As a business owner if there is one thing that you have paid attention to in the past few years, it’s that social media is king when it comes to advertising. Not only are you able to earn more money on social media, but you also are able to get more clicks, engage more people, and generate more conversation.
As a small business, you need as many effective marketing methods as possible at your disposal. Still, you should already understand that not all social media channels are proper for you.
Every platform has a particular set of users with their quirks regarding how they interact with their content. If you are unaware of these nuances when you decide to invest in social media marketing, you need to start getting up to scratch on which social media sites would be correct for your business. Below, we’ve compiled a list of top tips that will help you determine whether a social media website is suitable for your business.
What does your business do?
You have to consider the nature of your business when determining which marketing tools you should use and which ones you should stay away from. It will all depend on whether your business works with other businesses or with other consumers. For a business-to-consumer company, then you’ll use regular social media sites such as Facebook or Instagram.
Both of these are visually engaging and interactive, and they will help your business to gain better visibility. LinkedIn is the way to go if your business is business-facing because you can target current and potential clients. You also can build a personal connection because LinkedIn is Facebook but for businesses.
Who are you targeting?
You cannot afford the luxury of falling too often. Yes, you can listen to all the platitudes about failure being how you learn, but making mistakes is not something you can afford to keep going with, as it will cost you money for every mistake you make. Instead of running after all of the brand-new social media platforms, you should understand your audience and where to find them. A Google search will help you here, but you might be able to gain some traction on both Facebook and Instagram to get the information you need.
Who is your audience?
What do you know about the demographics of your audience? Are they an older audience or a younger audience? Even something as simple as this can help you to determine which platform would be right for you. Older audiences in the millennial section may decide Facebook is the best option, but younger audiences may respond better to videos that are short and are on streaming sites such as TikTok. Don’t go too thin with trying to manage multiple platforms simultaneously because this is how things get confusing.
Stay on the platforms where you know your customers will be
Is there any point in wasting both time and money advertising on platforms where your customers are not going to see it? Of course not. You want your business to be as visible as possible, so once you’ve identified where your customers are, you’ll be more consistent and valuable when you master your chosen platform. You have to learn all you can about the forum you’ve got rather than spending all of your money across different platforms.
Talk to your advocates
There will always be people out there who advocate for your business and they should know which social media platforms you choose to use. Don’t just focus on a specific social media outlet, but talk to your marketing team about focusing their time on empowering advocates directly and via social media channels. When you put your effort here, instead of just promoting your brand on social media, you can see where advocates will get the most traction. This then allows you to target your activity a lot better.
What do your competitors use?
As a business owner, you should always be on the ball about what your competitors are doing. Checking out each of their social media pages and seeing what content they are posting will help you. It will also help you understand how often they are posting and how many users they engage with each month. Websites such as social blade can help you here.
Focus on your content
The website that you have and the content that is loaded onto the website are going to be your digital footprint. It’s the backbone of all of your communications, and it’s going to house your business cards, it’s going to appear in such engines, and it’s going to be where you give that call to action to encourage people to sign up to newsletters, to buy products and to engage. You need to ensure that where you can you add great content and make it as aesthetically pleasing as possible. Over time, you can add blogs and social media platforms that you can direct to it.
Make sure that the platform you choose matches your audience. Are you really going to target a senior age range on TikTok? Probably not. Ensuring that your platform demographics meet your social media audience is important. Creating accounts where your content is going to have the biggest impact is vital if you’d like your businesses to be successful on social media.
Map out your social goals
When you choose a platform to focus on, you get an understanding of what your social media goals should be. Using Twitter to enhance customer care could be great, but what if your audience is on Facebook? Aligning your platform benefits with business goals is important.
