Social Media Marketing In The Digital Age As a business owner, it is important that you understand how social media works.

Social media marketing has been around a long time, but it has only recently been experiencing an explosion in participation from around the world. It has definitely gone mainstream, and is now even more important as a tool in your digital marketing strategy.

As a result of this participation, it's getting harder to run a business without paying attention to what's happening in the social media sphere. Many businesses are failing to get a grasp of this new marketing and networking medium, as they lose market share to savvy competitors. This is why it is important that as a business owner, you understand how social media works.

As part of your marketing budget, you should allocate an amount for digital marketing. Looking at social media, there are a few points to keep in mind:

1. Social media is not free. With all the new algorithms Facebook is applying, your posts are presented to a limited number of fans; therefore a post boost is needed. Now looking at Twitter, they have a 100% tweet delivery to fans, but there's a twist when it comes to advertising. Based on each account, Twitter individually decides whether or not you are eligible to advertise.
2. You get what you pay for. Simply put, the more you pay, the more exposure you get.
3. Never forget that it is a "social" network. Businesses nowadays are using social media in a way that viewers wouldn't enjoy. Always make sure that you engage with your audience and try to build meaningful relationships.

Now that we've covered the basics of social media, let's look at how you should manage your presence. There are a few points on what should be done, but based on your own brand, you can decide what works best for you. Be sure to engage with your audience and have a community manager take care of that. Aside from community management, focus on your content. Here are the types of content you should always have in your schedule of posts:

1. Brand posts
2. Industry posts
3. Generic posts
4. Competitions
5. Campaigns

With this big load on your hands, here is a list of tools that will help the smallest startups to the biggest corporations:

1. Hootsuite: Scheduling posts for all the major social media networks.
2. Trello: Task management platform.
3. Slack: Messaging app for teams.
4. Mailchimp: Mailing lists and newsletters.