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Social Media has come a long way from MySpace and Orkut funtimes to Meta, X(formerly Twitter), TikTok and Linkedin being considered as a major channel of communication between businesses and their users. Gone are the days when people used to "poke" each other on Facebook or write on each other's walls. With social media becoming a mandatory channel being considered for marketing initiatives, both organic and inorganic. But these platforms don't just spin users out of thin air. The reason these platforms have been chosen as a favourable channel of communication between businesses and users is because of the nature of these platforms, how they function and especially how people use them in their daily lives.
But not everything is rosy about Social Media Marketing because as Tobey Maguire's Spiderman's Uncle Ben's saying goes- "With great power, comes great responsibility". Our clients quite often come to us with complaints about their existing SMM not SMMing and ultimately feeling dejected about the concept. The major expectations mismatch stems from irritation around not being able to reach their potential users with the bigger problem being their fascination with how they themselves as users are somehow reached by the brands/businesses they like. But somehow when they try to reach their ideal users through the same channel, they're met with disappointment which comes ingrained with a considerable sum of amount wasted on graphics, visuals and content, something nobody was consuming. And having burnt through Ad spends without getting any desirable results or having moved the needle for traction.
Setting The Expectations For Social Media Marketing: What To Expect From The Unexpected
Over the years we've worked with many founders and business owners who want to thrive on social media from the go. They all want results from the first day and in results their expectations remain quite basic:
-Go Viral ASAP
-Get Paid Users
These expectations seem bare minimum but the science behind it actually happening takes a lot more than just going live on all platforms. There are also business owners who wait patiently without doing the needful for each platform and expect their business to go viral just by posting and promoting(paid ads). Before getting an understanding on the different channel specific tactics which actually work, first we suggest you first decide on the goal for each media.
Setting Goals For Different Social Media Platforms
Depending on what you want to achieve from social media marketing we advise clients to first tell us which of these they want to take up as an overall objective.
Creating Awareness
If you want people to know more about your business or brand or product then you focus on creating and publishing content which helps create awareness amongst your ideal user persona on the channel they're most likely to be found.
Generating Revenue
The most common requirements received from business, mostly new looking to grow. If you want to find your ideal paid customers then you focus on reaching your ideal user persona with your content and offers on the channel they're most likely to consider buying something from.
Customer Support
From showering love to making a rant, social media helps users express their opinion about your brand or business. So if you want to connect with them for customer support then reach them on the platform they most likely use for getting attention to their issues.
Social Media Marketing That Works
Based on the clients for whom we've handled social media for the 3 objectives listed above, we have compiled channel specific strategy and tactics which work. These are based on practical applications and results which have helped us draw our own insights for each channel.
The key to understanding how to crack a particular social media channel is to understand their focus and adapting tactics for the same. It will be better explained through individual use cases.
X(formerly Twitter)
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Started as an innovative short form communication platform where the challenge was to be as expressive as possible in 140 characters. Twitter, as it was known back then, and posts on Twitter (tweets) provided a unique platform for users to follow each other and tweet. From celebrities to common people, everyone had Twitter accounts and the personal feel back then was enough to turn it into something we know today as X.
From becoming a major channel for political campaigns across the globe with opposite parties trying to get their "#hashtags" trending with 1500 posts per minute to being used by prominent brands for their customer support and ensure the brand image is not hampered due to outbursts from dissatisfied customers, X has established it's superiority by being the channel where Elon Musk went from being an active influencer to buying it and rebranding it.
Channel Focus: In recent years X has been focused on getting their communities up and running apart from the individual creator benefits have ensured that only those who are an active part of the community providing genuine insights actually grow in general apart from. Apart from having premium membership, the channel is currently focused on their in-house LLM which didn't shy away from dissing it's owner Musk himself in May 2025.
Basic Strategy For Going Viral On X
For a new profile trying to grow on X, focus on engagement and not just on your posts but also you engaging with others. Likes, reposts and shares govern the basic engagement metrics for X. Irrespective of what you post, if you are able to get multiple likes, reposts, replies and shares then you are bound to make a splash on the algorithm using the algorithm's prescribed way of going viral.
Creating awareness on X (formerly Twitter)
For businesses who want to create an awareness on X or Twitter as known formerly then we suggest you go the Elon Musk route (not try to buy it obviously).
You let your founders do the talking and communicating. As personal profiles they'll have a much better chance of connecting with your first users and even potential investors. Founders these days use X to connect with others and seek support for launch on Product Hunt(covered later) to make their launch a success. Founders will also get more views on communities as compared to your brand's account.
