Social media can seem like a great idea for any kind of business, but how do you choose one platform over another? There are several factors to consider when choosing a social media platform, though most businesses tend to have some common obstacles, such as time or budget constraints.
Here are 8 tips to choose the right social media platform for your business.
1. Evaluate your business nature & goals
What is your business type? Are you a business-to-business (B2B) company or a business-to-consumer (B2C) brand? Do you provide services or products? What is your brand personality?
These are some of the questions you should consider and ponder upon before jumping into your social media marketing strategies. Generally, B2B enterprises have LinkedIn on top of their social media marketing strategies to reach professional clients, whereas for B2C brands, depending on their target audience, Facebook or Instagram is their common go-to platform to engage with layman Internet users.
After evaluating your business nature, you should also define your social media marketing goals. Although typically social media is used to increase brand awareness, it can be used to achieve various specific goals as well.
Some of the goals you can achieve through social media platforms are
i) Brand Awareness
As mentioned, social media is an awesome tool to build and increase a brand’s awareness. Consistently posting valuable posts that appear on people’s feeds could help them to familiarise your brand and stay in their minds. It also makes it more accessible for the public to get more information about your brand and products by just browsing your social page.
ii) Customer services & supports
Do you know that 35% of consumers use social media for customer support? This trend is especially prominent in the younger generation aged 18-34 as 65% of them believe that it is an effective customer service channel.
iii) Strengthen SEO and Website traffic
By linking your social media back to your company website, not only you’re able to drive traffic, but it also indirectly impacts your SEO. Social media is able to help search engines to determine your expertise, authority and trust (EAT) which will then push your ranking higher.
2. Know your target audience
The next step you’ll need to do is to identify your target audience. Be as specific as possible when you do your research.
Some of the questions that could help are
- Who are your typical customers?
- What are their demographics (age, gender, location, etc)?
- What is their level of education and income?
- What are their interests?
Detailed market research on your target audience is an inevitable step to do. By knowing and understanding them, you’ll get to comprehend how to strategize, plan and optimise your social platforms and content to suit their taste.
3. Understand the different platforms and their uses
Every social platform has its uses and group of personalities.
- Facebook: It has the highest number of users with over one-third of Facebook users aged 35-44. Fun, humorous memes are a hit on Facebook. Facebook Ads are an effective way to target your audience if they are Boomers.
- Instagram: It has around a billion monthly users and it’s GenZ’s favourite platform. Instagram high focused on visually aesthetic posts and trendy videos. IG Story Ads can seamlessly show your Ads to your audience.
- LinkedIn: It is a professional social platform and works well for B2B businesses. Thought-leadership posts are very popular on LinkedIn.
4. Align your overall marketing goals
As mentioned, social media could help achieve various kinds of goals. However, they are specific to the kind of platform you use. For example, Twitter and Facebook could better support customer service when compared to Instagram.
Thus, you should align and assign the marketing goals to the platforms. Knowing which platform to prioritise is important too!
5. Find where your target audience is
After gathering your information, find out where your target audience is.
- Where does your target audience normally hang out?
- Which social platforms are they most active at?
- Where do they normally shop at?
When it comes to social media marketing, size doesn’t matter much as long as your target audience is active on that particular platform. For instance, Facebook may have 2 billion users, but it’s no use if your target audience doesn’t use it.
6. Curate your content strategy according to the platforms
For social media’s content strategy, one size does not fit all platforms. Each of them has its own diverse group of users. Therefore, it is crucial to plan and tailor your content strategy according to the platforms. You could research what your target audience is looking for on those particular platforms. For instance, Instagram users are more attracted to aesthetically pleasing visuals and LinkedIn users like to engage with thought-provoking copy-centric posts.
Likewise, social media platforms are also very versatile toward different kinds of content. Be it short or long-form posts, infographics, blog posts, news, photos or videos, you’ll be able to be creative. In fact, live streams have also become a trend on Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok and even LinkedIn.
7. Define your brand voice
Your brand voice, tone and manner are crucial to showcase your brand’s personality and differentiate yourself from the other peers. On social media platforms, you should exercise your brand voice and personality through your visuals, content and copies to attract like-minded users and foster loyal customers.
One way to start defining your brand voice is through the evaluation of the 3Cs; Culture, Conversation and Community. Consider your company culture and think of the meaningful conversation you want to bring into your community, and there you’ll have a list of adjectives that describe your brand voice.
Another key takeaway is to write as you talk on social media. As we all know that social media is a place to relax after work, users don’t want to interpret jargon or formal writings. Instead, they want light-hearted captions.
8. Know your commitments
Social media management and content creation are not as simple as they seem. Unless you have an employee or a team dedicated to it, it’ll be difficult for brand owners to manage it alone, especially when you’re not only handling one social platform.
You have to be realistic about the amount of time and resources you need to manage these social platforms. Since consistency is the key here, social media marketing wouldn’t be effective if you only do it when you have the time. Hence, you’ll need to take into account these various factors when you’re choosing which social platforms to use and how many of them.
Ultimately, if you don’t have the resources to handle and manage your social platforms, you could always seek a creative agency’s help in social media management.
