Social media is a vital marketing tool for every business that wants to remain relevant and visible in today’s online dominated world.
Put simply, if you and your business aren’t using social media to its fullest, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity as well as potential customers.
But getting started can be difficult, and even something as seemingly simple as choosing a social platform can be more complicated than you’d think.
There are many social networks out there to choose from, the trick is determining which platform will give you the exposure you’re looking for, not to mention the right audience.
Define Your Goals
With so many options available to you, it’s important to have specific goals before you move forward.
These objectives will help determine not only the social platform you choose, but also the content you create and who is going to see it.
So ask yourself, do you want to improve your customer service offerings by providing another platform on which customers can reach out with complaints, questions, and concerns?
Perhaps you’re looking to reach out to new audiences and new demographics who might be receptive to your products or services Increasing brand awareness?
Or maybe you want to learn about the needs, wants, and habits of your audience and customers. Increasing traffic to your site and boosting sales?
Consider Your Options
Social media really does offer something for everyone, allowing users to connect with other users who enjoy shared interests, similar hobbies and comparable demographics.
In fact, there are way too many social networking sites out there to have a presence across them all, so your time would be better spent focusing on the sites that suits your needs
Of all the social media sites out there, the top ones in terms of monthly active users include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.
What you must decide is which one offers you the greatest exposure and what sites your target audience is most likely to be using.
Find Your Audience
In order to make sure you are reaching the right audience, a targeted approach is required, otherwise all your time and effort could be in vain.
You’ll also want to consider how active your audience is on that platform. For example, while young Facebook users may have profiles, they’re more active on Instagram or TikTok.
Besides demographics and engagement, you’ll also want to look at how individuals use the platform.
To do this, consider the following questions.
- Who is your typical customer?
- How old are they?
- Are they male or female?
- What is their income?
- What are they interested in outside of your product and service?
Choose Your Platform
To do this, you’ll have to determine which platform your audience uses by looking at the demographics of the users on each.
It’s also worth considering how active your audience is on that platform. For example, while young Facebook users may have profiles, they’re probably more active on Instagram or TikTok.
As well as demographics and engagement, you’ll also want to look at how individuals use the platform.
So here’s a look at some of the major social media platforms and their typical audience.
Facebook reports over 2.5 billion users making it a great platform for building the loyalty of your existing customer base. The downside to Facebook is that it may be hard to reach a new audience as, due to its large population, your posts have a limited reach-even within your own networks.
Twitter is an excellent platform to build awareness for your brand. Twitter utilizes the hashtag, which organizes conversations around a word or phrase. By searching hashtags, you can learn what people are talking about so you can craft your tweets to take part in popular conversations.
Pinterest is used for “pinning” photos or videos to a virtual bulletin board. Since Pinterest is a visual-based platform, you’ll need strong graphics to engage users. Successful business use of Pinterest has been linked to strong retail sales.
Youtube
Although YouTube boasts 2.3 billion users, its reach extends far past that. As a result, YouTube has become one of the biggest search engine platforms as many of these searches are for “How To” videos.
LinkedIn has the distinction of being the most utilized platform for older audiences. It boasts the largest users among ages 30-49 and is unique because it has a narrow focus with people using LinkedIn to search for jobs and to network professionally.
Instagram is one of the fastest-growing platforms, especially among a young audience. Like Pinterest, Instagram relies on photos or videos for conversation and because there’s less noise than Facebook the platform is useful for generating leads because your reach is wider.
TikTok
Like Pinterest and Instagram, TikTok is best for visual-based businesses like art, food, retail, beauty, and some service industries. TikTok has a very young demographic meaning the platform is useful for targeting the 18-24 age group.
Talk to a Social Media Management Agency
A social media agency can really get under the skin of your brand to determine who your target audience is, what type of content they are likely to interact with and adopt the correct tone of voice for everything published on social media.
Studio Coact are a Social Media Marketing Agency in Liverpool who are strategy led, underpinned by a knowledge of both your brand and your customers, we aim to create imaginative, creative content that will help your business cut through the digital noise.
Our social media marketing strategies hits the heights of creativity, developing engaging content for your business that will cut through the noise.
Why not schedule a free 30-minute consultation with one of our social media consultants?
Contact us online or call 0151 708 5813 today.