Every business should be using at least one social media platform.
Unless, of course, you want to fade into the background and not gain any exposure.
In 2020, there were 3.6 billion social media users! And that is expected to increase to an estimated 4.41 billion users by 2025.
Social media is clearly an excellent tool for connecting with current customers. It can also help with building brand awareness, finding new leads, generating more website traffic, gaining insight into the shopping habits of your best customers, and even improving your customer service.
Around 92 per cent of marketers say that social media has helped them increase exposure.
But how do you pick the right platforms for your business?
The trick is confirming the goals you want to achieve through social media and then working out what platforms your target audience uses and choosing one that matches the type of content you want to create.
Skip Ahead!
- Why Social Media Will Benefit Your Business
- What Are Your Social Media Goals?
- What Content Are You Going to Post?
- Where Is Your Target Audience?
- YouTube
- Conclusion
Why Social Media Will Benefit Your Business
Social media platforms have been around for a while and offer many benefits for small and big businesses.
Benefits such as demonstrating social proof with reviews to a stronger brand image.
One of the best advantages is increasing your reach.
Most of the world uses at least one social media channel and by being a part of a network you have access to a wider audience to promote your products or services.
This is important because more people today are using social media platforms to make purchasing decisions.
What they see online is influencing if they purchase from a business.
And not only are people purchasing from businesses on social media, but they’re spending 20%-40% more money on businesses that are using social media too.
What Are Your Social Media Goals?
Before you decide which social media platforms to use, you need to think about what your marketing goals are.
It’s important to have specific goals before you continue. This is to stop you from getting overwhelmed.
Your goals will help make the decisions easier and help you decide what content to create.
Ask yourself what will you be using social media for?
Are you trying to sell your products or do you want a way to stay connected with your audience?
Once you have answers to questions like these, it will be easier to move forward.
Think About the Types of Content You Want to Post
The types of content you want to post will affect which platform or platforms you should use.
Different content performs better depending on which channels you post on, so don’t skip over this consideration.
For example, Instagram is all about photos and images. If your brand is eager to show off a lot of your work, this might be a great choice for you. If your business involves giving your audience quick advice in text form, using Twitter might be better.
The type of content you create will depend on a number of things, including your industry, your brand, and your target audience.
Examples of Content Types:
- Blog Posts
- Podcasts
- Testimonials
- User-Generated Content
- Webinars and Live Streams
- Ebooks
- White Papers
- Videos
- Photographs
Focus on Channels Your Target Audience Are Using
The entire point of social media marketing is to connect you with your target audience.
We recommend you choose a platform where your audience operates. No matter how great your content is, if there isn’t an audience for it, it won’t be seen.
Knowing who your target audience is shouldn’t be hard. If you have customers already, you can use them as a guide.
Send them a survey if you don’t know much about them.
If you’re a new business, you can do some simple research. Think about who a potential customer of yours might be.
Are they male or female, young or old, etc.?
Then ask yourself what social media platforms are those people on.
Social Media Platforms
The following are the top 5 social media platforms we recommend.
Facebook is the granddaddy of them all!
At the minimum, we recommend every business have a Facebook page.
With over 2 billion monthly active users, Facebook is great for lead generation allowing you to reach a large number of people.
It’s a great platform for building relationships and posting different types of content. Competition for user attention can be high though, so make sure you post content that shows a different side of your business.
Once you have an audience, you can interact with them by creating private groups, which are great for building a community with your fans.
Another great thing about Facebook is its advertising platform.
Facebook’s advertising platform is by far the most developed of all of the social media channels and can be highly customised to target very specific audiences.
On Facebook, you can target by age, gender, employment, interests, purchasing behaviours, relationship status, and more.
This gives you the power to put your business and content in front of the right people.
It remains obvious that Facebook will remain one of the most popular social media platforms for a while.
Instagram is probably our favourite social media platform.
Compared to the other channels, it’s fairly new and popular with users under the age of 25 making up a large portion of the 1 billion daily users.
If your business or brand is aimed at a younger audience, you need to be on Instagram!
It’s owned by Facebook and has access to the same extensive user base and advertising platform.
Users mostly post photos and short videos with small amounts of text. This works to your advantage as a business since people remember 80% of what they see as opposed to what they read or hear.
Businesses can share stories that act as a way to show potential customers what you do instead of telling them.
Instagram is also great for growing your audience organically without the use of paid advertisements.
If people find your content useful, they will usually follow your page, thus exposing them to more of your content in the future.
Twitter is one of the older social media platforms with 336 million monthly active users.
You can post photos and videos along with the character-limited text.
Twitter is most known for its feed of real-time updates, also known as ‘live-tweeting’.
Types of content that work best on Twitter are easily digestible textual content, such as how-to articles and quotations. Images perform better than videos, but text-based content is still superior.
As a business, you can use Twitter to engage with new potential customers through its use of hashtags. You can find people tweeting about something your business offers and then tweet them with a discount or information about your services.
Twitter feels a lot more personal than other social media platforms and makes it easy to reach out to your customers with any news or information.
LinkedIn is a great B2B social media platform that can help your business generate leads.
LinkedIn has over 300 million monthly active users, most of which are in the working world or a part of it, and is a great platform to connect with other businesses and develop authority within your industry.
It’s mostly used as a networking tool exclusively for professionals and has changed the way people seek, find, and get hired for jobs.
YouTube
YouTube is a video platform service with over 2 billion monthly users. It allows users to watch videos from people and upload their own content.
It’s the second-largest search engine in the world after Google!
Most businesses feel YouTube isn’t the right social media channel for them. It’s important, however, to remember that YouTube isn’t all about entertainment.
Product reviews, instructional videos, and similar kinds of content do exceptionally well on YouTube, especially when you’re educating your target market.
Some of your audience will prefer watching videos to reading and once you create a video you can promote it across your other channels.
Conclusion
So which social media platforms should you use?
That can be a tricky question because there’s not a single answer.
The best social media platforms to use will vary depending on the type of business and the products/services provided, target audience, and platform versatility.
It also depends on you and how much time you have for your social media marketing strategy. It’s much better to use one platform and put in 100% effort instead of using multiple platforms and only put in 50% of the effort with each channel.
We’ve listed our top 5 social media sites that we recommend.
These should cover a wide range of businesses.
Using social media correctly can help your business can grow like never before!
Are you ready to get more customers through social media platforms?
At hellooodesign, we have a team of social media specialists who know how to get the most from your social media.
We stay up-to-date on the latest trends and best practices when it comes to social media marketing, and we strive every day to get you the results that you want to see.
Contact us to schedule a time to discuss how our social media management service can help you!
What social media platforms are you using?
