The Social Media Marketing Success Cycle You Should Never Ignore

You probably already know that social media marketing is the process of gaining traffic and attention through social media sites.

As simple as this definition is, it holds true, however, social media marketing involves a whole lot more than gaining attention and acquiring traffic.

In this article, we will look at the social success cycle of social media marketing. This is the required foundational knowledge that helps you make sense of your social media marketing strategy.

To start with, there are four successive cycles to social media and they are:

Social Listening:

This is the monitoring and management of a brand’s reputation and the process of responding to customer service issues via the social media sites. Its goal is to attend to customer’s needs on time, manage reputation, increase retention rate and possibly reduce refunds.

Social Influencing:

This is the process of establishing authority on the social web through the creation, distribution and sharing of relevant content that adds value to the audience.  The aim of social influencing is to increase engagement, website traffic and offer awareness.

Social Networking:

This is the process of finding and associating with the authorities in your space through social media – these are influential individuals and brands.  Social networking allows you to develop strategic relationships which would earn you more media mentions in the long run.

Social Selling:

This is the process of generating leads and sales from existing customers and potential customers on the social media sites. Social selling aims to generate leads, grow email lists, increase customer acquisition and buyer frequency.

That said, these are basically what any business whether big or small needs to do with its social media marketing. However, there is a ‘how to’ for each of the cycles which will often help businesses with.

In Conclusion

Any social media marketing that does not take cognizance of the social success cycle is an imbalance. What most businesses already do is a lot of social selling (because it’s probably the ‘ultimate’ of the cycle – everyone wants more sales) and maybe some social listening too.

However, to have a well-rounded social media marketing strategy that listens, influences, relates and sells – you must first understand the social success cycle which we have clearly explained here.

Now, go ahead and check your strategies again, are these factors in place? If yes, that’s fine, otherwise, you need to put them in place. But remember, you need to know ‘how’.

At, BFD that is what we do, we help you make sense of your social media marketing for the best possible results.

Do you have questions? Ask here, we will gladly help.