Social media has become one of the main communication channels in the world recently. In fact, around 40% of the whole world population uses social media actively. You could roughly say that every person who has internet connection also has at least one active social media account.

There are close to 1.6 billion active Facebook accounts in the world with Twitter and Instagram users being over 300 and 400 million respectively.

People use social media for everything these days: getting the latest news and trends, keeping in touch with their friends, entertaining themselves and also, getting to know their favorite brands better.

Businesses that leverage social media in their marketing campaigns have the opportunity to connect with their customers, show them their true value, keep prospects updated on the latest industry trends and innovations and constantly grow their fan/customer base.

But most importantly, social media is used to gain the trust of potential and existing consumers. With so much information and competition in practically every industry you can think of, where dozens of businesses offer the same products/services, it’s hard for consumers to make their choice: which business/brand do they choose to trust? How do they know whether they can trust a business or not?

By telling your own story, sharing industry insight and continuously providing valuable, educational content to consumers, you will be able to build that trust with your audience, which is so important when it comes to making buying decisions.

Understand your social media goals

Social media marketing isn’t as simple as posting content, answering comments and promoting your products. In order to make the most use out of it, first you need to identify your social media marketing goals.

When choosing the goal, there are a few things to take into account:

• Are you just starting your social media marketing or you already have a fan base?

• What are your overall marketing and business goals? Social media marketing has to be aligned with those in order to have a positive effect

• What are you trying to accomplish with the help of social media marketing?

These questions will help you understand what you need to do with your social media strategy and how to tweak it as you move forward. Example social media goals can be:

• Increase website traffic

• Improve brand awareness

• Create a brand identity

• Improve communication and interaction with consumers

• Educate your audience on the latest industry trends

Depending on the goals set, you will a different strategy to accomplish each of those. However, there is one thing that lies at the core of any goal and strategy: trust.

Without trust, you won’t be able to grow the number of followers, create a brand identity or increase website traffic. Consumers want to make sure that your brand is trustworthy first, before even thinking of buying your products.

Find your audience

There are dozens of social media accounts out there, but that doesn’t mean that your business must be present/active on all of them. Even if you have the resources and time to dedicate to this matter, it’s no use being active on social platforms that your consumers aren’t using anyway.

This is why after identifying your goals you need to figure out those social platforms that your target consumers actually use. There are a lot of awesome social media tools you can use to find the best channels for your business.

Every industry is different and different people have different preferences. This means that a certain social media channel can be invaluable to some, while completely irrelevant for other businesses.

Yes, even Facebook with its 1.6 billion consumers. Just like in other marketing spheres, it’s never about the quantity, it’s about the quality.

On a final note, I’d like to mention one thing: growing your fan base, gaining the trust of consumers, improving your brand identity and seeing positive social media ROI doesn’t happen overnight. Not even over a month. It’s important to realize that building trust takes time, effort and consistency. Only those brands that provide value to consumers on a consistent basis can hope to achieve a “reliable brand” status in the eyes of their consumers and be successful on social media.

Charles Dearing is a seasoned online marketing expert who writes about various marketing techniques on business and marketing blogs and also runs his own blog. He writes for Patientsites.com and helps numerous businesses improve their online marketing efforts.