Using social media for business has played a vital part in most companies success in 2019. The key to getting the most out of it is for you to understand your audience. To unlock this mystery, you must delve deeper into what type of business you have, the direction you’re wanting to take your brand, and the specific goals you have for marketing and sales. Then you will know the answer to a common question ‘Which social media platform for my business?’.
There are multiple ways for you to maximise social media for your business, but you will need you to be aware of the direction you want to take. For starters, you don’t need to be on every platform there is because it will always boil down to who you’re targeting. Creating a strategy to help you understand your business is essential to utilise and maximise the results these platforms can drive.
Digital Marketing and Choosing the Best Social Media Platform for Your Business
Social media is the new word of mouth. It provides businesses with the opportunity to create content is a wide variety of formats and deliver it directly to potentially millions of users.
Finding the best social media platform for your business can often be difficult because there are so many options to choose from. It’s essential to understand which of these platforms would best suit your brand and that not ALL platforms would be applicable.
Top 5 Social Media Platforms for Business
Around two billion people use Facebook to connect with friends and family as well as browse through different articles, pages, and groups which match their interests. Facebook has provided a platform which allows businesses in various industries to tailor fit their marketing campaigns based on their target audience.
Facebook is one of the best social media platforms for business because it provides incredible business tools such as ‘Business Manager’. These tools can help you engage with potential customers and grow your business.
Posting regularly on your business’s Facebook page will allow your audience and customers to know your business better and help them relate to you better. For example, creating a Facebook poll makes customer surveys a thing of the past. Plus, it allows users to interact with your current customers so they can firsthand know what they think about your services or products.
Aside from that, Facebook’s advertising platform is the most advanced among all the other platforms. It allows you to set your target based on age, gender, employment, interests, purchasing behaviour, and a lot more which will enable you to use this data to tailor-make your ads and content.
Creating some form of relationship between your audience can help boost customer satisfaction. Facebook Insights will help you obtain information about how many people engage with specific posts. Giving you a better look at which content is more likely to entice your audience – think of it as research with real-time information.
While the platform continues to roll out business features, Instagram’s algorithm to how and when its users see your content is perfect for showing your audience a little bit more about your brand. And with 72% of its users using the platform to purchase products, it allows your business to generate sales through product placement and shoppable posts.
Due to its potential, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, bought the platform and allowed it to grow. This means that Instagram has the same advertising platform Facebook does. So it has the same benefits of paid Facebook ads as well as good organic (free) reach, which means you don’t necessarily need to shell out a load of cash for your posts to be seen. This is perfect if your business isn’t big enough to cover an advertising or marketing budget.
Another thing is, competitor research is made more accessible in this platform because you can simply keep an eye on your competitor’s profile and see how they interact with their followers. For example, Wendy’s is famous for having a savage and humorous presence on social media and because of this, user interaction is high and organic traffic is even better. A screenshot of some of their followers’ witty post about their brand is enough to garner a steady stream of audiences curious to see how Wendy’s respond to these user comments. This information can be used to improve your own marketing strategy.
Instagram proves to be one of the best social media platforms for business because it gives you the ability to be creative when marketing your brand. Take Instagram stories, for example, which is designed to provide a personal insight into your brand. You can link call to actions on these stories to direct users to your website, which will give your audience content about your brand at a larger scale.
YouTube
Having video content on YouTube is the perfect way to build visibility and credibility for your brand. It will also improve your website’s SEO ranking because any content you post on YouTube is searchable not only on YouTube but on Google as well.
This platform also allows businesses to access unlimited video hosting making it an affordable way to publish video content to boost brand visibility. This is a lot more cost-efficient as compared to paying for TV advertising. Viewer interaction on YouTube is also beneficial because people can rate and comment on your content.
As previously mentioned, people want to use products if they see other people use them. With YouTube, you can collaborate with your long-time followers or other social media influencers to create and post feedback (testimonial) videos showcasing how they can use your products and/or services. These types of videos can create a significant impact on your brand’s credibility and trust among your audience, considering how the site generates billions of views.
With over 65 million business professionals, LinkedIn becomes an excellent platform to bring your business to the world of social media. The best part is it doesn’t have as much upkeep compared to other social media platforms because its search features will allow users to find you when they search for an offer that matches with your business.
LinkedIn, being considered as one of the best social media platforms for business, can help you expand your network, find potential clients or customers, and create a credible and professional image for your brand. Because it is a networking resource, it can provide you with connections that can potentially help you with publicity and growth for your business. Essentially, your company page can offer you with enough opportunities for potential leads to learn more about your brand and engage with relevant content.
TikTok
TikTok, launched in 2018, has over 1.2 users worldwide with around 500 million monthly active users and is now considered to be one of the best social media platforms for business. Seeing as today’s purchasing power relies entirely on how we engage our audience, TikTok’s 15-second video allows brands a creative, quick and non-dragging way to market their products and/or services.
This platform exploits some of the primary reasons users jump on a particular social media platform – creative, engaging, and addicting content. Generally, TikTok combines the powerful features found on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube powered by AI.
It’s the best social media platform for business especially if you’re targeting millennials and those that belong in Generation Z (which, for even the most popular social media platforms, are hard to reach). This is a gold mine for marketers, especially since users don’t even need to follow anybody. They simply go to the discover page and browse through video content that matches their interests.
Another feature which could generate high traffic is what they call ‘challenges’ which is measured by video interaction, clicks, banner views, and similar videos – it literally maximising the power of word of mouth. Users love watching challenges and uploading their own videos doing these challenges. They use specific and catchy hashtags to make it memorable and easy to find. You can maximise this feature by creating a challenge and potentially make your brand go Viral.
Big brands have already started using the growing potential of TikTok in reaching their target audience. For example, multinational fast-food chain, McDonald’s, worked with TikTok to create the viral challenge #BigMacTikTok. The gist of this challenge is for users to dance to pre-recorded #BigMacTikTok clips and winners were given free Big Macs and cash. Another challenge which went viral is Guess’ #InMyDenim challenge. Although there aren’t any prizes provided like the McDonalds’ challenge, users still participated, thus making Guess’ denim campaign even more viral.
People are not only on social media to interact. In today’s age, these platforms are also significant factors in a consumer’s decision making. Users are more likely to use your products and/or services when they know other people (especially friends) are already using it. The best social media platform for your business is one that will help you maximise user trends and interaction.
Generally, social media provides multiple platforms your business can utilise to make the best out of your digital marketing strategy. The challenge is for you to pinpoint which platforms to prioritise because it’s not necessary to adopt every platform available (unless you have the resources to). Research is essential to identify your primary audience and find which platform can best get their attention.
