With so many different options out there, how do you choose the best social media platforms for your business?
It can be really daunting and overwhelming!
You know that it’s important for your business to have an online presence, but where the heck do you start, right?
There are always new platforms emerging and new updates for the existing ones!
So much change!
Before we work out how to choose the best social media platforms for your business, we need to answer a few questions around your expectations from social media…
Do you want a social presence for your business just to be ‘socially active’?
Are you looking to build brand awareness?
Do you want to generate leads and sales via the content that you post?
Will you want to leverage social media for its advertising capabilities?
Who are you trying to reach?
Which platforms do your target audience use?
Answering these questions will help establish the best platforms for you to consider.
After all, your social media activity needs to happen on a platform where your target audience is for it to be as effective!
We want to make things a bit easier for you!
The first thing to do is to take a deep breath and let all that tension out…it’s going to be ok!
Here’s some good news!
Social media doesn’t need to be complicated and you don’t have to change everything you have ever done to make it work.
In fact, it’s the opposite.
You need to find a way to make social media work for you!
Social media at its core is about communication.
It’s that simple.
The trick is deciding how you can best ‘story tell’ on a platform where your target audience spends a lot of their time.
In the second part of this blog, we are going to provide you with key features, demographics and best practices for some of the top platforms.
The world’s biggest social media platform boasts more 2 billion monthly active users (MAU’s).
So in our honest opinion, having a Facebook presence for your business is not an option.
It’s a must!
Why you ask?
Think of Facebook as another Google.
If people want to find out more about your or your business, often times they will search on Facebook first!
Facebook connects people, business and brands.
It is also hands-down the most targeted digital advertising platform in the world.
Facebook is where you set up your social media ‘home base’, just like your website is your digital ‘home base’.
Best features for your business include:
Instagram started life as an image-based platform but has since evolved and is now owned by Facebook
The app now includes video, ephemeral stories and direct messaging.
‘Insta’ is perfect for businesses that have a visual or physical product.
Best features for your business include:
In the beginning, Snapchat was a disappearing photo app used by teenagers with a reputation for circulating ‘inappropriate’ material.
Today, Snapchat has over 150 million MAU’s worldwide with a younger demographic than most of the other top platforms.
Snapchat allows you to communicate in a way that is the most realistic to humans.
The content you post has a limited lifetime of 24 hours before it disappears!
Best features for your business include:
Gary Vaynerchuck calls Twitter the “water cooler of our society”.
Twitter is where you go for trending topics and news, to share short updates, communicate with people and search for things that you might need answers too.
Twitter can be a great tool in business for finding people you have a problem that your business can solve.
Twitter provides you and your business a real-time communication channel with the rest of the world.
There has been a lot of talk over recent years about Twitter’s lack of innovation and issues with the way they deliver content in the feed.
But there has been a gradual revival in recent months, which is seeing Twitter’s value start to climb.
Best features for your business include:
Are you feeling more confident about how to choose the best social media platforms for your business?
Youtube was founded in 2005 by three former Paypal employees.
Today, it is the second biggest search engine in the world behind Google.
More than 100 hours of video is uploaded to Youtube every minute!
Youtube is one of the best places in the world to house your video content and share it with the world.
There are many other video hosting platforms that are amazing in their own right including Wistia and Vimeo, each with their own pro’s and con’s.
Youtube however, has the volume of traffic and eyeballs with one-third of all internet users on the platform.
It is also free to create an account and add as much video content as you can!
Best features for your business include:
People often refer to LinkedIn as the ‘professional’ version of Facebook.
LinkedIn was started in 2003 and is one of the older social networking sites having survived many ups, downs and technology changes over the years.
In 2016, Microsoft purchased LinkedIn for $26.2 billion with plans to integrate the platform with its Windows software.
Best features for your business include:
At the end of the day, these are just some of the top social media platforms.
Creative is the variable for success.
What you do and the value you provide determines the overall results you have with social media.
Remember that while each platform has certain functions, doing things differently is what helps you stand out!
There is not always one ‘perfect’ social media platform for your business.
Like many things, it is about testing, measuring and repeating.
Try things and if they don’t work, try something else!
Remain authentic. Provide value. Be socially active.
At the end of the day, being true to yourself, your brand and caring about the person at the other end is the most important thing.
We hope this article will help you choose the best social media platforms for your business.
If you have any questions please leave a comment below, we would be happy to help!
Thank you for your time!
