On this page
What social media marketing is
It has two halves. Organic social is what you post to your own accounts and the conversations around it. Paid social is advertising on the same platforms, targeted by interests, behavior, location or your own customer lists.
It matters because it is where many of your customers spend their attention, and where they decide whom they trust. For many businesses social is also the first place a new customer sees them, before any search, and the place an unhappy one goes to complain.
What works on social
A clear purpose per platform. Each platform rewards different content: short video on TikTok and Reels, expertise and opinion on LinkedIn, community and events on Facebook, how-tos on YouTube.
Being present on all of them is less valuable than being good on one.
Content people would miss. The posts that do well teach something, show something real about the business, or answer a question your customers ask. Pure promotion is easy to scroll past.
Consistency. Algorithms favor accounts that post regularly and get engagement soon after posting. A steady weekly rhythm you can keep beats a burst followed by silence.
Conversations, answered. Comments and messages are customer service in public. A quick, human answer is often worth more than the post that prompted it.
Measurement that reaches the website. Followers and likes say whether people noticed. Visits, leads and sales say whether it worked, and that needs tagged links and analytics.
Choosing your platforms
Start where your customers already are, not where the newest trend is. A local service business usually does best on Facebook and Instagram, where neighbors recommend each other. Business-to-business firms find buyers on LinkedIn. Products that are easy to show off do well with short video on TikTok and Instagram Reels. Anything people learn to do belongs on YouTube, where people search for how-to videos.
Pick one or two, do them properly for three months, and judge them on visits and enquiries before adding another. Claim your business name on the rest so nobody else does, and point those profiles to the accounts you run.
Organic and paid together
Organic posts build trust with the people who already follow you; paid social reaches people who don’t yet. They work best together. Boost the organic posts that already earned engagement, because the audience has told you they’re good. Retarget website visitors with ads on the platforms they use. And use what ads teach you, such as which message gets the cheapest clicks, to shape what you post organically. Our social media advertising page goes deeper into the paid side.
Measuring social properly
Each platform reports reach, impressions and engagement in its own way, and none of them sees what happens after the click. To compare platforms with each other and with search and email, tag every link you post with UTM parameters (source, medium and campaign) in a consistent format, and read the results in your web analytics. Judge each platform on the visits, leads and sales it sends, and keep the platform’s own numbers for judging individual posts.
Where your website comes in
Every social link ends on a web page, and two things on that page decide how it performs.
Before and after: a shared link
Example for illustration; not a client's data.
How to check it yourself
- Preview a shared link.
Paste one of your page addresses into a new post on LinkedIn or Facebook (without publishing) and look at the preview. If the image, title or description is wrong or missing, the page's Open Graph tags need work. Each platform also has its own sharing debugger that shows what it reads.
- Read your visits from social.
Then open Google Analytics, go to traffic acquisition, and look at visits from social: which platforms send people, how long they stay and whether they convert. If social shows up as “direct” or “referral”, your links aren't tagged.
SMARTSEO doesn’t read social accounts today. It checks the Open Graph tags of every page it scans, and with Google Analytics connected shows the visits social sends to your site.
Is this in the SMARTSEO app?
Not yet. The app doesn’t read social or email accounts today, so this is expert help only. What the app does check is your website itself, and that’s where every click from social and email lands.
The problems we find most often
Each of these is a check SMARTSEO runs on every scan, in the words the app uses. The last ones come from hands-on work, outside what the app checks. Open one to see what triggers it and how to fix it.
NoticeMissing Open Graph tags
- What triggers it
- A page has no Open Graph tags.
- Why it matters
- Missing Open Graph tags produce unattractive social shares, indirectly reducing the referral signals that build authority.
- How to fix it
- Add og:title, og:description and og:image to each shareable page.
NoticeOpen Graph tags incomplete
- What triggers it
- A page has some Open Graph tags but is missing the title, description or image.
- Why it matters
- The page has some Open Graph tags but not all three that shape a shared link, so a share may appear without a picture or with the wrong title.
- How to fix it
- Add the missing og:title, og:description or og:image tag.
CommonPosting everywhere, well nowhere
- What we see
- Accounts on six platforms, each updated now and then, none with a clear audience or purpose.
- How to fix it
- Pick the one or two platforms where your customers already spend time, post there consistently, and park the rest with a pinned post that points to where you are active.
CommonMeasuring likes instead of results
- What we see
- Monthly reports of followers and engagement, and no line from social to leads or sales.
- How to fix it
- Tag every link you share with UTM parameters, set up the conversions in Google Analytics, and report social on visits, leads and revenue alongside engagement.
CommonLinks that send people to the homepage
- What we see
- A post about one product or offer links to the homepage, and the visitor has to hunt for it.
- How to fix it
- Link each post to the page that delivers what the post promised, and check that page on a phone before you publish.
CommonNo plan for comments and messages
- What we see
- Questions and complaints in comments and DMs wait days for an answer, in public.
- How to fix it
- Decide who answers, how fast, and what goes to email or phone. Response time on social is part of your reputation.
CommonAds boosted without a goal
- What we see
- Posts boosted for reach, with no audience, no conversion event and no landing page.
- How to fix it
- Run paid social from the ads manager with an objective, a defined audience and a tracked conversion. See social media advertising.
How our own links looked when shared
The part of social a website controls is how its links look in a feed. Our own WordPress site had pages missing part of their Open Graph tags, so a share showed whatever the platform guessed instead of the title, description and image we'd choose.
SMARTSEO’s own project for its own site, read from stored data on October 28, 2026.
In this section
Questions people ask
Which social media platform is best for business?
The one your customers use for the decision you help with. LinkedIn for business services, Instagram and TikTok for consumer products with a visual story, Facebook for local communities and older audiences, YouTube for anything people want explained. Start with one.
Does social media help SEO?
Not directly. Google has said social signals like shares and likes aren't a ranking factor. Social helps indirectly: content people share gets seen by people who may link to it or search for you by name later.
How often should a business post?
As often as you can keep up with quality, every week, without gaps. Consistency matters more than frequency, and a smaller number of useful posts beats a daily schedule nobody reads.
Organic or paid social?
Organic builds the audience and the trust; paid reaches people beyond it, on purpose. Most businesses need a little of both: organic for the people who follow you, paid for launches, offers and remarketing.
Can SMARTSEO track my social accounts?
Not yet. The app reads your website, search data and analytics, not social platforms. With Google Analytics connected you can see the visits social sends to your site, and every share of your pages benefits from the Open Graph checks below.
What we do for you
- A social strategy built around one or two platforms that fit your customers
- Account setup, cleanup and a content plan you can keep up
- Paid social campaigns with tracked conversions
- Reporting that ties social to visits, leads and sales