Social media marketing involves using a variety of social media channels to share content, post ads, and engage with customers. Each social media platform functions differently and, depending on your audience, one platform might have much higher engagement than others. Just like working with different types of influencers, from micro to macro, different social media...
Social media marketing involves using a variety of social media channels to share content, post ads, and engage with customers. Each social media platform functions differently and, depending on your audience, one platform might have much higher engagement than others.
Just like working with different types of influencers, from micro to macro, different social media platforms perform in different ways. Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok are three of the most popular social media platforms and there are specific ways to use each one to get the best results. It’s also not one size fits all when it comes to metrics and KPIs across social media platforms. Knowing the ins and outs of each platform informs your overall marketing strategy, including how you leverage your influencers.
As the power and popularity of influencer marketing has risen, Instagram has become one of the top platforms for influencers to build their following. On Instagram, influencers and regular users of the platform create user-generated content. User-generated content (UGC) is more than just photos and videos — it includes caption text or text-based posts.
Instagram is a platform that welcomes open discussion through the comments. Successful influencers build relationships with their audiences by interacting with their followers in the comments. If you do decide to hop into the comments, it’s good to note that Instagram has a quick return on interactions for posts in the feed, which hit their peak after a few days.
Instagram Stories are great for video content–they’re interactive and highly engaging, featuring options for comments, polls, and reaction from viewers and followers. Stories are also the only way to directly link out to your website, making it an invaluable tool for driving traffic to your website and supporting conversions.
The key performance indicators (KPIs) to focus on for Instagram posts are brand awareness and reach, interactions, engagement, and audience growth. Working with influencers can help you hit your goals for all of these KPIs. Influencers have highly engaged followers, so partnering with them to promote your content can support efforts across the board — from boosting awareness to growing your follower base.
Depending on your specific area of focus, you can target campaigns with influencers to hit one or more of the goals. If you’re primarily interested in brand awareness and reach, getting your content out in front of a wider audience is key. This can come from an influencer sharing your brand or products on their page or from you featuring content from an influencer on their page that they can re-share to drive their followers to your page. Tracking your followers as you run campaigns and using affiliate and tracked links are a few of the ways to measure whether your campaigns are increasing reach and awareness.
YouTube
YouTube is one of the top video platforms in the world, with 2 billion logged-in users per month and 500 hours of video uploaded every minute. There’s a huge audience available on YouTube and marketers have taken notice. Video content is incredibly effective for driving engagement and conversions, and YouTube makes it easy to upload and share videos online.
YouTube is the best fit for slow burn, evergreen content. Due to the search capabilities and keywords on the platform, videos gain traction over longer periods of time. Influencers and video pair incredibly well together, but that’s not the only way to create user-generated content to feature on the platform. Get video testimonials from influencers and other customers that you can share on YouTube to provide strong social proof for your brand and your products.
For YouTube, the KPIs you’ll want to track are site traffic and conversions, interactions, reach, engagement, and brand awareness. On your videos, you can drive viewers to your site from links in the description, so it’s important to add any relevant links to your site or products in the video description. Tracking these links can help you measure which videos are gaining the most traction and driving the best results. Comments, shares, likes, and dislikes all factor into your interactions —keep an eye on these metrics to see how your audience is reacting to your video content.
TikTok
One of the newest social platforms on the scene is TikTok. TikTok is a video-sharing platform where users create dance, lip-sync, and comedy videos on top of fashion and beauty content. It’s especially popular for younger demographics, with Gen Z making up a large portion of the platform’s users. If the demographic falls within your audience age range or you’re looking to expand your reach and identify future tastemakers, TikTok provides a lot of opportunities.
With the current algorithm, it’s often easier for videos shared on TikTok to go viral. The popularity of a video on TikTok is determined by the amount of the video that is watched combined with engagement like likes and comments.
TikTok owes a lot of its popularity to the fact that the content is more authentic, with users filming a short video with their phones and no fancy equipment. It’s less curated, making it feel more authentic than some other social platforms.
When you start marketing on TikTok, the metrics you’ll want to focus on are brand awareness, interactions, and reach. One of the good things about TikTok is that you can still get a lot of views on your content even if you don’t have a lot of followers. With the For You Page and the algorithm, you can get a lot of eyes on your videos pretty easily. Watch your followers along with the number of views, shares, and comments to help measure awareness, reach, and interactions.
While TikTok is still a fairly new platform, marketers are taking notice of the impact it can have on driving sales. Like Instagram, users add hashtags to their posts on TikTok. This gives brands another opportunity to generate original, branded hashtags to help get the word out.
With authentic, user-generated content, TikTok is a natural fit for influencer marketing campaigns. Influencers can film videos with their own phones from the comfort of their homes and share information about new products through demos and testimonials.
Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok are great outlets for brands to connect with more people through the influencers they work with, increase their reach, and drive conversions. The KPIs vary from site to site and the type of content you share should be tailored to fit the algorithm, demographic, and metrics for each one. Whether you’re letting an influencer host an Instagram takeover, sharing an unboxing video on YouTube, or showcasing a product in action on TikTok, knowing what metrics to track helps inform your whole strategy.
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