How to choose the right social media platform for your business
Social media marketing is an integral part of any marketing strategy. It drives brand awareness and website traffic, helping you to spread the word about your services.
But not all social media platforms are the same.
Picking the right social media platform is a key element of any effective social media strategy, allowing you to focus your effort on the right channels for your particular business, so you get the best results possible.
But different social media channels attract different types of audience, and there’s little point in creating content for a platform your audience isn’t active on. You can end up spreading yourself too thin and wasting your all-important resources.
Instead, choose two or three channels and post high-quality content.
Which social media channels are best for my business?
If you’re just starting out on social media or want to review your current social media activity, try asking yourself these five questions:
1. Is my business mainly B2B or B2C?
A great place to start is to think about whether your business is targeting B2B or B2C audiences. Channels like LinkedIn and Twitter are often more appropriate for B2B brands, and Facebook and Instagram work better for B2C businesses. So, if you’re looking to sell your online coaching memberships to C-suite executives, posting videos to TikTok may not be the right choice.
2. What are my social media goals?
Knowing what you’re trying to achieve means you can assess which social media platforms would best help you to achieve your goals. For example, if your goal is to sell a product, Pinterest and Instagram might be a great choice, but if your goal is to generate leads, you might be better on LinkedIn.
3. Which social media channel(s) is my target audience(s) using?
Think about where your target audience might spend time online. Are they likely to be posting videos on TikTok or reading thought leadership articles on LinkedIn? If you have existing social media platforms, monitoring your insights will help you to understand more about your audience. If you have a website, you can also look at your Google Analytics to see which social media channel sends the most traffic to your site.
Learn more about target audiences.
4. Which social media platforms are my competitors using?
It’s time to get nosey! Research your competitors and find out which channels they’re active on, how often they post and the type of content they’re getting best engagement on. This will give you great insights into what might work for your own business.
5. What type of content is popular on this particular channel?
Does the type of content that’s most popular on a given social media channel align with what you know your audience is actually interested in? You’ll find that engagement is a great indicator of what they do and don’t like, and you can also ask them what type of content they want to see!
Once you know what’s likely to get the most engagement, research the social media platforms. Do they work well for the sort of content you want to create?
Over to you…
Choosing the right social media platform(s) is a combination of knowing where your audience hangs out, the type of content that fits your business and what your business and social media goals are. If a platform isn’t working for you, it’s well worth re-evaluating your strategy to focus on the best social media platforms for your business.
