What does digital marketing actually mean? (spoiler: not just posting on Instagram)

"Oh, you work in digital marketing? So basically you post on Instagram?" I have been getting that question for eight years. Almost always kindly, and almost always with the same misconception underneath. Before starting this series of articles, I wanted to set the record straight once and for all: digital marketing is not "posting on social media". It is a whole profession, with dozens of very different hats.

Digital marketing isn't just “posting on social media”

The word "digital" makes everyone think of social media first, because that is the most visible part. It is a bit like judging a chef's entire job from the single photo they post of a finished plate: you see the result, never the preparation. In reality, social media is only one channel among many others.

Digital marketing is the full set of ways to make a brand, a product or a person known on the internet — and it covers jobs that are very different from one another.

The main families of digital marketing

Here are the big families the term covers, without needless jargon: SEO, to be found on Google without paying a cent for ads; GEO, the 2026 version of SEO, to appear in the answers of ChatGPT, Perplexity or AI search engines; organic social media, to build an audience without paying; online advertising, to pay and be seen by the right people; content marketing, to create useful content that attracts and retains; email and newsletters, to keep the connection alive far from the algorithms; influence and partnerships, to work with creators or be one; and data, to understand what really works, with the numbers to prove it. One person rarely does all of that at once: most professionals specialise in two or three of these building blocks.

My path: agency, luxury hotel, hotel group

I did not learn all of this in a single job, and that is probably why I ended up connecting the dots. Two years in a media agency in Montreal put me in front of the numbers: media buying, performance dashboards, budgets to justify. Three years in communications for a Parisian palace hotel taught me image standards and press relations. Today, as communications and marketing project manager for a hotel group, I run campaigns that combine all of it at once.

Seeing both sides of the table

And alongside that, for the past three years, I have also been on the other side: a content creator as @solennstories, with my own brand partnerships and UGC productions. Which means I have seen digital marketing from both sides of the table: the person briefing the campaign, and the person filming it in front of her own camera. That double view genuinely changes the way I approach every topic — and it is exactly what I will be sharing in the next articles.

Three misconceptions to drop

“You have to be a technical genius”

First misconception to drop: "you have to be a technical genius". Not true. You have to be curious and methodical. The technical side can be learned, especially now that tools exist to do most of the heavy lifting for you.

“The goal is to go viral”

Second misconception: "the goal is to go viral". No. Virality is a possible consequence, never a reliable objective. The real goal is to be seen by the right people at the right moment — sometimes by exactly 200 people, if they are the right 200.

“SEO is dead because of AI”

Third misconception: "SEO is dead because of AI". The opposite is true: it is evolving. Traditional SEO now comes with a new reflex, GEO, so you also exist inside the answers of generative AI. We will come back to that in detail in a few weeks.

A digital presence is no longer optional

Whether you are self-employed, an employee, a content creator or simply curious, a digital presence is no longer optional. It is not a matter of fashion: that is where your clients, your recruiters and your audience are — and the competition has already started. The good news is that this job does not require mastering everything at once. It requires understanding the basics, one at a time, and then choosing where to focus your energy.

What this series will bring you

That is exactly the point of this series: giving you those basics, one per week, with no fluff. Coming up in the next few weeks: how to choose the right social platforms when you are starting out, the basics of creating content that works, the AI tools I genuinely use day to day, how to get noticed by a brand as a creator, UGC explained simply, the most common beginner mistakes, how to build an audience over time, online advertising on a small budget, and SEO/GEO without the jargon.

If you want to be sure not to miss an article, the monthly newsletter covers the essentials — no spam, one email a month.

Keep reading

→ SEO for beginners: how you actually get found on Google — search optimisation explained without jargon.

→ Why I'm launching the "The Craft" pillar on SolennStories — what I document on this blog.

→ SEO, my method and services — the overview page on search optimisation.

→ GEO and AI visibility, my services — the overview page on AI visibility.