Social Media Platforms: How to Choose the Right One for Your Business

Social media platforms are not a one-size-fits-all concept; choosing the right one for your business is key to your marketing campaigns. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter all target different groups with different interests using different methods. Knowing who you want to see your ads is the first step in choosing what kind of advertising you want to put money in to, and it only goes further from that. There’s a reason there are entire companies who specialize in your online presence: they know how to navigate the ins and outs of various social media platforms. There’s a science to knowing which social media platforms are the right ones for your business, and we’ve got that science lab open for business!

Finding your target audience is step number one for brand awareness

If your company is a law office, would you rather put flyers in a prison or an elementary school classroom? It’s an extreme example, but it demonstrates how important your target audience is. Obviously, the lawyer who puts flyers in a school isn’t going to get any business out of kids who would beg mom for crayons, just as your business won’t get any new clients by advertising to the wrong people. Knowing who you’re ‘targeting’, a term used in social media advertising to indicate who you’d like your ads to reach, is key to achieving a positive return on investment. Certain target audiences won’t use certain platforms; a scrapbooking or ladies’ fashion design company would see success on Pinterest, where most viewers are women. Facebook tends to lean towards people seeking a connection with old acquaintances, so it’s a great tool for letting your fans know what advancements you’re making. Instagram is photo-based, so people looking for visually striking businesses (i.e. a coffee shop with a beautiful matcha latte on the menu) will seek places to visit there. Identifying who you’re looking for will help your social media campaigns succeed.

Locate where your competitors are advertising

If there’s a lot of fish in your part of the sea, they may be after a particularly delicious piece of bait. Social media is public, which means you get to take advantage of where your competitors are posting and what type of content they’re promoting. This does not mean you should plagiarize a competitor’s ad campaign (we’ve seen plenty of times this has backfired), but a little espionage won’t hurt. Smaller businesses gain a huge step up by looking at what hooks (otherwise known as social media platforms) their competitors are using to reel in clients, and can play off of them to enter the market. If a similar business sees a lot of Facebook likes or retweets on Twitter, you know where to start posting.

Social media platforms should be used by businesses in a personal way

Social media was built to be just that: social. When people look or stumble upon your business online, they still want to feel some personality! How you project that personality ties directly in with which social media platform is right for your business. As we mentioned, Instagram is a very visual platform. Should your business be ripe with opportunities for bright, eye-catching photos, it would be a useful tool. Facebook is great for long-term connections, so a company looking for repeat customers would be wise to use their ad features. Whatever choice you go with, there are tips and tricks (such as using live streaming to increase viewer trust) to have your business succeed. For help launching and maintaining your social media ad campaign, reach out to our social media team at Success City Online at 702-350-2870!