Companies, professionals, businesses, organizations, and of course countless individuals around the world create or connect with each other through social networks (also called “communities” or “social networks”). These people gather to share content of interest to them (text, images, videos, audio, etc.), and companies can take advantage of these social gatherings to promote their content and products either organically or through paid advertising. This is social media marketing.

The benefits are numerous, ranging from increasing brand awareness to creating and developing interactive relationships with your target audience. From building and enhancing your online reputation as a reference point in your sector (brand authority) to creating advertising campaigns to promote your products and/or services to an extremely wide audience—up to 4 billion people, practically half of the world’s population.

The best and fastest way to start and grow an extremely successful social media marketing effort is to find and engage—the technical term is “engage”—as large an audience as possible (known as reach). While it’s always interesting to take inspiration from big companies, it’s often counterproductive because they already have a high level of brand recognition and use strategies that aren’t applicable to unknown companies or brands. Therefore, it’s essential to study a customized strategy for each individual case.