Social media is an essential tool for any business that wants to remain relevant and gain exposure online. Because not only can it connect you with prospects, but it can also help you reach out to people all worldwide. Furthermore, social media is an invaluable tool for building brand awareness, finding new leads, generating more website traffic, getting to know your audience better, gaining insight into the shopping habits of your best customers, and even improving your customer service.
Undoubtedly, social media is a crucial marketing tool for every business wanting to stay significant and noticeable in today's cluttered online world. Many results have proven that social media has helped increase exposure; as such, if you are using social media to its fullest, you're missing out on a huge opportunity. The skill to selecting the right social media platform for your business is all about affirming the goals you want to achieve through social media marketing. Figuring out what platforms your target audience use, and choosing a platform that matches your type of content.
However, getting started can be difficult, and sometimes, choosing a social platform can be more complicated than you'd think. There is a number of social media platforms to choose from, but the good news is that you can start by narrowing it down to the standard and most widely used platforms. From there, it's all about determining which platform will give you the exposure you want, to reach the right audience, and to figure out which one will help you meet your marketing objectives.
Start By Selecting
There are many social media platforms, including ones to connect people with shared interests, similar hobbies, comparable demographics, and much more. The detail is that there are way too many social networking sites, and you cant have a presence on them all. Your time would be better spent focusing on the sites that get the most traffic. Some of the top social media platforms in terms of high numbers of monthly active users include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.
Define Your Goals
There are many benefits to using social media, but it's essential to have specific goals before you move forward. For one, your objectives will help determine not only the social platform you choose, but also the content you create, the audience you target, and more. Here are some of the most common benefits of using social media that you might want to focus on:
Improving your customer service offerings by providing another platform on which customers can reach out with complaints, questions, and concerns Identifying new leads and prospects who are similar to your best customers
Reaching out to new audiences and new demographics who might be receptive to your products or services Increasing brand awareness and exposing your business to new people
Learning about the needs, wants, and habits of your audience and customers. Increasing traffic to your site and boosting sales
Determine What Channels Your Audience Use
The entire point of social media marketing is to put you in contact with your best audience, so it's not advisable to choose a platform where your audience doesn't operate. It is the best idea to analyze which platforms your audience prefers. There are a few different ways by which you can find this, and one of the most straightforward is a simple customer survey. Another way to get information about your audience is through social media sites themselves. With platforms like Facebook, you can actually tell Facebook about your ideal customers, and they'll estimate the audience size for you.
Lastly, Examine the Type of Content You Create
Different types of content work better with specific social media platforms, so it's essential that you consider the type of content you create and that works best with your brand. Instagram, for instance, is all about the pictures, so it may not be the right choice if most of what you create is long-form textual content like whitepapers. The type of content you create will depend on a number of things, including your industry, your brand, and your target audience, but content types you may focus on include:
Blog posts
Podcasts
Testimonials
User-generated content
Webinars
Ebooks
Whitepapers
Videos
Photographs