Google has earned a reputation for being the best place to promote your products, but there are plenty of great social media platforms for business that can help you attract quality leads.
With that said, consumers behave differently on social media than on any other platform. Whether you’re running a small business, medium-sized organization, or a large corporation, you need to tailor your organic content as well as your paid ad campaigns for this phenomenon.
In addition to the above, you also need to choose the best social media platform for your company based on your requirements.
In this article, we’ll go over tips to help you choose the best social media for business. We’ll also share the main social media platforms used by most businesses and go over the benefits of improving your brand recognition on Facebook and similar platforms.
Tips for Choosing Social Media Platforms to Promote your Business
Before choosing the best business social media platforms, it’s important to understand a few basics.
First, all businesses are unique. This means that a business social platform may be a great solution for another company in a different industry, but not for your own organization. In this sense, if you want to choose based on performance, it’s best to conduct market research using direct competitors.
Second, it’s common to leverage multiple special platforms in order to build brand awareness and drive more potential customers. Many businesses focus on a single platform, rather than establishing a continuous social media presence across multiple networks. This isn’t always the best solution as members of the target market likely use more than one social network.
With the above in mind, here are 10 tips to help you choose the top social media platforms for your business.
1. Learn as Much as You Can About Your Business and Industry
Choosing the right social media platform for your business is all about understanding your company’s requirements.
Even if you’re directly involved in the daily operations of your business, it’s important to analyze your organization, conduct interviews, and determine what goals you’d like to achieve through your social digital marketing plan.
It may be time-consuming to research your company. But, as a business owner, you can always rely on your internal employees or on an external team, like the marketing professionals at Fannit.
2. Focus on the Target Audience
A product-centric marketing strategy won’t boost your brand visibility on social media sites. The reason for this is that Facebook users are always looking for engaging content. The same goes for users on other social platforms.
The key here is to focus on what the target audience wants. Rather than focusing on your product features, you should use every top social media site as a visual platform that provides solutions to your audience’s issues.
3. Analyze Client Demographics
No list of social media tips for business is complete without mentioning the target audience.
As a matter of fact, small businesses should conduct extensive research and analyze their audiences in order to create content that attracts more customers. The goal is to determine what type of content drives the most engagement and implement similar techniques to drive social traffic to your business pages.
Depending on your industry and business goals, you may not even have to direct users to other marketing channels. If you use a social professional platform that has an integrated lead management system, like paid Facebook advertising, you may be able to generate leads without switching over.
Now, it’s important to note that you’ll only be able to create these complex marketing mechanisms if your target audience allows for it. Therefore, you need to study your audience and implement the data you collect into your social media efforts.
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4. Go Where Your Ideal Customer Is
There’s a large list of social media platforms you can choose from in order to promote your business. With that said, you should focus your efforts on the channels that your customer uses the most.
There are two logics to this social media marketing strategy. For starters, small businesses have limited resources. In these cases, spreading yourself thin by focusing on various networks may not yield the same results as choosing the best social media platforms for your client.
5. Drive Users to Your Social Channels
Opening social accounts on the right networks is a great first step, but you need to build a loyal following in order to have an impact.
In addition to building brand awareness directly through your networks of choice, you can also drive external users to your social page.
For instance, you can promote one of your social media accounts in your email newsletter and include a link to it directly in the content. Not only this, you should also have self-promotion social media buttons at the bottom of your email to send subscribers to your different accounts.
This will boost the performance of your social media marketing for your business and your digital advertising efforts as a whole.
6. Conduct In-Depth Competitors Research
There are some areas of your social media strategy that you’ll need to source entirely from within your business, like your brand personality.
However, you should still take the opportunity to learn from competitors that successfully drive website traffic through the channels you want to target. All social media platforms for business have unique traits, so take the time to observe which competitor campaigns get the most attention and attempt to implement some of these elements into your own content.
7. Focus On the Backbone Of Your Digital Footprint
Social media sites for business can bring great results, but you shouldn’t focus entirely on any one platform. Instead, you should work on creating a solid base for your digital footprint and expand it into any professional network that is relevant to your business.
