Social Media Channels for Your Business: A Marketer's Guide.
With such a large percentage of the public using social media – Pew Research Center reports 70% – businesses can't afford not to interact with customers via channels like Facebook, Twitter and other social platforms. But while you should be marketing via social media, you shouldn't necessarily be on every channel. It's important for you to invest in the platforms where you're more likely to reach and engage with your audience, but with so many social media channels to choose from, it’s hard to decide which is best for you and your business.
To choose the best social media channels for you to interact with your customers, take some time to familiarize yourself with each network, how it runs and what demographics use that platform. You can start by answering these two questions before going on to the basics below that you need to know about today's most popular social media platforms.
Cater To Your Audience The Way They Prefer
1. Who Is Your Audience? People are using social media to search for whatever they need, while they socialize. Each social media channel caters to its unique demographic. Understanding the demographics of your audience could bring you tons of warm leads for your business that are more likely to convert to customers. Things to consider: “What kind of business do you have?” “What age range is your product or service for?”- New Borns, Teens, Seniors. “Is your product or service for males or females?” Answering these questions can help you determine the social media strategy that is best for your business.
2. How Do You Want To Communicate With Your Audience? There are 3 basic methods to communicate on social media: text only, photos only, a combination of text and photos as well as with video. However, the most effective medium is videos, with text & photo composites taking a close 2nd. Instagram now offers a way to use all these methods in one single post, read on to find out how.
FACEBOOK
The Biggest Social Network On The Web
This is the biggest social network on the web, both in terms of name recognition and total number of users. With nearly 2 billion active users, Facebook is a great starting point for your business, regardless of your industry as a medium for connecting people from all over the world with your business. Users can share text, photos, pre-recorded and live videos and links. Pros – Facebook offers exposure for your brand and drive engagement up. You can target and advertise to your specific audience(s) to increase your chances of sales. Everyone knows when you are on Facebook. You can even narrow your target market to very specific demographics with Facebook ads. Cons – With so many people using Facebook, competition is very high for eyeballs to fall on your posts and ads. Facebook has become highly saturated with brands and advertisers.
TWITTER
Twitter Is a Quick Way to Connect With Your Audience
With Twitter, you can share short text updates (of 140 characters or fewer), along with videos, images, links, polls and more. You can also easily interact with other users by mentioning their usernames in your posts, so Twitter is a great way to quickly connect with people all around the world.
Users can “tweet” messages, links, polls along with your photos or 30 second videos. It’s the perfect medium for promoting BIG events, news and special offers. And it’s one of the only platforms where you have easy access to public figures. Pros – With Twitter, you receive instant news. Has the ability for you to send and receive quick responses from customers. Retweeting and sharing other user’s content is simple, especially when using #Hashtags which help boost posts’ potential to go viral. Cons – Twitter is very fast paced. Every second, on average, around 6,000 tweets are tweeted, which corresponds to over 350,000 tweets sent per minute, 500 million tweets per day and around 200 billion tweets per year. It’s a high volume of content at high speed which means that users have to pay more attention to this platform. This sometimes makes it difficult to connect with relevant people and content. The 140 character limit can be a bit challenging, more so for some.
PINTEREST
Pinterest Is a Digital Bulletin Board
Pinterest is a social media channel consisting of digital bulletin boards where you can save and display photos and video in the form of pins. It’s like on online collage with photos and videos. Users can create and organize their boards based on categories. Women primarily use Pinterest. Women account for about 80% of the users.Pros – Pinterest is perfect for those whose audience is mostly women. It’s great for finding ideas and selling products. You can link back to your content by using keyword and hashtags to make your photos searchable. Users tend to spend more money, more often than the other top 5 social media channels.Cons – You need highly visual and unique content to make an impact. You can message other users, but you can’t engage or interact with them. Also, pins from other websites will link back to the source image. So it’s best to pin your own images.
INSTAGRAM
Instagram Is a Facebook Owned Visual Social Media Platform
Like Pinterest, Instagram is a visual social media platform based entirely on photos and 60 second videos. The now Facebook-owned network has more than 700 million active users, many of whom post around specific subjects or topics, making it easy to find your target market. Instagram is distinguished by its unique filters and photo- and video-editing options. It's important to note that this platform is almost entirely mobile (tablets, phones and now as an app for Windows 10): You can only view and browse Instagram posts on the desktop version. With its unique filters and photo and video editing options, you can create visual content that can help you grow a massive following. Pros – Instagram is easy to scroll since all the posts are comprised of photos and videos and 90% of the users are under the age of 35. Instagram is great for personal branding. It’s easy to network by liking and commenting on others photos. Instagram is almost entirely mobile. Cons – The biggest setback for marketing on Instagram is you cannot post links. However, you can post your link in your profile, although you were limited to just one link until Linktr.ee (we’ll discuss this an upcoming blog) turned up. There is less one on one interaction than other social media channels. Instagram is almost entirely mobile.
YOU TUBE
YouTube Is a Video-Sharing Platform with over 1 billion Users
It’s a video-sharing platform with over a billion users, where people can view, upload, rate, share and comment on content. Now owned by Google, the site is a huge hub for news and entertainment. Created over a decade ago, YouTube has gone through numerous changes. For instance, users can now make money from Google AdSense, with the revenue dependent on the number of views on a video. Many businesses whose thrusts are creative, visual or educational have active YoutTube channels. However, your business doesn't need a channel to market on the platform. There's a subculture of vloggers called YouTubers who publish frequent videos and often maintain large audiences. Often, businesses partner with YouTubers for product placement, because these users already have a large number of subscribers and actively engaged audiences.
SNAPCHAT
A Time Sensitive Video-Sharing Platform
This is another mobile-only visual social media platform that's known for its disappearing content. The 150 million-plus app users can send videos and photos, available for up to 10 seconds at a time, to one another, or post content to their public Stories, which before its 24 hour life span is up. Because posts are so temporary, there is less pressure to create graphically polished content. However with the use of the many available filters there isn't much that you can’t do to enhance your posts. You can also see how many and which specific users viewed your story. This story feature allow for more intimate enagament, but keep in mind that only users who have added you can view your story content. However, once you have an audience, the story feature allows you to easily create story-driven and interactive content.
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