As a business, social media is no longer negotiable. It's a crucial way to reach your customers and grow your business.
So why is social media important for business?
Beyond the traditional methods of marketing and advertising (radio, trade titles, mail-outs etc), social media allows your business to engage with customers in a timely and more human way.
By increasing your methods of communication with your customers online, you can increase your visibility through search result pages and increase all important traffic to your website.
So what platform is best for my business?
You don’t have to be on every platform, but it’s helpful to understand where your customers are most active and what your competitors are up to so that you can maximise your reach and boost sales.
We’ve highlighted the top 6 social media platforms to help you make the best decision for your business.
Twitter can be a useful tool for expanding brand awareness and connecting directly with prospects and existing customers. A tweet can contain up to 280 characters and you can use hashtags (#) to reach a bigger audience.
There are many ways to use the platform, for example, to offer exclusive discounts and competitions, to share blog posts or to answer customer queries.
Twitter has a great feature called lists so you can follow different segments of your customer base. There is a lot of noise on Twitter so you do need to make sure your tweets provide value to your audience. It’s important to plan for multiple tweets a day to stay relevant.
Twitter has come under lots of scrutiny of many in recent years as being quite a negative platform, and it is hard to get your times-worth out of the platform unless you develop a big following. It's a great platform for those in the film, political and entertainment industries, but possibly not suitable or time-worthy for smaller businesses.
Facebook is the most popular social network in the world which is why it's a top channel for businesses. With such broad reach, Facebook provides a platform to legitimise your business and create a community with existing and potential customers.
You can create a Facebook business page in seconds and start sharing photos, videos, and other short posts. There are multiple features you can take advantage of to promote your business such as Facebook Groups, Facebook Live and Facebook Stories. You can also drive visitors to your site through paid ads - their analytics tool helps you understand what works best.
Facebook have recently changed their algorithm making it harder for Facebook business pages to be seen, prioritising the reach of Facebook groups and profiles over business pages. Frustratingly this means it is harder than ever to build a decent following on Facebook nowadays. Yet it cannot be disputed that Facebook is the second most searched platform for businesses, second only to Google, and this makes it the perfect platform for nearly all businesses to be seen by their target market. The review feature also enables you to showcase just how fab your business is.
LinkedIn is a more formal social media platform for professionals and business owners, so businesses from many different industries, particularly B2B businesses, can benefit from being on the platform.
Like Twitter and Facebook, you can use LinkedIn to announce new products and services, share blog posts (as LinkedIn articles or via links) and build a relationship with your customers. As a business owner, you can use LinkedIn Publishing to promote thought leadership and engage in Groups within your industry to raise your profile. You can also ask for recommendations from your customers to your showcase your credibility.
A good way to look at LinkedIn is as an online networking platform. If you apply the same etiquette you would when attending a networking event or expo, you'll be behaving correctly on LinkedIn. LinkedIn saw a massive increase in usage over the pandemic, and so many new features have been developed and added to build upon this increase in usage; from lives, to stories and more.
Instagram has become a great way for businesses to visually tell stories about their products and values through their various features. It's also notoriously known as a positive platform, and so encourages positive usage.
It now has an ecommerce feature which means customers can look at products on your page and purchase directly on the platform . According to the latest Hootsuite statistics, some 60 percent of Instagram users now say they discover new products on the platform.
Instagram is popular with a younger audience (more than Facebook) so do some research to make sure your customer is active on the channel. At the moment, reels are a real algorithm cracker, and a great way of developing your page's reach and following.
Pinterest is a platform that allows users to share and pin visual content to a virtual pinboard. Businesses can create different boards to show their products, services or inspiration. It can help you build a compelling visual world around your business.
The platform can help drive a lot of traffic to your website, but it’s important to invest in high quality visual content to make sure it’s shareable and drives engagement.
This channel is especially useful if your business targets women - about 85% of Pinterest’s user base is female, and perfect for the more visual industries; from interior design, to photography and more.
Need help?
When deciding what platform is best for your business it’s important to set goals and objectives for social media and plan your approach accordingly. There have been massive changes across social media since the COVID19 pandemic hit us, and now is really the best time to utilise social media. You can find out more about how the pandemic has influenced social media here.
Contact us today to see what platforms are right for your business.