Business owners today understand that they need social media for marketing. To remain visible and relevant, you need to ensure that you establish a solid online presence. Social media platforms help business owners increase exposure and reach their target customers.
Any business that’s not using social media to the fullest is missing out on a lot of customers. Even though getting started on a new social media platform might be hard, over time, you get the hang of it.
Many business owners assume that having a business page on Facebook alone is enough. However, there are many more customers you can find on other social media platforms. Besides, each social platform functions uniquely and helps you achieve a specific goal.
By having business pages on all platforms relevant to your business, you ensure you maximize on the potential of these marketing tools.
This article will guide you through choosing the social media platforms that fulfill the needs of your business.
Start by Defining Your Goals
In the business world, the very first thing to do before making a choice about anything is to define your goals. Even though social media is a gold mine, you won’t strike gold if you don’t know where to look.
Having specific goals not only saves you time and effort during execution, but it also ensures that you achieve results in record time. This way, you can identify the social platforms that suit your business needs and the content to create for each platform.
Here is what you should focus on as you define your goals;
- Choosing social platforms that make it easy for customers to reach you. This way, you can improve your customer service offerings because you’ll be able to respond to concerns, questions, and complaints promptly. This also allows you to identify new leads much quicker, so you can target them with timely and relevant content.
- Targeting prospects who are receptive to your content and penetrating new demographics with the right content.
- Increasing brand exposure and brand awareness to make your business more accessible by new people.
- Learning about the shopping habits of your customers and using this information to boost your sales.
Determine what Channels your Audience is already using
Now that you’ve set your goals, the next step is to find out where the majority of your customers spend most of their time. You need to target customers on a platform they’re already using.
Choosing a platform where your audience doesn’t operate beats the whole purpose of using it as a marketing tool. Take time to do an in-depth analysis to identify the platforms that your customers prefer. Seek your customers out on the networks they’re already active on.
The most straightforward way to find out where most of your customers are is by conducting a customer survey. You need a questionnaire that asks all the right questions for this;
- Which social media sites do they frequent
- Where do they go when they want clarification about something
- Which influencers do they follow
Another way of getting this information is by paying attention to the traffic on different social media sites. A platform like Facebook will actually estimate your audience size and help you target your ideal customers. All you have to do is tell them who your ideal customer is.
Examine the Type of Content you typically create
Each social media platform is unique, so you can’t approach them with a one-fits-all paradigm. Take your time to examine the kind of content you create and find out if it will work for your social media pages.
You want to make sure that the content you create for each social media platform aligns with your brand message.
Some of the content types you can explore include;
- Videos
- Blog posts
- E-books
- Podcasts
- Webinars and live-streams
- Testimonials
- User-generated content
- Whitepaper
- Photographs
Pair Your Goals, Audience, and Content with the Right Platform
Once you outline your goals, find out where to find your audience, and establish the kind of content that works on specific platforms, you can now identifying the social media platforms that are relevant for your business.
Here is a rundown of the most relevant social media platforms and what kinds of users you’ll find on each;
Facebook is, by far, the most used social media platform. The platform gets over 2.4 billion active users every month. Even though you won’t be targeting all Facebook users, the more the overall number of users, the more prospects you’re likely to target.
This is an excellent platform for advertising and lead generation because you can easily customize your content to target specific audiences.
The platform also helps you humanize your brand and create lasting relationships between customers and your business. Leads will easily turn into loyal followers if you let them in on the human side of your business.
If your business is about immediacy, Twitter is your go-to platform because you can easily reach your audience with announcements, important messages, breaking news, and other in-the-moment information.
The majority of Twitter users are below 50 years, and the content that works best here is information that’s easy to digest.
As a B2B business owner, this should be your social media platform of choice. The main goal of LinkedIn is lead generation, and the content that works best here is editorials that position you as a leader in your industry. LinkedIn helps business owners build trust, present themselves as an authoritative brand, as well as facilitate engagement through conversations.
For this platform, your focus should be on publishing high-quality images. If you want to drive up your sales, this is the platform for you because images help customers plan for purchases. As you create content, bear in mind that more women use Pinterest as compared to men.
It’s a good choice if you prefer to count on the good relationships with you and the customer. You can show your product, stories about company life or manufacture, engage customers to talk with you with questionnaires and giveaways. Also, it’s the perfect platform for partnerships with influencers.
TikTok
This platform presents everything youth live today. Videos and music are the souls of this social network. Being a business itself, TikTok encourages businesses no matter how big or small they are to create accounts and show the people behind the brand. Maybe it’s not the best place to sell something, but it can be good for your reputation and popularity.
Conclusion
Social media is a valuable marketing tool for businesses today. If you want to remain relevant, make sure that you establish an online presence on social platforms that are relevant for your business. Social media allows you to reach customers regardless of their geographic location. All you need to do is identify the social platforms that’ll cater to your business needs.
About the author
Bronwyn Leigh is a writer and content editor at My Custom Essay. Her big aim is an educated society, which she reaching by writing articles for informative websites. She thinks it works, because you’ve read one just now.
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