Generating Revenue On X (formerly Twitter)
Apart from the creator program for earning if you want to generate revenue from X then you either go the organic route or the inorganic. Organically reaching your ideal user persona takes some research and even when you do reach them, communicating your brand/product's value proposition to them is not easy. While communities and individual interactions remain key to reaching your users organically. But if you don't have the right messaging then they may never amount to a conversion.
Inorganically paid ads on X work for many brands and businesses where you run targeted campaigns for the users you know are most likely to convert. However with the introduction of paid tiers of X membership where premium users don't get to see much ads might be a deterrent in getting your content across your potential customers
Connecting With Customers On X (formerly Twitter)
Right from its tweet days, X has been the go-to channel for people to post a rant or make a noticeable complaint about a product or service they were dissatisfied with. LinkedIn taking too long to verify your profile? Post about it tagging their team and see them spring to action on priority on a work which was stuck for 5 days.
In a funny incident in February 2025, a heartbroken bike lover tagged the owner of the bike company complaining about his bike being in workshop for over a month. The customer support team of the company immediately spring to action replying to the post within 5 minutes despite not being tagged in the same asking the user to connect on DM for quick resolution. And true to their word within 36 hours of the post the bike was handed over brand new.
Almost all major companies have their customer support active on X making sure nothing goes astray especially the rants.
Brands with presence across multiple locations go for this kind of customer support where they have their own Online Reputation Management team at work as well apart from customer support executives.
Facebook (Meta)
Started in the dorms of one of the most prominent ivy league colleges, Facebook started as a network to connect and keep in touch with your friends - with people even able to find their childhood friends from different locations. Some even found love on the platform well after the platform had removed its “poke a friend” feature. Having started as a competitor to Orkut, Facebook has evolved over the years going from being a simple social networking site to giving serious competition to Google through the Meta network of Ads, FB Shops and what not. After the founding of Meta, FB along with its sister products of WhatsApp and Instagram have set out to become the ultimate channel for businesses to reach out to customers in real-time creating a meta universe of different social media platforms. Meta’s recent focus on LLMs and AI has also put them in the same league as OpenAI’s ChatGPT where Meta’s models are being widely used now by people to self host their AI solutions.
Channel Focus: Facebook has since long made a shift to focus on communities via Facebook Groups which have been functional since the pandemic times with people using FB groups to seek out help and get leads. However in FB’s attempt to compete with Google, its focus on long form videos and short form videos(competing with yt shorts) are also some of the focus areas where FB has achieved successful monetisation of long form videos along the lines of what YT does for creators showing ads within the video. Even if you watch reels(from instagram also visible on FB) or short videos created on FB, you will be shown an advertised or promoted clip in every 3-4 videos that you scroll.
Basic Strategy For Going Viral On Facebook (Meta)
The basics of any social media platform remain the same where you have to adhere to appease the metrics which are of essence for conversion and engagement in the respective platform. What it means is that a post on FB which has decent number of likes, comments, shares is considered a good post by algorithm to show to others and spread the word around. Similarly when Facebook started Groups, people were incentivised for being active participants in various groups where they could show off their rep within the group and be recognised as an essential contributor to the community.
Facebook pages have good potential for brands and businesses to communicate with their followers and interact with them but just posting from the page and expecting people to magically discover you then you couldn’t have been more wrong in your life. Its been observed that irrespective of the number of followers you have on a page or a profile, your content will be served to only about 20% of your followers in the first go and based on the reception and response it is then shown to a bigger set of audience which also includes people who do not follow your page. Business owners often come running to us claiming they are not able to reach their followers properly. How would they be able to reach their target audience? While we make sure to explain exactly what goes behind the scenes and how the reach for posts are calculated by the platform, the pertinent question around how this reach suppression actually affects the growth of a page is something we feel will be better illustrated through a live example from 2 different clients targeting the same user groups and how their page stats mattered.
The Curious Case of Organic Traction For Inorganic Success On Facebook
Back in 2021, just after the pandemic our team was working with a few clients, 2 of whom had the same target audience. A sports-tech startup focused on democratising children and young adults’ fitness and health through fun fitness classes online and offline and an EdTech focused on letting children and young adults learn and get qualified guidance in the extra curricular activity of their choice. While both businesses targeted the same set of audience, the Facebook page of the EdTech had about 5-6 profiles sharing the content of the page on different groups and got traction which was often in the range of 3000-5000 average impressions. At the same time the sports tech business FB page was doing normal posts and had the 20% reach only at any time and no sharing or even internal team engagement on the posts. Both businesses ran ads targeting the same users/target audience. The results were so drastic that we had to rehydrate ourselves before we could do anything else.
