To do social media marketing well, start with one business goal, decide exactly who you want to reach, and choose the one or two platforms where those people already spend time. Then plan a steady mix of useful content, reply to the people who engage, put a little paid budget behind what works, and measure the results that matter to your business, such as enquiries and sales, rather than likes alone. Consistency beats volume. Three good posts a week, every week, will do more than a burst of daily posting that stops after a month.
That’s the outline. The rest of this guide walks through each step with a worked example, so you can see what it looks like in a real business.
What is social media marketing?
Social media marketing is using platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube and X to reach the people who might buy from you, build their trust and send them to your website or sales team. It has two parts. Organic social is what you post for free on your own pages and profiles. Paid social is advertising on those platforms, targeted by job title, interests, location and more.
Most businesses need both. Organic content builds credibility with people who already follow you. Paid campaigns put that content in front of people who don’t know you yet.
The example we’ll follow
Say you run a 15-person architecture practice in Richmond. Most of your work comes from referrals, and you’d like more commercial projects: office refits and small developments. You have a company LinkedIn page with a few hundred followers and an Instagram account someone set up three years ago.
Step 1: Set one clear business goal
Before you post anything, decide what social media is for. “Be more active on social” isn’t a goal. “Get ten enquiries a quarter from commercial clients” is, and it tells you who to target, what to post and what to measure.
For the architecture practice, that goal immediately points away from consumer audiences and towards property developers, facilities managers and business owners planning a move.
Step 2: Know who you’re talking to
Write a short description of the people you want to reach: their job, what they worry about, what they search for and which platforms they use for work. Use what you already know from your best clients. Platform analytics will fill in more once you’re posting regularly.
The practice’s ideal reader is a facilities or operations director at a 50 to 200-person company whose lease ends in the next two years. That person cares about cost, disruption and getting staff back into the office. They’ll spend far more time on LinkedIn than on TikTok.
Step 3: Choose the right platforms
Which social platforms suit a B2B business? For most business-to-business companies, LinkedIn comes first, because you can reach people by job title, industry and company size. YouTube works well for longer explainer and how-to videos. Instagram suits visual businesses and consumer brands, Facebook still reaches local and older audiences, and TikTok suits younger consumers and brands comfortable with short, informal video.
Pick one or two and do them properly. The architecture practice puts its effort into LinkedIn, posting from both the company page and the directors’ own profiles, because posts from people often reach further than posts from company pages. It keeps Instagram going as a portfolio, with no daily posting.
Step 4: Plan a content mix
What you post should be useful to your audience first and promotional second. A simple monthly plan for the practice might include:
- Project stories: before and after photos of an office refit, with a short note on the brief and the problem solved.
- Practical advice: “five questions to ask before you sign a new office lease”, or how long a typical refit takes.
- Behind the scenes: the team on site, a model being built, a planning drawing taking shape.
- Proof: a short client comment (with permission) or an award entry.
- Direct offers: an occasional post inviting a free feasibility chat.
A content calendar, even a simple spreadsheet, keeps this steady. Batch the work: one afternoon a month to plan and draft, then schedule the posts in advance.
What is the 5-3-1 rule on social media?
The 5-3-1 rule is a guide to your content mix. For every nine posts, five share useful content from other sources, three are your own content relevant to your audience, and one is personal or promotional. The numbers aren’t sacred. The point is that most of what you post should help your audience, with only a small share selling to them.
What is the 3-3-3 rule for social media?
There’s no single 3-3-3 rule. The phrase is used for several informal rules of thumb, most of them about posting a few times a week across a small number of themes. The useful idea underneath is the same: choose a few content themes your audience cares about and post on them consistently, rather than trying to cover everything.
Social media works for businesses that turn up every week with something useful to say. Posting a lot matters far less.
Step 5: Talk to the people who respond
Social platforms reward conversation. Reply to every comment, answer messages quickly and comment thoughtfully on posts from your clients, partners and the people you want to reach. A considered comment on a prospect’s post is often seen by more of the right people than your own post.
For the practice, that means the directors spending fifteen minutes a day on LinkedIn: replying, congratulating clients on their news and joining discussions about office space and planning.
Step 6: Put paid budget behind what already works
Organic reach on most platforms is limited, so a modest paid budget helps. Don’t guess what to promote. Take the posts that already performed well organically and boost them to a targeted audience, or run a campaign offering something worth an email address, such as a short guide to planning an office move.
On LinkedIn, the practice can target operations and facilities directors at companies of a certain size within a set distance of London. Our guide to what a PPC agency does covers how paid social fits alongside search ads.
Step 7: Measure what matters
How do you measure social media marketing? Track three levels:
- Reach: impressions, reach and follower growth. These tell you whether people are seeing your content.
- Engagement: comments, shares, saves and engagement rate. These tell you whether it’s landing.
- Results: clicks to your website, enquiries, leads and sales. These tell you whether it’s worth doing.
Most businesses stop at the first two. To see the third, add UTM tags to every link you share so Google Analytics 4 can show which posts and platforms send visitors who enquire. Ask new enquiries where they heard about you, and record it in your CRM.
Review the numbers monthly. Do more of what drives enquiries and drop what doesn’t, even if it gets plenty of likes.
Tools that make it manageable
You don’t need much. A scheduling tool such as Buffer, Hootsuite or Meta Business Suite lets you plan posts in advance and see your analytics in one place. Canva handles simple graphics. LinkedIn and Meta both have their own built-in analytics, and GA4 shows what happens after the click.
How do beginners start social media marketing?
Start small. Choose one platform, write down your goal and your audience, and commit to two or three posts a week for three months. Complete your profile properly, with a clear description and a link to your website. Then reply to everyone who engages and review your results at the end of each month. That’s enough to learn what your audience responds to before you invest more time or money.
How we approach social media marketing
Social media is one part of the work our fractional marketing team takes on, with a social media specialist planning and running your channels alongside a content strategist, paid media specialist and designer, all working to the same goals as the rest of your marketing. We start with the enquiries you want, then choose the platforms and content that will bring them. Find out how the team works on our fractional marketing page.
FAQs
What is a social media marketing strategy?
A social media marketing strategy is a plan that sets out what you want social media to achieve for your business, who you’re trying to reach, which platforms you’ll use, what you’ll post and how often, and how you’ll measure results. A good strategy ties every post back to a business goal, such as enquiries or sales.
Which social platforms suit a B2B business?
LinkedIn is usually the first choice for business-to-business companies, because you can reach people by job title, industry and company size. YouTube works well for explainer videos, and X can suit sectors with active professional discussions. Most B2B businesses do better focusing on one or two platforms than spreading thinly across all of them.
How often should a business post on social media?
Two to five times a week on your main platform is a sensible starting point for most businesses. Consistency matters more than frequency, so choose a schedule you can keep up every week, and adjust it once you can see what your audience responds to.
How do you measure social media marketing?
Measure reach (impressions and followers), engagement (comments, shares and engagement rate) and business results (website visits, enquiries and sales). Use UTM tags on your links so Google Analytics 4 shows which posts send visitors who convert, and record the source of every new enquiry in your CRM.
