Picking the Right Social Media Platforms for Your Business
Small businesses once left all of their marketing to professionals. Money was exchanged, marketers placed ads in newspapers and sent direct copies to a consumer’s mailbox. But in today’s digital world, a lot of small business owners want to take control of one form of marketing: social media.
This is the medium in which you can directly get in contact with your target audience, and it’s one of the best ways to offer customer service.
But before diving into social media, it’s important to pick the right platforms.
Facebook is a Must for Businesses
Facebook has over 2.2 billion users, and it’s too big of a platform to ignore. When you have such a large user base, keep in mind this is over 25% of the planet, it’s simply too difficult to ignore Facebook. You’ll find a lot of companies that exclusively use Facebook.
Why?
It’s too big to ignore. If nothing else, you need to have a Facebook page.
If you don’t know what to post, you can use your profile as a means to just promote your blog posts. You don’t need to come up with witty posts every day. Of course, self-promotion for every post is not a good thing, but there is always some industry news to post about at the very least.
“Have you ever heard a kitten meow but didn’t know where it was coming from? These plumbers found a kitten inside an underground pipe,” Next Level Pipe Lining posted to keep their readers informed. This is just one example of how to use Facebook to promote your business.
LinkedIn If You’re a Business Professional
If you’re the face of the business, LinkedIn is the right place to reach other business professionals. But your business doesn’t need its own LinkedIn account – you do. This is a personal account, and it’s meant to be more for networking and building authority for yourself.
Yes, you may get a few leads depending on your industry, but this platform is all about personal branding.
Twitter for B2C Marketing
Twitter is the one social media platform that business owners often don’t know how to keep alive. Short and concise, this platform is great for customer service if you’re actually active on the site.
Men and women, aged 18 – 29, are the best suited for this site.
When using Twitter, know that it is a discovery channel with consumers using the platform to find complaints, questions and responses from your business. For services where the owner’s expertise is paramount, such as a top-tier lawyer, Twitter is a great place to display your expertise and creativity.
Twitter has 330 million monthly active users, so while it’s still very popular, it’s best to put your energy into Facebook if your time is limited.
Of course, you can open an account on all platforms, and you can start telling stories on Instagram, but all of this will be for nothing if you do not put your focus into each account. Every platform needs love and attention, and this means unique content, responses and engagement, and an analytical approach to find what content is working and what’s not working.