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Which Social Media Platform is Best for My Business?

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Which Social Media Platform is Right for Me?

Posted on 07/08/2019 at 10:08 AM

Each Platform is its own Monster

The social media landscape is constantly changing and evolving. As a result, consumers expect more and more connectivity. Every social platform has a specific use, a unique culture, audience, and impact. Failing to understand the differences, or worse, trying a generalized approach for social media marketing across all platforms is a waste of money and will seldom yield the ROI you’re looking for. However, truly understanding these differences can be the key to unlocking valuable and measurable engagement- impacting your audience to meet your social media strategic marketing goals!

Why Does it Matter?

The face of customer service has changed in our ever-evolving mobile world. Customers want answers and responses, and they want them now. Social Media is the new word-of-mouth, and good, bad, or ugly that word spreads faster than ever!

When a customer contacts a company via social media, they expect an immediate response. For example, our research indicates that if a customer comments or sends a message via Facebook, the expected response time is 24 hours. On Twitter, customers expect a response within 1 hour.

If the average customer does not get a response within these timeframes, they perceive it the same as if they had called the company and your representative hung up on them without resolving the problem.

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Breaking it Down

To be most effective in social strategy, your business needs to know which platform best fits your audience. Some businesses find no benefit being on Twitter, for example, while others thrive on it. The same can be said for any social network. Because each social media has its own community norms and cultures, what is perfectly acceptable on one may not be on another. Understanding each social media can help you determine where to invest your time and allocate your social media advertising budget.

What Should I Post on my Business’ Social Accounts?

It’s been said that social media success is a pay-to-play game. In some ways that is true, but overall social media is about being social. Engaging your audience, posting videos, using polls, asking questions, answering them, and encouraging direct messaging are all great ways to boost your online presence, customer satisfaction, and overall engagement without investing in Ads. The key here is to understand your audience. A good place to start is to know when to engage your audience and how to target them. Much of this can be found within the social media’s free built-in analytics tools if you know what to look for!

As a rule, to maximize your post’s organic reach, each post should include the following:

  1. A piece of selfless content that adds value to your audience- the most important aspect to a person’s time is W.I.I.F.M. (What’s In It For Me)? Give them a reason to share.
  2. Something visual to engage with- posts with a custom video or photo element have a much higher engagement rate than text-only posts.
  3. A call to action - this can be a link, a contact us, call now, or message us button. Posts must have some way to encourage customers to get in touch.

What About Ads?

We’re not discrediting ads by any means! Let us consider Facebook. A quick look at analytics can tell you when your audience is online and what posts have historically had the best traction. This gives you an idea of what type of post will likely do best if you turn it into or create a similar ad.

Like any social media marketing strategy, it all starts with the end in mind. What is the goal of your campaign? Are you attempting to boost brand awareness? Do you wish to promote a product or service? Are you simply trying to drive traffic to your website or generate sales leads? Starting with the end in mind is essential to creating an effective ad.

To get the most bang-for-your-buck, ads can and should be targeted to very specific audiences. From age groups to geographical locations, interests to groups, ads can be hyper-targeted. This is something not as easily done with a simple post and ensures that the age-old marketing problem of getting the right message in front of the right audience at the right time is no problem at all.

Facebook Ads even allow you to customize how your budget is spent. Per day, per week, per month, you decide! For example, if you run a month-long campaign and ask that Facebook spend a specific amount of money each day to target a specific audience, Facebook’s AI will do their best to do that. This means that at the end of the Facebook Ad Campaign any money un-spent goes back to you for your next campaign. When done correctly, this can save you a ton of money with a massive ROI!

An Introduction to the Top Social Media Platforms

It’s okay to admit if you’ve never used or don’t understand one platform or another. That is why you’re here. We can help. Here is a brief overview of each social media platform for your review:

Facebook

Facebook is a widespread social network that is vital for engaging your audience. Businesses and organizations can share photos and videos, interact with people and pages, and share the latest news and announcements with their audience. They can “like” customers’ pages, as well as create and promote events. Facebook is a great way to “humanize” your company and share any social responsibility projects. When used properly, Facebook can be an exceptional marketing, communication, and even PR tool.

Most experts agree that the best social media ad spend is on Facebook.

Twitter

What if you took Facebook status updates and built a social media platform focusing only on that? You’d have Twitter. Though not as large as Facebook, Twitter still boasts over 100 million users. The basic concept behind Twitter focuses on real-time conversations, referred to as “tweets” or “tweeting.”

For businesses, Twitter works well for releasing up-to-the-minute announcements. For example, if a business is having a fundraiser or a blow-out sale, it would be perfectly acceptable for the business to send out updates via tweets every 15 minutes or even “Live Tweet” an event if they so desired. On Facebook and other social media, this would not be recommended. On Twitter, it’s expected!

Using Twitter, businesses can quickly find out what their target audience is talking about. You can search for a certain subject or keyword (called Hashtags and represented with a # symbol) and instantly receive a list of all tweets mentioning that search term.

Twitter is a great tool for most businesses. In our experience, businesses with Twitter accounts should be able to commit to tweeting at least a couple of times a week.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is an ideal networking tool for engaging potential employees, clients, or networking with other businesses in your industry. More than just a “B2B” Facebook, LinkedIn has become the premier social network for working professionals. Establishing an active presence on this platform allows you to build brand awareness and establish your company as an expert in your industry through proper content marketing.

When you are seeking to generate leads, LinkedIn and other platforms allow you to funnel your audience back to your website in order to create client conversions.

Our expert tip about LinkedIn: when crafting your company LinkedIn profile, be sure it is a strong representation of your company, its brand, and its mission.

YouTube

YouTube is the second most utilized search engine on the internet, right behind Google. If part of your content marketing strategy is to include video campaigns, as a great tool for releasing fresh content, YouTube should be a vital part of it.

YouTube Channels are created to allow companies or organizations to publish videos online for the public to view. YouTube is not only a useful marketing tool, but it also acts as a free way to store videos online. When setting up your YouTube Channel Account, link your other social media, and be sure to update the settings to optimize your channel to be found in search, then keep the content coming!

Let's Work Together!

The world of digital marketing is vast and ever-changing. We hope this blog has helped you get an idea of which social media your company should invest in. If you have further questions or need help, good news! Global Reach can assist you! Whatever your digital marketing needs, our team will pull out all the stops to help you with any online initiative you might imagine!

Reach out to further the discussion today!

Categories: Social Media

Tagged As: Facebook

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