The EdTech ads running on the same target audience gave them lead conversions at about $0.33 per lead while the sports tech had to pay $3.5 per lead all other parameters kept constant. So it goes to show how organic reach can help you acquire users at lesser cost as compared to when running ads from pages which do not have any reach.
Creating an awareness on Facebook(Meta)
As seen in the case above, going for different groups to create awareness about your product or business works not only to help you gain more users but also for you to spend lower than your peers when going for paid ads on the Meta ad network. But Facebook remains a platform which wants you to do more than socialise, with its FB Shops and marketplace, Meta has managed to ensure Facebook competes across segments and enables businesses to get going.
Generating Revenue On Facebook(Meta)
Apart from the payouts from ads featured on your videos, and selling through shops and marketplaces, reaching your ideal paid customers is comparatively easier on Facebook than any other platform given its inclination towards enabling small business owners. Running ads would work but you have to decide how much you want to pay and accordingly also make efforts for the same.
Connecting With Customers On Facebook(Meta)
Brands and businesses often have functional FB pages which don’t just post updates but even spring to action from time to time. Only its not as easy as on X to get businesses’ attention. Disgruntled users posting on the wall(yes its a concept of FB from earlier days) where their team replies and discusses the next steps towards resolution of your complaints. However posting on your own profile and tagging a company page and expecting them to respond doesn’t work unless you are an influencer with a million followers
Product Hunt
A goldmine for Businesses where you launch your product and find users who consider Product Hunt as a trusted platform to discover and use tech products. With Product Hunt issuing badges for top trending products of the day, week, month, year, its always a competition to get the badge featured on your business website as well. While Product Hunt itself has evolved over the years to become a more forum oriented platform where users can interact with each other, apart from making, hunting and upvoting on products. Product Hunt as a platform has actually given a lot of tech founders to quickly launch their micro SaaS products into the market finding their first users or paid users.
Channel Focus: Product Hunt is currently replicating the Reddit model of forums and discussions with upvotes and downvotes on posts as well. The platform has some really stringent rules about launching and a small miss may be the only thing keeping you from becoming product of the day to not featuring you on product list at all. Back in 2024 May, a certain AI startup was about to launch their all-in-one Chatbot which had multiple models like ChatGPT, Claude, Mistral etc. in a single window user interface. The business decided to go for a Hunter who could get the startup viral. While the preparation took 2 months for the founders of the startup to use X and LinkedIN to grow their network whom they could tap in to for upvotes on launch day. The Hunter first scheduled the launch on 27th July first and set everything up but then changed the launch date to 3rd July and while the setup was done on 1st July on Product Hunt, the reschedule happened on 2nd. On 3rd July while the product launched spectacularly despite having nobodys as makers, however they did not get featured in top10 despite having 200+upvotes and the top 5 product having 150 upvotes all in the first 4 hours. Goes to show how despite doing everything right choosing a Hunter who cannot hunt properly or get in touch with the Product Hunt team to sort out your feature problem, then you are doomed.
Basic Strategy For Going Viral On Product Hunt
Another Founder-led platform but employees using product hunt and gaining traction is not unheard of as well. Be an active member on the platform participate in discussions, upvote on products, share your reviews, make and hunt products. Product Hunt considers profile engagement seriously so much so that if your profile is less than 48 hours old and upvoting on a new product launch then you should expect those upvotes to disappear soon since Product Hunt considers those profiles as bots. The AI startup which launched on 3rd July as mentioned earlier opened with 200+ upvotes within first 4 hours, however the product now has less than 150 upvotes which goes to prove how important it is to have a hunter who knows everything and doesn’t get bot profiles to upvote your product on launch.
Creating an awareness on Product Hunt
Founders use the platform to not just grow their network for upvotes but also to connect with others and create awareness about what they are working on. Hunters and Makers alike use the forums to keep the conversations going earning karma for their contributions with the platform having individual badges based on karma as well.
Generating Revenue On Product Hunt
It's a platform where people come to find users who would use and pay for their products so it's all about being trending enough to go viral worldwide and get your first users or paid users. Product Hunt as a platform even offers a paid tier for the launch to get you a boost while launching.
Connecting With Customers Product Hunt
Founders and makers use the platform to study what works, what users want, find their first users to connect with and build an organic channel for sales. While companies don’t currently use Product Hunt like they do X or FB for connecting with users. Its mostly a personal connection that the founders and team of a product choose to create with their potential users while earning karma points.