Social media has become one of the most effective marketing tools and it’s important that business owners use social media. However, with the numerous social media channels and their benefits how can a business determine the platform that suits them? Here is what you should consider or ask yourself before signing up for a social media platform for your business:
What is the nature of your business?
Your business is either a business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C) and thus it’s important that you define your business correctly. B2C businesses should utilise Facebook and Instagram as they allow a business to gain visibility, engage and interact with their clients. However, B2B businesses should utilise LinkedIn as the platform helps businesses reach current and potential customers resulting in them building connections.
Know Your Target Audience
As a business you have no free time to be distracted thus as a business owner you should understand who your audience is. Knowing your audience is knowing where they are, what they do, what they spend on and where you can find them.
Go where your customer is
When choosing a social platform, it’s important that you are where your customer is. If you are for example an e-commerce business that sells clothes you may consider using Instagram than LinkedIn unlike a business-to-business which may favour LinkedIn over any other platform. Since you want to reach customers, it’s very important that you identify your customer and their platform of choice and when done master that platform.
Study Your Competitors
Know your competitors! Check which platforms they are on, their social media pages and the content they are producing and how they are creating engagement or how often they post. Once you are certain of what your competitors are doing, join and use their social media platform
Talk to Your Audience
One mistake business make is to join every platform and push content that they think their audience will love. It doesn’t mean if you can create an account on twitter, you should be on Twitter. The social media platform you join should match your organization’s goals. Always ensure that you know your audience thus you create an account where your content will have an impact because your audience is there.
Other things to remember in your determination of the social media platform to use are:
- The key is to maximize reach with minimal effort thus have a social media content strategy
- Never write-off a social media platform as some platforms can be used for various benefits for example you can use Twitter to engage your customers and receive feedback
And here is a brief guide to some popular social media platforms:
Below is a guide to some of the major social media platforms to help you find your audience.
Facebook reports over 2.7 billion users and since it allows people to stay connected with their family and friends it is ideal for building relationships with your existing customers. However, it may not be easy for your content to reach a wider audience organically thus if you are trying to get new customers it may be initially challenging but it does allow you to keep in touch with your existing customers.
Twitter is a great platform to build awareness for your business. Through the use of hashtags, you can follow and join conversations as well as create a hashtag one can identify with your business?
Because Twitter does offer insights into what topics are trending, Twitter is often used by news platforms to find stories.
Pinterest is a visual-based platform, you’ll need strong graphics to engage users and thus it’s not ideal for every business
Youtube
YouTube has over 2.3 billion users and often used as a search engine platform by viewers looking for ways to do certain things. Thus, a business can leverage this platform by creating ‘How To” videos.
People commonly use LinkedIn to search for jobs and to network professionally. As a result, the platform is useful for B2B organizations for lead generation, networking, as well as recruiting employees.
Instagram works really well for visual-based businesses in sectors such as food and beauty among others. This means the platform is useful for generating sales leads because your reach is wider.
TikTok
TikTok is popular for its short-form videos and thus ideal for visual-based businesses in industries such as food, beauty, among others.