Before narrowing down your choice to choose the best social media platforms for your business, try to find answers to these questions about which social media platform would be better for your business:
- Identify the type of audience of your business:
Try to identify the profile of your audience. Find out the answers to questions like who will be your typical customer, are they male or female, what are their annual incomes and education and what are their age?
- Identify your goals:
What will be your primary goals? Whether it will be to drive sales by attracting more customers or to increase brand recognition? Brainstorm a list of goals for your business.
Which Social Media Platforms should you consider for your business?
1. FACEBOOK
Facebook boasts of 2.5 billion monthly active users and around 1.5 billion daily active users. Facebook continues to occupy the #1 spot among the social media sites. Millions of businesses depend on Facebook to connect with their audience. It is the leading social media platform reaching about 61% of internet users. More than 80 million small businesses around the world are using Facebook business pages.
Facebook continues to remain the dominant social media platform among the young adults. 65 percent of Facebook users still haven’t attained the age of 35. Facebook users are spending on an average 59 minutes each day. More time spent on Facebook means more chances for business to get leads.
Facebook offers the best audience targeting tools so that you find your perfect customers. It also offers the cost per click (CPC) average of $1.72 which is very fruitful to small businesses having a shoe-string budget. Facebook continues to remain the best social media platform for reaching a large number of people.
2. TWITTER:
Twitter is that kind of social media platform that acts as an elevator pitch for your brand – connect the audience to important news topics very quickly and will do social PR for your brand. Twitter is fast-paced and has mass appeal to world politicians and journalists, so for any brand who wants to achieve fast pace in customer acquisitions, Twitter is the ideal social media platform for it.
Twitter claims around 330 million monthly active users. Around 63% of worldwide twitter users are between 35 and 65 years old. This clearly shows how Twitter appeals to an audience who are much more mature than those of Instagram and Facebook. Around 67% of B2B businesses are today using Twitter as a social media marketing tool for digital marketing.
It is one of the top 5 social media sites in the U.S. You can consider Twitter as part of your long-term brand strategy.
3. LINKEDIN:
Linkedin is a massive network of professionals. It boasts of around 310 million monthly active users. It’s some kind of B2B gold mine. 40% of the monthly active users are using Linkedin daily. Among the Fortune 500 companies, Linkedin is the most used social media platform. 61 million Linkedin users are at senior level positions and 40 million users are sitting at decision-level positions.
This acts as a proof that Linkedin is the platform to find your ideal customers and clients. Hence it is a no big surprise that 94% of B2B marketers are using Linkedin as a content distribution channel. Half of all the social traffic are going to B2B sites from Linkedin. Linkedin accounts for 80% of all B2B leads coming from social media platforms.
B2B marketers always use Linkedin as a key tool for marketing strategy and campaigns. Hence it’s time now to start investing as a B2B marketer in Linkedin.
4. INSTAGRAM:
Instagram has emerged as the most popular social media platforms for teenagers and young adults. Instagram has come a long way from a simple photo-sharing app to incorporating features that help the businesses to sell their products such as shoppable posts, product stickers within posts, like posts, polls in stories, and send direct messages.
Instagram also gives marketers the opportunity to connect with a community of users. Hashtags are one of the best ways to connect and follow like-mended users on the platforms.
Around 80% of users on Instagram follow brands. Instagram’s users are a little bit younger than other social media platforms with 53% of people having ages between 18 to 29. Instagram is the best social media platform for businesses to showcase their products since you can tell a brand’s story with unique visual content like images, videos, stories and IGTVs.
5. YOUTUBE:
Youtube ranks as the second most popular search engine today in the world after google. It boasts of around 2 billion monthly active users. People are uploading around 500 hours of videos every minute. Among 18 to 34 years olds, Youtube is the most preferred platform for watching video.
Watch time for “which product to buy” videos are increasing day by day and doubling each year. The daily engagement of users is increasing with the videos’s creators. The average user is spending around 12 mins on videos every day. Product reviews and how-to videos get a lot of views.
To increase your reach on the platform, create a youtube channel for your brand by uploading videos so that your subscribers can view, like and share videos.
Whatever be the size of social media sites and its popularity, always first try to find out whether your brand’s targeted audience are active on these social media platforms.
As a marketer, you can use these platforms to promote your brands and products. The trick is to choose the right social media platform for your business which aligns with your goal of social media marketing.