customer.
• When are they likely to be active? Test different publishing times and see which time frame is most active (based on reach and engagement). This is a hard question to answer before you start sharing, but make sure you experiment with different times to see when you get the best results.

Choose your channels

You don’t need to post content to every single social network out there. Social media marketing across multiple networks can take up far more time than you might think, so figure out which ones work best for your personas and focus on those.

For guidance, as a B2B marketing consultancy, we focus mainly on LinkedIn. But there are still opportunities to consider Facebook, Instagram and more

Share your content

The ultimate aim of social media marketing is to direct people to your website, where you can convert them into leads and customers. To do that, you need to create and share your own content.

Link to your company's blog

By now, we know that a blog is the backbone of any basic social media strategy.

• Post informative content on your blog.
• Share blog posts on social media to link people to your website.

That’s the strategy in a nutshell, but we’re not going into depth here. If you want more details on how to make your website marketing run on autopilot, read our complete guide to website marketing.

Share away

Every social media platform is, well, social. But they’re social in different ways. Because they differ in format and purpose, each has its own unique rules. Let’s have a look at those key social platforms and how you should post to them:

• LinkedIn: LinkedIn is all about people and thought leadership. While company pages and posts can do well, the platform is more focused on humans and real connections. Post frequently from your company account, but also consider the value of personal engagement. Whether you're a CEO or product expert sharing your own thoughts and insights or an employee resharing company content, every little helps. Learn more about how to use executive LinkedIn profiles to maximise engagement. 
• Facebook:  It's safe to say that Facebook is typically more valuable to consumer-focused brands than to B2B organisations. But it absolutely works for some of them. Meta (Facebook's owner) is a genuine powerhouse. Not only does it own Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads, but Meta Platforms' ad revenue grew 24% year over year to $58.1 billion in Q4 2025. 
• Instagram: You can’t add links to posts, so it’s best used for things like company photos and building your employer brand. As it’s a visual platform, it's also a fabulous way to share your work portfolio with customers and showcase your brand. 
• TikTok: It's no longer an app for dancing and lip-syncing. While TikTok won't work for every business, and finding your B2B niche will take some time and strategic planning, you shouldn't dismiss it entirely. Check out how Sage, an accounting software Provider, and fintech banking provider Revolut use the app. 
• X: As X is such a fast, pithy social network, you can generally post as often as you’re able to without issue. After all, it’s much harder to catch the attention of your audience on their fast-paced feeds. Recent changes in ownership and concerns about the platform's content have led to a significant decline in users, revenue, and engagement. 

(Full transparency, since this piece was originally written, we have, since late 2023, made the decision to reduce posts on X due to events following Elon Musk’s purchase of the company that was once Twitter.) We now focus on other social media platforms.)

Post frequency varies from platform to platform. And with the rise of AI-generated posts, it seems to be getting higher. The goal is to be a reliable, constant source for your audience, but you also don’t want to annoy them or clog up their newsfeeds. 

Use scheduling applications

No one is motivated enough to remember, rework and live post every single social post. You’d have to set multiple alarms every few hours and keep every social media tab open at all times. Let’s face it: that would be annoying. Thus, you’ll be better off using a scheduling application like Hootsuite, CoSchedule, Buffer, or (as we do) HubSpot’s social media scheduling tool.

Scheduling apps allow you to easily manage your social posts, apply templates and create an editorial calendar. These calendars are handy if you want to make sure that you don’t go a day without posting content.

Share other people's content

We mentioned this already, but why would you do that? After all, the whole point of social media marketing is to get people to your website, right? Right. But sharing other people’s content is a proven way of increasing the number of people who go to your website, and it helps you build your network.

Content curation

Sharing other people’s content on social media is called ‘content curation’. It’s best explained by a hypothetical scenario. Say you’re a marketing agency and buyer personas want help with social media marketing, here’s what you’d do:

1. You search Feedly and Alltop to find useful, popular advice on the topic. You can also find articles directly through search engines via search queries or social media platforms via topics and hashtags. 
2. You find one of the articles genuinely useful and share it via Linkedin, including the relevant hashtags and attributing the original author of the content by mentioning their handle; @Social.
3. A few people see your post when searching #socialmedia and share it because they enjoyed the article. Since they appreciate your taste in content, they also decide to follow your account.
4. Meanwhile, @Social receives a notification because you’ve mentioned them. They want to make sure you share their content again. They navigate to your page and re-share a post you shared earlier in the day, promoting one of your own blog articles.
5. An article from your blog has now been shared with all of @Socials' followers. Nice!

The more businesses you curate from, the larger your potential audience becomes. So, by helping your customers with helpful content from credible sources, you’re also strengthening your marketing strategy and reach. If content curation can improve the chances of other people sharing your own content, it’s well worth doing.

How often?

There are a lot of differing opinions on how much of your own content you should share compared to other people’s. A 60:40 split between original and curated content is widely recommended. That’s four posts from curated posts to every one of yours. That might sound like a lot, but it’s a big part of our winning formula. Be generous, in short.

Stand out

By now you’re probably thinking, ‘That’s great, but what if I spend time sharing all this content and no-one sees it?’

