Social media is currently one of the best marketing platforms. You can reach a bigger audience through social media by creating and sharing engaging content. This platform isn’t only popular but guarantees a return on investment if utilized correctly.
One of the challenges most businesses face when venturing into social media is choosing the right channel. As you may already know, there are several social media channels, and each is built differently. Before creating a business profile on Instagram, Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok, you must be sure this is the best platform. That’s what we will discuss today, and hopefully, you can narrow down to a suitable social media channel for your business.
First, You Need to Identify Your Business Social Media Goals
Knowing your social media goals can help you choose a channel that is most likely going to deliver these results. Let’s go through the different social media objectives a brand may have and list suitable channels.
To Increase Brand Awareness
If your business is new to the market and wants more people to know about it, you must choose a social media channel with plenty of users. The good news is that nearly all social media channels are packed with users nowadays. Arriving at such a decision shouldn’t be hard.
You should also consider that brand awareness may require the intervention of paid promotion. Opt for a channel that specializes in robust advertising solutions such as Facebook. You are most likely to achieve your goals on such a channel.
To Increase Lead Generation
If your goal is to generate leads, you must consider channels that facilitate targeted campaigns. Social media is known to be effective at boosting lead generation. But that wouldn’t be possible if you are targeting the wrong consumers. Go for channels that divide audiences into smaller demographics. That makes it easier to target a particular group.
Secondly, You Should Find Out the Channels that are Popular Amongst Your Target Audience
This is a crucial step when deciding what channels to use for your business. It wouldn’t make sense for you to have a TikTok account, yet your target audience is the old society members. How many grandmothers or granddads have TikTok on their smartphones?
Before settling on a particular channel, look at the demographics of its users. You can narrow down your search to age, gender and location. Research is crucial as it can direct you to unexplored platforms. For instance, Pinterest is more common in ladies than men. If you are selling women-only products, creating a profile on Pinterest can be highly beneficial.
Thirdly, Evaluate the Channels Being Used by Competitors
Instead of competing with similar businesses, you should always learn from them. In this case, if most of your competitors are on Facebook, that means it’s the best source of leads for your niche. You should not copy everything your competitors are doing, but it can pay off to evaluate why they are using specific channels more than others.
Feel free to look at various business accounts on that social media channel. While you are at it, see how many comments or likes they are getting. This information is vital since it shows you whether that is the right channel or not. There are also many tracking tools that you can use to measure your competitor’s social shares. A good example is Buzzsumo.
Fourthly, Determine the Type of Content Your Business Ought to Create
Content is part of all marketing strategies. When deciding which is the best social media channel for your business, you need to determine what content you want to make.
Company news and industry updates
Such type of information mostly suits B2B companies. You need to convey such content on professional platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn. There you will find users that have an interest in such content. For businesses that want to post editorial content, LinkedIn is also a great choice, and so is Facebook.
Video content
YouTube and TikTok are the leading content mills on the internet. If most of your content is in video format, focus on these channels.
Pictures and Images
Pictures work well with Instagram and Snapchat. These are solely image platforms and should accommodate this type of content.
Don’t Limit Yourself to One Social Media Channel
After evaluating the above factors, you should have specific social media channels in mind that seem ideal for your business. Depending on the nature of your business, you may have to use more than one channel. As you do so, it’s important to be careful. Too many platforms can be challenging to manage. Stick to two, at most three, and create a social media calendar so that you can balance all.
Alametrics offers innovative social media marketing solutions for businesses that can’t settle on a social media channel. We can identify suitable channels for your business and develop effective social media marketing strategies for you. Contact us and let’s talk more about the benefits of social media marketing.