Google is the world’s largest search engine, so you should start by creating a website and focusing on search engine optimization or SEO. Chances are you’ll have to use multiple platforms in addition to Google search, so determine what other techniques you can implement to boost sales.
This is where social media professional networking, PPC ads, and email sequences come in.
8. Match the Social Publishing Platform With Your Audience
The social media posts you create will vary depending on the network you’re using. For example, Instagram stories have different requirements than Facebook posts, so you should tailor your content based on the social media site in use. While Facebook is the largest social media site, there are other social media networks you can use to share your content.
Remember, there is no formula to fund the best social media site. Instead, you should determine which platforms your customers use the most and create a social media account in every relevant network.
Here are some examples of social media platforms you can focus on:
As we mentioned earlier, Facebook is the largest social media site out there. It has close to 2 billion monthly active users and that number is still growing.
Many credit Facebook for changing the way businesses leverage social media marketing. In addition to building a Facebook business page, the platform allows you to use its messaging platform as an alternative way to reach its users.
If you’re looking for a social network that most mimics a professional business platform, then LinkedIn is the best alternative for you. This great social media platform focuses on sharing professional resources, so even though it has a relatively small number of monthly active users, it’s one of the most profitable alternatives out there.
While many B2B companies opt for this social media site, it’s also a great place to target audiences that have higher acquisitional power.
Instagram is the second-largest social media platform out there. Unlike other social media platforms, Instagram content has always revolved around images and videos. In addition, the social media site has also implemented short videos that are only available for a certain period of time, the ability to shop online, and additional features to keep its users engaged.
Most Twitter users are located in the US and the social media site is used by a large number of outlets and politicians to publish news and broadcast messages. Having business partners that are familiar with the way this social media platform works can help you create more impactful campaigns that are more powerful than the most popular digital bulletin boards.
Pinterest, YouTube, and More
Pinterest users are known for having better engagement metrics, while video sharing platform YouTube has the second largest search engine in the world. These are just two additional examples of great social media networks you can use to provide customer support and generate more leads.
9. Build A Consistent Strategy Across All Platforms
After analyzing Facebook and other social media platforms, it’s time to create a strategy that’s consistent across all channels.
In addition to the content format, remember that every social media site induces slightly different user behavior. Therefore, your strategy for every social media platform will be unique and include distinct elements, like a different posting schedule.
There are many tools that you can use to manage your social media campaigns in one place. Just remember that there is no one platform for all social media
10. Figure Out How You’ll Use Paid Ads
We’ve focused mainly on organic techniques, but it’s important to understand that the different social media platforms for business that you have available also offer paid ad campaigns.
Social media users interact with paid ads differently than they do with organic content. While it’s true that paid ads are better for generating conversions, you need to figure out exactly how you will use these. Furthermore, you should ensure that the paid ad strategy you implement works in harmony with the organic content you’re publishing. social media platforms for business
The Benefits of Social Media Marketing for Businesses
Google may still be the biggest search engine, but Facebook, Instagram, and other social media networks have become great marketing alternatives for a great reason.
Social media marketing allows you to:
- Connect with your audience through their favorite channels
- Reach potential customers while they’re engaged
- Promote your business at a local, regional, national, and international level
- Build your email subscriber list
- Notify your audience about promotions, discounts, and other benefits
- Garner reviews and gauge the perception of your product or service
Want to Find the Best Social Platform for Business Success? Contact Fannit Today
Building a strong social media presence is key, but you need to familiarize yourself with the different platforms and choose the best network.
To find out more about creating an effective social media marketing plan contact Fannit today and our team will be glad to help.
FAQs
What are the main social media platforms?
The main social media platforms are Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, and Pinterest.
When is the best time to post on social media?
This varies depending on your target audience, location, and marketing goals. That said, your target audience will guide the decision. You should start by running ads in general schedules, like business days for example, and make adjustments once you have enough traffic data.
Which social media platform is best for my business?
There are many social media platforms for business that can help you succeed. Your best bet is to analyze your requirements and choose the platforms that help you achieve your goals in the shortest time span.
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