How to Determine What Social Media Platform Will Work Best for your Business
One of the most puzzling parts of social media marketing is figuring out which social media networks and platforms will work best for your business. With the limited time you have as a business owner, you want to make sure that you’re not spinning your wheels or putting effort into something that won’t maximize your brand reach or generate leads. So how do you determine which social media platform will work best for your business?
Consider Your Target Market Persona: Think about your business in terms of business-to-consumer (B2C) or business-to-business (B2B). If it’s B2C, maybe your target market is mostly local women? Maybe those women are moms. If you are catering to a business crowd, perhaps your clients are mostly male and junior managers in the tech industry. Think about the core qualities that your clients and customers have in common and decide who your target market is. From there, you can decide what social network would be best to use your time. If your business is dedicated towards women, you may be better served utilizing women-dominated Pinterest. However, if you’re after a more corporate market who spends a lot of time looking for their next lead or trying to find decision makers in future potential client companies, you may be better off serving them content on LinkedIn. You can even ask your current customers what social media networks they are currently using the most and use that as a baseline.
Consider How Your Target Market Likes to Learn: If you’re a bookstore, you’ll probably find that your customers prefer to read rather than watch a video. You can probably safely assume that YouTube wouldn’t be the best place for you, but a blog may be a great option. Similarly, if you’re a real estate broker or you work with a contracting company, a large part of this is visual, so Facebook or Instagram would be great options to upload visually engaging images.
Consider What Type of Business You Run: If you run a brick and mortar business, managing a Yelp profile is going to be very important since customers have the ability to leave reviews about your products, services and more. If you run an online business, Yelp will probably be less of an influence, but you’ll surely want to be present on Facebook or Twitter so users can tweet you questions during the order process or tag you when they receive their products to thank you for your excellent customer service.
No matter what social network you decide to start out with, the most important element of determining their success is measurement. If you see your Twitter engagement increasing, but your LinkedIn engagement dropping, you may find that more of your customers or clients are using Twitter, and thus maybe it’s better to prioritize and spend your time there. Measurement and the above tips will help you to create a better social media strategy and optimize your time.
