For most business owners, your ‘to do’ list is never-ending and you never seem to have the time or resources to get everything done. Adding social media into the mix might seem daunting, and you ask yourself – does my business really need to be on Social Media?
The answer is simply – yes! Social Media is integrated into the daily practices of most people’s lives and having a social presence for your business builds brand awareness and gives you a direct line of communication to current and potential customers.
Not only that, positioning your business on Social Media also:
- Helps direct traffic to your website
- Positions you as current, and relevant
- Helps your business SEO
- Introduces you to new audiences, and helps you learn about your current audience
But with so many different platforms available, and more coming into the limelight all the time, how do you know where to start? It can be tempting to try and have a presence on all of them but this approach is dangerous as individual platforms generally have different purposes and it is impossible to fully utilise all the platforms effectively at once, especially if you are managing them yourself.
It is important to establish which social media platforms will be the most effective for your businesses marketing objectives. Attempting to manage multiple platforms and manage them successfully, especially if you don’t have a dedicated Social Media specialist, can be risky.
91% of brands use two or more Social Media channels. This is a good place to start; choose one or two key platforms that will immediately benefit your business. When these are proving successful in generating leads and building brand awareness, you can always add more to your Social Media strategy in the future.
To help you create a Social Media plan that will work for your business, here are some considerations when choosing Social Media platforms:
What type of content are you going to use to communicate to customers through Social Media?
Think about how you are going to communicate to your target market. Is this going to be through images, lengths of paragraph, videos? Some platforms are more suited to certain types of content, so this may narrow down your options.
Consider what Social Media your customers are currently using?
The best place to start is to think about your target audience, and which platforms they are using in their everyday lives. For example, if you are a swimwear retailer and you have a ‘bikini collection’ suited to millennial females, Instagram is going to work well for your brand.
What social media platforms should I consider to market my business?
Here are some of the platforms you’ve probably been considering:
Facebook is now the most popular social networking site in the world. It is a highly visual, fun and interactive platform for businesses to market their product or service, regardless of the industry. The site is relatively low maintenance in comparison to other platforms where constant posts are required to remain relevant.
Facebook easily allows you to share images, videos, significant amounts of text and run promotions, whilst intricately monitoring your audience’s behaviour on your page. This means you can easily see the content that is working, and what isn’t, even before you spend any money.
Instagram is a highly visual platform that relies predominantly on an engaging image to grab your customer’s attention, which is followed up with explanatory text. A consideration for Instagram is that there are no clickable links associated with individual posts, so converting your post into traffic to your website, can be difficult. It is however used by 59% of its 500 million users every single day, with the average age being 18-29, so if your target audience falls into that group, you may want to consider it as it could be great for building brand awareness among your target market.
Facebook is also integrated with Instagram, so you should consider if Instagram will also work for your business as it is relatively easy to use both of them in conjunction with each other.
Twitter is a short, snappy, conversational platform that is good to be part of to stay relevant and up to date with industry information, but isn’t necessarily the best place to acquire new customers to sell too. Depending on your type of business it may be worthwole having a general understanding and presence on Twitter to monitor and join conversations about your industry.
Whilst it’s not always necessary to have Company page on LinkedIn, if you are the CEO, director, manager or owner of a business it pays to have a professional profile for networking purposes, particularly if you are a B2B business as LinkedIn helps to build reputation and trust. A ‘Company page’ on LinkedIn is worthwile for larger business / companies in terms of branding and also a helpful recruitment tool.
YouTube
This is the channel to use if you are going to be sharing tutorials, or videos often. The platform is heavily creative so it is important to have video content edited to appear professional if this is a platform you are going to use to ensure you remain professional.
Social Media is constantly evolving, as will be the case with your Social Media strategy.
It is important to consistently monitor and analyse how much your audience is engaging with your platforms, and the type of content they are engaging with. By evaluating what is working you can ensure you are generating quality leads.
Social Media marketing does require more time than most businesses anticipate at first and needs to be utilised properly to be successful. If you are finding that you don’t have the time or knowledge for your social media to be effective, or you just don’t know where to start, consider engaging the help of a Digital Marketing Agency who will be able to work with you to create and deliver your Social Media strategy, successfully.
Digimedia Worx has Social Media packages to suit your needs. Contact us today!
References:
adweek.com
blog.bufferapp.com
digitalmarketinginstitute.com
forbes.com
