Social media is a key component of many organizations' marketing strategies. It allows organizations to build engaged communities with their customers and prospects. These channels are also free to download and use, which fits into the small budgets of many marketing departments.
But, now that social media is saturated with business accounts and algorithms are making it more difficult to reach your target audience, how can businesses best leverage social media's potential?
Here's what you need to know about social media marketing in 2026.
What is Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing is when a business uses social channels to promote itself, engage with prospects and customers, and share new offerings and promotions. The channels used by an organization should be guided by where their target customers are the most active and engaged.
Social Media Marketing Strategy
All parts of your business need a strategy, and social media is no different. Your social media strategy is a document detailing how you'll use social media in your marketing efforts.
It should outline the platforms you'll use and how you'll use each of them, how you'll engage with your followers, the calendar you'll follow for sharing content, your social media goals, and how you'll measure progress towards each goal.
Given how much it guides your social media usage, it's important to have a solid social media strategy.
Social Media Channel Tips
Facebook defines engagement baiting as the practice of prodding users into interacting with your content. Facebook's guidelines list five types of engagement baiting the algorithm monitors for: react, share, comment, tag, and vote.
It's best to familiarize yourself with engagement bait, as posts that are found to use these tactics are demoted in the News Feed.
High-quality visuals are more appealing than poor-quality ones, and this is true across all platforms. Facebook's Ad Guidelines recommend that your visuals have a resolution of 1080px x 1080px and be no more than 30MB for best results.
Asking questions in your content or captions is an excellent way to get organic engagement on Facebook.
Not sure where to start with this? Try one of the questions from this list!
Instagram is known for having a finicky algorithm. However, it generally prioritizes content that is widely saved and shared.
You'll want to create content that really resonates with your followers so they share it with their friends or save it to view again later.
Social media users don't want to see the same thing constantly. Ensure your social media strategy includes different content formats so you'll always be entertaining your audience.
Consistently using the same colours, fonts, and styles will enable your followers to immediately recognize a piece of your content. It allows them to know what to expect from your organization's Instagram, which helps foster a consistent customer experience.
Tweets with videos can often see up to 10 times more engagement compared to tweets without one. You aren't limited to just sharing original video content; you can retweet videos from competitors, customers, or industry experts that would add value to your following.
As we outlined in the first tip, you don't have to only tweet original content. Retweeting other content can still provide your audience value and opportunities to engage with you without you spending tons of time creating content. Just be sure to credit the original creator!
Brands need to tweet what adds value to their following, so don't tweet every thought you have simply because you feel pressured to tweet 50 times per day.
You can do this by using your headline to describe what you offer and posting behind-the-scenes content that shows how you provide value to your customers.
Although it's a social media channel, LinkedIn is still a professional channel, so all visuals you share on the platform should match that energy.
There are a few ways you can do this. You can offer educational content in your area of expertise in blogs, free downloads, videos, or how-to posts.
You can also create a sense of community by sharing stories about your industry or engaging with the community through polls. The options are endless!
Long vertical images are more likely to stop the scroll than square photos, so use these to your advantage.
People don't want to spend time figuring out what your pin is about. Keeping backgrounds distraction-free will show them exactly what they want to see.
People also don't want to read a novel in your captions. Show them the value your pin is providing, and then they'll click through to your site to get all the details.
People who follow a certain hashtag don't want to see content that doesn't apply to it at all and therefore won't engage with your content.
Although trends can help you reach a wider audience, you still want them to apply to your target audience. Those people are more likely to like your video and follow you to engage with more of your content.
There are new trends every day, and you'll exhaust yourself trying to do every single one. Your new followers will want to see you provide value beyond nailing TikTok trends.
Key Takeaways
Social media can be tricky to master, but following platform-specific tips will help you make the most out of your social marketing efforts. Keep the focus on entertaining, educating, and engaging with your community to build and maintain trust and loyalty.
Community members that find you trustworthy are more likely to buy from you. Once you've fostered a sense of loyalty, it'll keep those customers coming back for more. They may even create user-generated content that you can reshare (with credit, of course) with your followers as social proof.
All of this takes time, so you should view social media marketing in 2026 as a long game. Use a social media strategy to keep you on track toward your social media goals and how those tie into your organization's big-picture goals.
