How To Pick The Right Social Media Platforms For Your Business
Using social media to showcase your business is the best way to grow your customer base.
Love it or hate it, Facebook gets the most traffic of all social media platforms, so it’s a given that this will be your main marketing avenue. However, you’ll need to advertise on two or more platforms to capture as many customers as possible.
Fun Fact: 9 out of 10 brands use more than one social media channel.
Choosing a secondary social media site can be daunting as each platform has its own unique aspects that can work both for and against your business. Excluding Facebook, popular social media sites include Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Twitter, YouTube, WhatsApp, Reddit, Pinterest, TikTok, and Nextdoor. Whew! That’s a lot to choose from; however, only a select few will help you reach your marketing goals.
Follow these wise tips to help you choose the perfect social media platforms for all your marketing needs.
Know Your Audience
This cannot be stressed enough. If you haven’t conducted any market research to learn more about your customer base, you need to do this first.
Each social media platform is frequented by users that fall into certain demographics. Once you know your audience, you have a good chance of predicting which platforms they’re hanging out on.
According to the latest Pew Research Center results, Instagram is second in line after Facebook for receiving the most traffic. However, if your business is geared toward men over 50, this platform is a bad choice for your marketing purposes because only 29% of your target audience visits Instagram. Therefore, you’re more likely to reach customers using LinkedIn or YouTube.
Consider the Road Your Business is On
Is your company business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C)?
B2B companies have the most success marketing on LinkedIn because they can connect with other business professionals and publish articles that touch on their interests. Once you’ve gotten their attention, it’s easier to get a dialogue started.
B2C companies are smart to focus their marketing efforts with Facebook and Instagram as these platforms increase their business’ visibility. These particular social media channels also give them the opportunity to engage with customers by answer questions and publishing informative videos.
Remember, people buy from people, not businesses. Letting others know who you are is the best way to gain their trust, so you can grow a loyal customer base and score more sales.
Define Your Goals
Businesses market on social media platforms for different reasons. Once you identify your purpose for posting, you can better identify which channels will help you achieve your goals.
To begin, start asking yourself relevant questions that lead to concrete answers.
- Do you want to expand your audience and increase the number of email contacts?
- Are you trying to increase brand recognition?
- Do you want your customers to get to know you better, so you can build brand loyalty?
- Are you trying to drive sales with discounts and incentives, or introduce a new product?
- Do you need to increase your business’ website traffic?
Fun Fact: A large following doesn’t equate to a highly engaged audience.
Social media marketing helps businesses with brand awareness, customer engagement, community building, and lead generation. Determining which of these you need to concentrate on the most will help you determine which platforms will deliver the fastest results.
Facebook and Nextdoor are perfect for community building and increasing engagement because they allow you to create closed, or focused, groups, which allow for greater intimacy. People are more likely to ask questions when they know that they are surrounded by people who may have the same concerns. This situation is also convenient for you because you’re most likely answering questions that many others have, which reduces the chance of you repeatedly replying to the same inquiry. However, this is a great opportunity to increase traffic to your website by directing people to its FAQ page.
If you want people to get to know you, but don’t have much time to spend nurturing your social media platform, Instagram is the place you want to be. This platform is ideal for storytelling, so one post a day will attract a captive audience compared to Twitter where you need to post sporadically throughout the day to attract the same attention.
Twitter is perfect for increasing brand awareness. Just create a hashtag for your brand, then attach it to your posts. This technique also opens the lines of communication with customers. Branded hashtags are extremely valuable during live tweets because you can draw attention to new products or services, your latest news and updates, and event photos.
Research Your Competitors
There’s no doubt that your competition is using social media for their marketing purposes. Check out what platforms they’re using and how they’re using them. Take notes on your findings, then ask yourself how you can do what they’re doing, but better.
If you’re interested in blogging, read what your competitors are writing about to come up with your own unique blog topics. Also, look at the hashtags they’re using to get an idea about what words and catch phrases will help drive traffic to your social media posts. You should also pay attention to how often your competitors are posting.
You can learn a lot from your competition and their social media habits. You should continually monitor their posts. If you notice that they’re changing things up, it’s probably time for you to do the same.
To learn more about monitoring your competitors’ social media and acquire the tools to help with this task, check out this informative blog.
Enjoy Unlimited Success Through Social Media Marketing
Marketing on social media platforms can produce unlimited rewards for your business.
However, don’t commit to posting on more than two or three social media channels or you’ll quickly become overwhelmed. Each of your accounts must be nurtured. If you fail to do this, your followers will notice that your posts are stagnating and lose interest. When you’re unable to hold the attention of your audience, your competition will be happy to take up the slack. Don’t let this happen!
When your social media marketing efforts begin to pay off, you’ll find that you have less time to post. At this point, you may want to consider hiring a professional to manage your social media accounts. Should you decide to go this route, be sure to stay in regular contact with this person and monitor their posts to verify that what they’re communicating expresses your brand’s characteristics and values.
If you’re ready to embark on a successful social media marketing endeavor, Higgins Marketing Group can help. Contact us for a pressure-free chat about how we can get you started on the right social media platforms to get your business booming!
Not sure yet? Check out our work and let us know when you’re ready.
