Choose the Right Social Media Platform for your business

Benny January 4, 2014 0 comments

Finding the Right Social Media Platform that Works Best for Your Business content marketing could be tricky. But in order to avoid wasting time and money, finding and prioritizing is mandatory.

You already have your profiles created on FaceBook, Twitter etc for your business and even started some marketing activities with regular posts. So, you are probably well aware of social media and just how imperative it is for digital content marketing. You may fall anywhere on the spectrum of social media know-how, ranging from novice to internet marketing guru. No matter what your expertise is, the success and return on investment from marketing is contingent upon how well you leverage (and know) your resources beforehand. Many business owners or their content marketing agencies start posting content on every possible Social Media platform they know and like, and at one point they become tired of finding it ineffective. Not getting enough comments, Likes, Shares etc makes them worried and at one point they let all their effort go in vain.

Before you investigate which social media platforms will work best for your business, consider the larger scheme of what your objectives are. These sites are very useful for marketing, but they are also great for networking, client relationship management, communications, reputation management, and for branding. The strategies vary pertaining to what will best assist you as you plan on using social media to represent your business; and, surely enough, your business model will be integral when deciding which platforms will best serve your needs.

What to Do Before Using Social Media Sites for marketing

New social networking sites and applications are appearing on the market constantly and frequently. It can seem like you have to take them all on, but that doesn’t have to be the case. Not every site nor business will serve the same crowd. This crowd also includes potential new clients and customers. Nonetheless, whether or not that crowd is ideal all depends on the business, what social media platforms it uses, and why.

The following is a list of ideas that will help you understand what information you might want to share about your business and where you can share it. You don’t have to be limited to just one or even any of them. These are only some of the many useful considerations of the planning process:

• Will you want to inform your audience about trending news in your industry?
• Do you have a quirky workspace that your followers and fans might appreciate and want to see?
• Do you have a really narrow pool of clients or customers? Where do you think they’re hanging out and how do they communicate with their networks?
• Do things like humor, skilled employees, technology, creativity, or good customer service exemplify you? If so, make a note of it and all the other good traits so you can use them to better sell your offerings.

If a list format is too limited for the planning you would need to do, then a diagram, chart, the web, proposal, portfolio, mind maps, or a mere whiteboard doodling are all alternative methods that could help you brainstorm your social media marketing goals.

Which Social Media Sites Should You Choose for Your content marketing?

The demographic and type audience of the social platform is going to affect which one you choose to represent the brand, message, and product of your company.

Facebook

The majority of social savvy business models will find Facebook, which is the holy grail of social media,  quite essential. Taking Facebook’s Ad Manager Program as a prime example, the site has many tools that help businesses target their ideal audience better.

Aside from tobacco companies and others that are highly regulated, virtually anyone can benefit from Facebook’s blog-like format. It gives the content a lot more breathing room than Twitter’s congested 140-character limit. Virtual travel agencies, popular name brands, athletes, politicians–truly, anyone can benefit from Facebook, one social site that supports over one billion users. That’s most certainly a wide audience considering the grand scheme of how vast the internet is.
Twitter

Some companies that benefit from using Facebook alternatively might enjoy the micro-blogging format of Twitter. Stock brokerage firms and financial consulting companies, for instance, might like the real-time aspect of Twitter as well, since many news reporters and leaders in the global economy are actively posting on the site. It’s a constant virtual meet-and-greet there despite its strict limits on content.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn can be considered as a Facebook for Business owners and Job seekers. Some independent contractors, freelancers, and entrepreneurs have probably already enjoyed the networking culture of Twitter and several other social media sites, but nothing else quite tops LinkedIn. It is a great connector, helping its users form professional connections and find new clients. LinkedIn Business pages are a great way of building a potential customer base. Years ago we started collecting recommendations and endorsements from our customers who worked with us in the past, share the web projects that we did and started sharing business information, and I am sure which pays off.

Pinterest

Pinterest provides a visual way of building backlinks. Businesses within the arts, fashion, lifestyle industries–really anyone who likes and employs pictures–could benefit immensely from the format of this platform. If you are a retailer or running an E-commerce store, building a Pinterest follower base would be something you cannot ignore. You can post your product images directly under categorized albums (called boards) and share them on Twitter and Facebook easily.

Wishpond says 25% of Fortune global companies have their presence on Pinterest and over 60% of consumers who visit Pinterest found what they wanted.

Instagram and Google+

Instagram and Google+ perhaps are the newer hybrids, both bearing characteristics of Twitter and Facebook. These are extra and still growing daily, but their concepts overlap and they allow the use of hashtag keywords in their posts. Google+ profiles and pages are surprisingly beneficial to anyone who wants to enhance their SEO. Instagram is kind of like a visual extension of Twitter.

Blogging still brings more life:

Both social media and blogging could go together. You can share your blog on Facebook or twitter, integrate Facebook comments within a blog, post some videos on Instagram videos into your blog, add tweets into your blog etc. But, why still blogging when you get all these social media sites? Blogging gives more space to design your content framework and you get the content not quickly vanishing like a Facebook post or Tweet that merges within the crowd and becomes invisible.

Social media has its technicalities, as you may have noticed when you were first introduced to it, and we can help you with this by optimizing your social media profiles and making them more productive for your marketing. Get in contact with us and a member of our team will respond to you.

Meanwhile, good luck on your search!