In your daily routine of running your business, it is very difficult to make time and be active on all the social media platforms. Shrinking down the choice of the platforms will help you focus and be efficient. It will get the best result on time and money for your investment.
So now, the question is how will you choose the best social media platforms in 2020?
Here are the important steps to determine which platform is perfect for marketing your business. Where people go beyond ordinary ways and use different ways to connect online for all kinds of reasons.
Step 1: Recognize your target audience and budget for marketing?
This is very crucial. Be as specific as possible, as it will be easy to create your marketing campaign.
Jot down the answers to the following questions and any other relevant questions related to your business industry. In array to help you build your target audience and the budget for the campaign.
- What is your target demographics?
- Are they male or female?
- How much do they earn?
- Their education level
- What are their Hobbies?
- What are your brand image and message?
- How much are you willing to spend?
- What is your campaign goal?
Step 2: Define and describe your Goal
Once you have identified the goal and budget for your social media campaign, you need to define the goal for your audience.
As a businessman, your prime aim is possibly be to boost sales by attracting more customers.
However, there are other creative goals for social media marketing. For instance, some brands use social networks for brand recognition and awareness to build up friendly relations with their consumers, whereas some might use it just for customer support.
When it comes to determining your social media goals, brainstorm ideas and unique ways social media could be beneficial for your brand.
Step 3: Discover your target audience
After brainstorming the first two steps, it’s time to find locate your audience. For this, you need to research on which platform does your audience uses by looking at each type of social network and what they are used for. This will help you create a strategy keeping in mind the content according to the channels.
Adding on, you will also have to do an analysis of the behavioral pattern online. For instance, youngsters may have a profile on Facebook, but they are more active on Insta.
If you know the answers to these three questions. It’s comparatively easy to pick it down to a frozen two to three platforms to devote your time to. (Keynote- Yes, a frozen two or three; no more. Unless you have a huge team to direct them all or employ a social media marketing company, do not try to be on too many networking channels. All platforms take time, and you won’t see results unless you put in the efforts.)
After the first 3 steps now the major concern is which Social Media (sites) Platforms do you invest in? Or do you invest in all of them? Which platform is going to be the perfect blend for your business?
Here is the guide that will help you select the best-suited social media platforms for marketing your business :
1. Facebook
It is not a huge surprise that Facebook is number one. Along with 2.41 billion daily active users, Facebook is the most widely used platform.
Whether the goal of business brand awareness online conversions, website traffic or lead generation. Facebook is the perfect public network platform if used properly.
Facebook’s broad user base and demographics of users is the main reason it’s at the first one in our list; almost everyone can find their target audience on this platform and get in front of them.
Now that you know that your target audience is on Facebook. How will you make sure that they see your business page? The answer to this is Facebook Advertising along with great Quality content
Facebook’s advertising platform is by far the most urbanized of all of the social media platforms
On Facebook, you can target very precisely by age, gender, employment, interests, purchasing pattern, relationship status, area, and so much more! This offers you the supremacy to target your exact audience and put your ads and content in their newsfeed.
If you’re wondering if Facebook is for you; our answer is YES 9 times out of 10. There are only 2 cases where we may propose another platform over Facebook. The first being if you do not have a Digital Marketing Budget and the second being if your type of business is banned to advertise on Facebook (i.e. a vaping or tobacco company etc.).
Facebook Messenger
Facebook Messenger is a part of Facebook, you have to download the Facebook Messenger app discretely from Facebook to use it. It includes a few extra features outside of the ones for Facebook.
Facebook Messenger is an app that allows Facebook users to send direct messages to one another, and this functionality also extends to Facebook business pages.
As Facebook Messenger is a part of Facebook, it has the same access to Facebook’s large user base and advertising platform.
Facebook has advertising campaigns that are particularly developed for Facebook Messenger. When someone clicks on an ad, they will be provoked to start a Facebook Message with your business page, and if they do, your business page can pursue with them in messages from that point on.
If your business goal is focused on lead generation as opposed to eCommerce or more immediate online conversions, then this may be a good choice for your business.
You can also set up automated chatbots (AI Driven) for your business page. This way, if someone messages your Facebook business page organically, Facebook Messenger will send an automated message back to them instantly.
These automated messages say something as easy as, “Thank you for reaching out to us! We will get in touch with you within 24 business hours. Thank you and have a great day!”
Even a message as simple as that, helps you build trust between your business and possible or existing customers. Aiding the chances for you to make conversions or repeat the buyer using Chatbots.
2. Instagram
Instagram comes very near to Facebook. Owned by the same individual who owns Facebook and has 500 million daily active users.
As it is owned by Facebook, it has access to the same extensive user base and advertisement platform the same as the Facebook Messenger app does.
So it has all of the same paid benefits of Facebook but also has its own set of organic benefits that is the functions you can perform without directly paying for them in marketing.
On Facebook, you have to pay for advertising campaigns to raise your followers and boost the reach of your page and posts. On Insta, you can raise your followers organically and therefore grow the reach of your profile and posts alongside.
This makes it a great option for both businesses with and without a marketing budget.
3. YouTube
YouTube is a media sharing platform that allows users to watch videos and upload them.
2 billion active users monthly. Giving your business the option to share company content with over 30 plus million daily active users. Who are likely to watch it and subscribe to it.
Similar to Pinterest, and Snapchat, YouTube has the benefit of visual content. But unlike the other social media platforms for business, it has the exclusive stance of being owned by Google.
Because of this, it has access to Google Adwords (Google’s advertising platform) and you link it to your benefit while running Youtube advertisements.