Well, that’s where our tactics come in.

Use images

Impressive images and video assets are a sure way to direct attention to your social media content. No matter which platform you use, it's vital that you include images and video with your social posts. They help your content stand out amongst the crowd.

They also make your content easier to read. Think about it: how often have you read something because the image next to it caught your eye? It’s scientifically proven that content is more attractive when an image is included. It’s also much easier to remember; you’re 55 percent more likely to retain a piece of information if there’s an accompanying image.

There are many forms of images you can choose.

• Use relevant images. This goes without saying, but it’s important to remember. If your social post is about IT security, promoting it with an image of a kitten probably isn’t the best idea. It’s necessary to use relevant images because they help to drive interest in your content. Research shows that people are 94 percent more likely to view your content if it contains a relevant image, so start being picky with the images you choose. There are many free sites that allow you to download copyright-free images, such as stocksnap.io.
• Create infographics. If you have some nice statistics you want to showcase, create a visually appealing infographic to draw attention to them. These tend to be very shareable images on social media. Sites like Canva let you create infographics quickly and easily. 
• Memes (use with caution). Be funny! Social network users love sharing funny, relatable content. If you can find an entertaining meme that relates to your topic, there’s no harm in using it. Or, create your own unique memes using a meme generator.
• Videos.  Create short, shareable videos to post on your social network accounts. These can be how-to, live, or short educational videos that could be useful to your followers. If you host a webinar or podcast, these are great sources of video content for you to share. 

Where possible, choose real-life imagery over stock photography, and opt for graphics created by designers rather than AI-generated. The more time your audience spends online, the easier it becomes to spot repetitive stock or AI-created images. Choose creativity as often as you can.

Keep it short and punchy

We have very short attention spans. Only a few seconds long and decreasing. Because of the ever-growing accessibility of mobile information, we now seek short, consumable content we can read or watch quickly. That's what makes social media so addictive: we can find a limitless amount of new content at the click of a button, whenever we like.

Unfortunately, this means that it’s much easier for people to completely miss or skim over your social content in favour of reading something else. You can’t let that happen. Give your audience what they want and create content that’s easy to consume and checks all the right boxes.

• Write concise sentences. Short and simple works best when you want to grab someone’s attention on a social post. Keep lengthy posts to a minimum. Tell your audience what they’re going to get quickly, and they’ll decide whether to click your content.
• Use short, easy words. Replace complex words with simpler ones: they’re much easier to read. Plus, there's nothing worse than having to research the definition of a word halfway through a text.

Hook the reader

We’ve already discussed the difficulty of attracting attention on social media. That’s why you need to make sure you hook the reader and stand out from the crowd:

• Give instructions. People respond to being told what to do. Imperative verbs are very persuasive, so if you use these verbs at the beginning of your posts, you’ll grab the attention of your readers from the get-go. For example, instead of writing ‘Here are some helpful social media marketing tips’, try ‘Use these helpful social media marketing tips’.
• Ask questions. If you begin a social post with a rhetorical question, the chances are it’ll entice or influence your followers to think about your chosen topic. This will encourage them to investigate further and read your content.
• Demonstrate the value. We like being told why something is useful to us. Try to demonstrate how your blog post, webinar or other piece of content will be valuable to your audience.
• Show your statistics. Numbers are very consumable. People enjoy seeing clear, believable and proven facts. They help to build the credibility of your content.
• Quote. Using a quote from a popular personality or influential person can grab the interest of your readers. To learn how to make your writing more memorable, read our blog on writing with anecdotes.
  

Be human

People like to talk to people, not spam bots. Thus, it’s critical that you try to breathe some life into your social network accounts.

Engage in real conversations

Human responses are especially important. If you leave queries or messages without responses, you can upset your leads and customers and destroy brand trust.

Follow these helpful human tips:

• Don’t use automated responses. It’s very frustrating to reach out to a business and receive a robotic response. If these automated and robotic responses aren’t genuine enough, you could risk losing leads and customers.
• Respond ASAP. Not every Facebook comment requires a response, but the more you can engage with your leads and customers, the better. Try to listen intently, personalise your responses and be as helpful and informative as you can.
• Use your buyers’ language. People like it when you talk in a language that they can understand. Don’t use technical jargon that they can’t relate to: it’ll put them off. Instead, opt for helpful, simple language that engages your readers.

Analyse, make changes, repeat

Before you can put your social media strategy into action, you’ll need to step back and set SMART goals. These are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely goals. In other words, you need to be clear about what you’re aiming for. 

Set some KPIs (key performance indicators) to help you measure your social media success. These can be your audience growth, the number of clicks to your site, the amount of social shares and the number of leads/customers generated from your social media profiles. Keep track of your numbers to see whether you’re meeting your targets.

Don’t be afraid to make changes to your social media marketing strategy. These changes can range from shortening your written content on Facebook to trying out a new social network. Make a note of what works, what doesn’t, and optimise your social media marketing strategy to suit your business.

Just remember: social media marketing takes time. Unless you’re as famous as Beyoncé, the chances are you aren’t going to gain a million followers in a week. But that doesn’t mean that you should be discouraged. If you put in the time and effort, social media will help you grow your business.