Your business is most likely already on some of the big social media platforms, but are you sure you’re on the best platforms for your business? If so, is it working to the best of its ability?
Because social media is in a constant state of motion, it’s imperative that you roll with the punches, keeping up with their revolving door of changes.
Yes, we know it’s not always easy. You’re running a business, where’s the time to read about Facebook’s new algorithm? Not to fret, we’ve got you.
We’re going to tell you what social media platforms are best for you and how to work those platforms effectively.
What kind of a biz are you?
Do you work B2B (business to business), B2C (business to customer), or both? Are you e-commerce or brick and mortar? Do you offer a tangible product or a service?
This plays a role in where you want to be advertising.
If you work with other businesses, LinkedIn may be your best, most profitable, bet for you.
When selling to customers, Facebook and Instagram have users that are huge supporters of local businesses and often look to their friends for insights into products/services.
Advertising on these channels could pay off big time.
The more appealing your product is to look at, the more you want to capitalize on channels that can showcase them, such as Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest.
Once you know who you are, figure out who your customer is.
Connect with your buyer persona
First thing’s first when it comes to figuring out WHERE your target audience is.
You’ll need to know WHO your target audience is- this is your buyer persona.
Have you ever had an ad pop up ad that makes literally no sense to you because you would absolutely never click on it? If you have, that company is not only wasting its valuable time, it’s also wasting its valuable money.
That company doesn’t know its target. That’s a mistake no business wants to make. Don’t be like that company.
You want to know all the basics about your buyer:
- Location, location, location (if you’re trying to market to people in your town in Hawaii- lucky!- and your ads are showing up in Ohio, not good)
- Male or female?
- Age?
- Single? Married? Kids?
- Job title and income
- Rent or own their home
- Hobbies
- Challenges/problems you can help solve
This list can get longer and more specific based upon your industry. If you’d like to get more involved in creating your list, Facebook’s Audience Insights is a great place to start.
Once your list is conquered, you have your target.
Findability
Now you know who your audience is, which will tell you where they are, but can THEY find YOU?
It’s important to note here that all of the social media platforms, work as search engines too. Meaning your content not only matters, but helps you in ranking. Having an omnipresence (being everywhere) will give you more credibility, help you to be easily found, and contribute to your SERPs.
So where exactly should your business be in order to be effective? Let’s delve in:
Social media demographics, anyone?
Now for the good stuff…
Lucky for all of us, the social media gurus give stats upon stats upon stats. And that’s good for you, great for your business.
Let’s explore how each of the main social media channels will work for you through some of these said stats mentioned above.
Still the creme de la creme of social media, Facebook boasts a 2.27 BILLION (with a B) monthly users.
That’s an astounding quarter of the world’s population.
And age? Age is all over the place – most likely your audience is here.
So, basically, to put it bluntly: you gotta be on it.
Whether you’re B2B or B2C, the people are on Facebook, so your business should definitely be seen there, too.
And since Facebook is crazy-international, with 50% of its user non-English speaking, your audience is truly worldwide.
Facebook prides itself on relationship-building and gives you the resources to do that. You can get excellent engagement on this channel, so be sure to provide content that encourages that.
You can easily and relatively inexpensively set up paid campaigns (PPC) to target your desired audience, as well.
Owned by Facebook, Instagram has 1 billion monthly users and over 500 million daily users. That’s impressive.
It caters to an image-centric audience, meaning if you’re selling gorgeous gowns or industrial furniture, or if you provide edgy haircuts or just want to show pictures of your cat, this is the place to be.
And with their introduction of IGTV you can post longer content through vertical video, so this is a killer channel for chefs or gym rats, any business that wants to accentuate movement will look great here.
Instagram appeals to a younger audience than Facebook, so if your target is on the young side, think 18 to 35, you want to for sure to be on it.
And although they currently see more female users, those stats seem to be changing.
However, like Facebook, Instagram has a captured user-base worldwide, with over 80% of their users being from outside the US. Meaning, once again, your audience is pretty darn big.
Known for its micro-blogging platform (280 characters), Twitter is super popular among the 20-somethings.
Although Twitter raised the character count to 280, the most common length of a tweet is 33 characters.
It works great for real-time campaigns since it’s one of the only platforms to still run chronologically.
For instance, if you’re celebrating the grand opening of your art gallery you can head to Twitter and say, “Grand opening! First 20 people in the door get a free Warhol print!”
Because this channel works chronologically, it’s recommended that you send out multiple tweets a day. So be sure you have the capability to do so in order for this to be effective for your business.
This platform is really well known for building business relationships. You can find anything job-related here, networking being at the forefront. Both job-seekers and employee-seekers are found here, so ages run the gamut.
LinkedIn ranks highest when it comes to your B2B efforts, so if that’s the type of business you’re in, this place is a must.
They offer a premium service (for a fee) that will allow you to adjust your filters and see who you want to see. This makes it easy to connect to anyone you’d like, even having capabilities of personalizing ads that can be sent to specific inboxes.
250 million monthly users tells you that this visual search engine is no flop. And 61% of users have made a purchase after seeing a product here. I’m no mathematician, but that’s over half, and those are some good odds.
Although most pinners currently are women, over 50% of the newbies, are men- if you’re a biz that appeals to men, you may wanna jump on this quick, before your competition does.
Like with Insta, any business that can sell through stunning images will do well on this platform.
Snapchat
A rather new channel, respectively, that works with mobile devices only. It creates messages, images, or videos that appear for only a short time before being lost forever.
This downloadable app is making waves with the younger generation (millennials and generation Zers), so if you’re targeting them, you should be found here.
To sum it up
Once you know who your audience is, you’re well on your way to knowing where you need to be in order for you all to collide in one harmonious interaction (that will hopefully turn into more harmonious interactions).
Social media will be around for a while and you might as well be there with it. With the billions of users worldwide, you will find your people.
Look into all the well-known and well-used channels, but keep in mind the niche social media outlets that already contain your target- they don’t even know how badly they want to see you there yet!
The specific social media demographic images were sourced from Sprout Social.