It also imitates its parent company in that you can optimize the search of your company’s YouTube videos with the proper keywords.
Without having to pay extra money on advertising, you can make your videos have elevated search rankings by optimizing your youtube channel which can be done by including the searched keywords in your title, video description, and the actual list of keywords in the keywords tool.
4. LinkedIn
If your business is a B2B model or aim consumers based on job titles, then LinkedIn can be a perfect tool for you.
LinkedIn has 500 million+ members, which manages your professional identity. Helps you build and engage with your professional network
Because LinkedIn is considered to be a platform where people often include more truthful information about their employers, job positions, work email addresses and more than they do on any other platforms that are used more for personal use.
Linkedin Advertising platform is not highly developed like Facebook majorly in terms of targeting and other campaign functions, however, it gives you a lot of job positions (specific) to target then facebook. This can be vital if your business is dependent upon targeting specific businesses or job titles.
5. Pinterest
If your business comes under a creative industry of any kind or caters more towards females, then Pinterest is a social media platform you want to be on.
Pinterest has 291 million monthly active users. Out of those users, 81% are women, 93% of active Pinterest users said they use Pinterest to plan for purchases and 87% said they’ve purchased something because of Pinterest.
Wedding Ideas, Food recipes, lifestyle how-to articles, furniture inspiration, architectural pins and outfit ideas are some of the top searches on Pinterest. So if you’re business falls within any of those industries, you need to make the most of Pinterest as one of your social media platforms for business.
Though Pinterest’s advertising isn’t as advanced as Facebook and LinkedIn you can still use paid ads to boost the reach of your posts. Plus it also tracks online conversions through your Pinterest ads.
Adding on, Pinterest has few organic benefits that other social sites do not. Organic reach on a Pinterest post is dogged by the number of keywords in a post and if they line up with what a user has searched on Pinterest it will organically boost the post.
This gives businesses a likelihood to tactically plan their content to contain words that are searched a lot on Pinterest, without having to use extra marketing budget.
6. Twitter
Twitter is a microblogging medium on which users post and interacts with messages known as “tweets”
It is the oldest social media sites, and it has 336 million monthly active users. You can upload photos and videos along with character-limit, but Twitter is most known for its feed of real-time updates.
Moreover, it is also great for engaging new customers through its hashtags; you can search a #hashtag and find other posts from consumers and businesses.
This helps you find your potential customers via their search intent and let you optimize your content.
These are the 6 Social Media platform you are looking for. Now that you can select the perfect networking platform for marketing your business.
Few additional guidelines for you to look around the best Social Media Marketing tips.
Social Media Content Plan
Building a digital marketing plan is necessary. The first step is the keyword research and competitive research to help come up with content ideas that will interest your target audience. What are the competitors in your industry doing to drive engagement on social media?
Quality Content
Steady with other areas of internet marketing, content is supreme when it comes to social media marketing. It is very important to post regularly and offer true by valuable quality information that your ideal customers will find helpful and solve their intent.
A Consistent Brand Image
Social Media for marketing enables the business to project the brand image across a variety of platforms. While each medium has its own sole settings and voice, your business’s core identity, whether it’s a friendly, fun, or trustworthy, should stay constant.
Sharing Curate Links
while using networking sites for marketing is a great way to influence original content to gain followers and fans. it also has an opportunity to link to outside articles as well. If other sources provide great, trustworthy information you think your target audience will get attract, don’t be shy about linking to them. Linking to outside sources improves trust and reliability, and you may get a link back in return.
Competitors Analysis
It’s very important to keep an eye on competitors—they can provide important data for keyword research and other marketing insight. If your competitors are using a certain social media marketing channel that seems to be effective for them, consider doing the same thing, but do it better.
Measuring Success with Statistics
You can’t conclude the success of your marketing strategies without tracking data. Google Analytics can be used as a great marketing tool. Which will help you measure your most glorious marketing techniques. As well as decide which strategies are better off discarded. Attaching tracking tags to your social media marketing campaigns to properly monitor the effects. And make sure to use the analytics within each channel for even more insight into which of your content is performing finest with your audience.
Keeping in mind the tips for social media marketing, here are 10 general categories that focus on what marketers wish to achieve by using them.
Below is the list of 10 types of social networks and what they are used for. This will help you complete the first 3 important steps in order to select the perfect social media platform for marketing your business.
- Social networks help in connecting with people. For Instance – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter
- Media sharing networks serve for sharing photographs, videos, and other media. For Instance – Instagram, Snapchat, Youtube
- Discussion forums platforms where new ideas are shared. For Instance – Reddit, Quora, Digg
- Content curation and bookmarking networks for discovering and sharing new content. For Instance – Pinterest, Dribbble
- Consumer review portals sharing, discovering businesses through reviews For Instance – Dineout, TripAdvisor, Zomato
- Blogging is for publishing quality content. For Instance – WordPress, Tumblr, Medium
- Social shopping networks basically for online shopping. For Instance – (we need to add and get our backlink if possible)
- Sharing economic networks for the trade of goods and services. For Instance – Airbnb, Uber
- Anonymous social networks for communication anonymously. For Instance – Ask.fm
- Interest-based network for sharing hobbies, ideas and interests. For Instance – Goodreads
Conclusion
All the above tips, tricks, and information are very much important before selecting the platforms. You now have an outline of the most important channel.
You would have already established a social media presence on at least a few of them. Now you know which platform best suits your business. But don’t have the time or know-how to manage them?
Accetrix is the right place that helps you manage all types of social media. Get all your profiles into a single platform and let us help you reach your aim.
There’s nothing holding you back. You have the information you need.