How to select the best social media platform for your business?
- By Asifa
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Table of Contents
In today’s world having a website is not enough. Social media presence has become the essence of any online business.
Business owners are often left feeling overwhelmed trying to make their presence felt on all the current social media platforms.
However, trying to establish your business on all the platforms often thins out your presence and you miss the opportunity of connecting with your ideal audience.
Instead of trying to establish your presence on all social media, it’s important to follow a strategy that helps you stay connected with your ideal customers. In today’s saturated market, brands constantly seek customers’ attention with various offers and deals.
The only way to stand out from the crowd is to make a social connection with your customer. People buy from people. Social media helps in establishing that connection with your audience.
In order to establish a connection with your audience, it is important to know your ideal customer, which social media do they spend their maximum time or their social media preference.
Try to establish your presence more on the preferred social media of your targeted customer.
The best solution would be to have an account on all the social media in order to protect your brand name from being used by others.
After securing your brand name on all the social media platforms, you can choose one or two platforms and go-out on them.
The best social media for your business depend on the type of content and your targeted audience.
Below are the pros and cons of the most popular social media platforms!
With more than 2.85 billion active monthly users, Facebook is the most popular social media platform. 66% of its users log in at least once a day.
With such a huge traffic, it is a no brainer that you won’t want to give this social media platform a miss.
Even if you choose to spend more time on other platform, you should still have a complete Facebook profile for your business.
With Facebook owning Instagram and Whatsapp, a post on Instagram can be posted to Facebook simultaneously makes it easier to maintain.
Your facebook business profile can have a whatsapp button integrated which allows potential customers to contact you directly through whatsapp.
The shop functionality available to business accounts on Facebook allows you to have your online shop integrated in Facebook account itself.
The “About” section give details about your working hours and contact information making it ideal for any online business.
The reviews from customers also make it a ideal platform to make an informed purchase, thus builds trust.
Facebook paid ads is a great way to get in front of customers or increase your following.
It allows you to target specific demographics, age, gender as well as the type for eg, young moms, elderly parents, working couple etc. In other words it can help you target your ideal audience.
Facebook Messenger is another feature which lets you communicate directly or in group with your customers.
However, the constantly changing algorithm and strict policy makes it difficult to reach new potential customers organically, and the only way is through paid ads.
Instagram is another popular social media platform with 1.2 billion active users, with 62% daily logging.
This platform is more suitable if you are targeting younger audience. Half of its users are users in the age group of 34 or younger.
Almost all business nowadays have an Instagram account which people follow to find new products or services.
The use of correct hashtags and constant posting of new and value based content helps you to reach your ideal customer.
Influencers are big thing on Instagram, if know any influencer in your niche, you can ask them to promote your product or services for some monetary gains. This helps you get in front of your ideal customer quickly.
Another feature of Instagram is Stories, which allows you to share behind the scenes with your followers to build trust.
Stories disappear in 24 hours, you can save important stories in your highlight so that it is available even after your stories expire.
Instagram reels is another feature that allows you to tell your brand story in a creative way by the use of videos. Similar to reels is IGTV which is also a video-based feature.
Instagram is more suitable for business who appeal to young and “hip” crowd. 14% of U.S. adults above 45 years have never of Instagram and just 14% of its users are above 45.
Pinterest has 478 million active monthly users. In addition to being a social media, it is also functioning as a search engine, which makes your content evergreen, unlike Instagram where your reach is totally dependent on your consistency in posting new posts.
This platform was predominately used by females, however, it is changing in recent times.
Moreover, the user demographics is also getting younger, 35% are millennials while 40% fall into the Gen Z group.
If your target users fall in this demographic then it is highly advisable to create your presence on this platform as 77% users search for new products and looks for inspiration and ideas here.
In the visually appealing world of social media, twitter prefers to differ. Known for short content, this platform is most preferred by the affluent class.
If you have a way with words and deliver your brand message in interesting and concise words, then you can consider this platform.
One of the most popular example is Elon Musk who is very active on Twitter.
Twitter has 340 million users and 186 million active users. However, the active users are too active. We have often come across incidences where a single tweet gathered much momentum.
A tweet by a politician, social activist, film personality, etc, is common for users to vent about their experience on this platform.
If your business is in the B2B space then LinkedIn might be a good option to establish a business connection.
Mostly used by professionals to share their experience or for employment, there is not much competition on this platform.
With significantly less competition and has 310 million active monthly users, it is easier to establish your brand on this platform.
YouTube
YouTube is the second-most visited site and the world’s second-largest search engine after Google. With 2 billion active monthly users, YouTube allows you to reach a broad audience. It is necessary to constantly create high-quality videos to establish your brand on this platform, which requires financial and time commitments.
TikTok
A new kid on the block which is gaining more popularity among the younger audience is the video app TikTok.
TikTok can be helpful in growing your audience, increasing engagement and driving traffic to your website provided you keep up with the trend of creating hip and creative videos which keep your audience entertained.
With 80 million active users, it is one of your option if you are targeting a younger audience.
Takeaways
You would be able to choose one or two social media platform from the information above. Irrespective of your chosen social media platform, consistency is the key.
High value consistent contents/post delivering your brand message leads to social media success. It takes time and efforts to build a following of raving fans who in turn results in paying customers.
No matter which platform you choose social media is your next marketing partner for business!
