If you want to effectively widen your reach and attract your target audience, you need to establish your presence on various social media platforms. Unfortunately, many brands waste most of their time on the wrong social media platforms.
While platforms like Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook provide different benefits, engaging with your audience across various platforms won’t always mean that you’ll get results. This is the reason why instead of using several social media platforms, you should consider focusing on finding the best ones that would complement your brand’s unique needs.
Luckily, there are many helpful resources you can consider to find the right social media platforms suited for your brand. For advanced tips, check out some helpful marketing blogs or make sure to keep the following tips in mind:
In this article
- 1. Understand The Different Types Of Social Media Platforms
- 2. Know Your Target Audience
- 3. Consider The Kind Of Content You Plan To Share And Publish
- 4. Define Your Social Media Objectives
- 5. Know Your Resource Limit
- 6. Study Your Competitors
- 7. Measure And Test Your Efforts
- 8. Keep Your Brand In Mind
- Bottom Line
1. Understand The Different Types Of Social Media Platforms
Every social media platform is unique. With this in mind, make sure to spend more time understanding the platforms you’re considering. Below are some popular social media platforms you should be aware of:
YouTube
Since video content plays an important role in the world of digital marketing, YouTube is becoming a popular social media platform for brands that focus on creating and sharing video content or video blogs.
Depending on your brand’s niche, you can share instructional videos, how-to guides, or corporate videos. Use YouTube to make appealing videos to increase your brand’s exposure. Just take note that quality matters in terms of videos.
It’s one of the best and popular social media platforms to market any brand. By using Facebook, you can target your audience by interests, employment, age, and some characteristics, making it a dynamic platform to build brand awareness.
Make sure you track impressions, clicks, and other post-level and page-level Facebook metrics to understand what works and what does not.
Primarily used for trending topics, Twitter is a social media platform that’s originally designed for short but concise thoughts. But, these days, this platform has upgraded to enable users to share photos and videos. Still, untimely text posts are still Twitter’s popular posting style.
Typically, Twitter allows users to use hashtags to make terms more searchable in the platform. This is why the platform is a great way to stay up-to-date on trending topics and top news, enabling businesses to keep up to date with the events related to them.
This is a social media platform with an old-fashioned feel, but can be of great help in terms of networking. Having a LinkedIn account for your brand can help you connect with potential customers and investors out there. That’s why it’s a good option if you want to grow your email list. Just be sure to keep your information or descriptions current.
This social media platform allows users to save pins of photos from various parts of the world. Such images can lead to videos, blogs, websites, products, or services.
Pinterest started as a website for women to share home décor, wedding planning and fashion ideas, and recipes, but other topics are now included in the platform. Even if it’s still widely used by women, it’s now slowly becoming popular among men, especially those who love DIY projects.
Unlike other social media platforms available in the market, Instagram is known for being a visual-heavy platform as it provides users to post short videos and publish photos.
Using Instagram for your brand can help you increase your followers organically through the use of hashtags, storytelling, and good images. However, authenticity matters a lot on this platform.
2. Know Your Target Audience
Do you know your brand’s target audience? If so, on which social media platforms do they spend most of their time and what are the things they usually do on those platforms?
You should also know the other brands they’re interacting with, what attracts them, and how much time they spend on social media platforms. Aside from that, it’s wise to check the key demographics, like the location and gender of the users, to gain a better understanding of what every network is used for.
Once you know your target audience, it’ll be much easier for you to choose the social media platforms you should invest your time, money, and effort into. This is because different groups of people prefer different platforms, thus not all stick to certain social media networks. For example, if your target audience is teenagers, your brand must focus on platforms that are popular to them, which may include Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter.
3. Consider The Kind Of Content You Plan To Share And Publish
Knowing the content formats that complement your brand identity and goals is essential to select the right social media platforms for your business. This is because other formats are more suited to certain platforms than others.
For instance, on Facebook, different types of content are appropriate, but contests, articles, photos, and videos perform better. The algorithm of Facebook prioritizes posts that connect people and those that ignite meaningful conversations. In this case, videos are more powerful. This social media platform is also the perfect place to announce events or share webinars.
Instagram, on the other hand, is more on visuals as it enables users to post videos and photos. At present, its feature called Instagram Stories also offers amazing opportunities to draw attention to product launches or new releases. IGTV, which is another feature of Instagram, can also let you share long videos and do live streams.
When it comes to Twitter, you can share short-form tweets. The good thing about this platform is that it favors real-time data, so it’s widely used to share current events. However, if you want to get better traction on this platform, you should post text tweets, especially the ones that include quotations.
For sharing videos, you can use YouTube and TikTok as they’re popular for sharing video content. For YouTube, reviews and how-to videos are the best content, while for Tiktok, the content that works great includes recipes, memes, life hacks, and educational content.
You can also use Pinterest for your visual content. This visual search tool is also best to share infographics and photos of your brands. On this platform, you can make a blog board and create some beautiful pins for your posts. To maximize your outreach, you can share all of your posts on other group boards.
If you prefer to share editorial content, LinkedIn is an ideal choice as it helps generate leads and build authority in your niche. It’s also a good social media platform for brands who want to establish a presence in the world of B2B (Business To Business) companies.
4. Define Your Social Media Objectives
Before you choose any social media platform for your brand, you have to know your goals on social media marketing. Take note that there are many advantages and disadvantages of social media marketing, so you should be clear with your objectives for you to get the results you want.
Do you want to maximize word-of-mouth marketing, grow your follower base and audience or engage more with your current customers?
To define your social media objectives, you need to perform a business audit. Start by determining the aspects where you lack focus in your marketing endeavors. Is growing or building your audience something you should pay importance to? Do you need to drive more traffic to your website? The answers to such questions are crucial to determine the social media platforms that are best for your efforts. Also, the answers can help you maximize the perks of social media marketing to your brand.
Generally, your initial social media goals must not be tied to the followers or fans you wish to reach. But rather, pay attention to the platforms that will improve your engagement with your potential audience.
These days, the number of followers you have is more than just a vanity metric and it doesn’t mean that it can help your brand succeed in a highly competitive market. In fact, a big audience base won’t convert to tangible results for your brand, but a highly engaged audience can make a huge difference to achieve success.
5. Know Your Resource Limit
For many business owners, unlimited resources are great. But in reality, it’s quite impossible to achieve them. This is the reason why it’s good to have a better understanding of your commitment, money, and time limitations when choosing your platform.
Besides, you want to be wise when spending your precious money and time. So, by having defined limits, you can easily choose the right social media platforms for your available resources and brand goals.
To do that, you should first know your limits. This means knowing how much money or time you can afford to spend and the effort you put into each of your social media campaigns. Then, look for the social media platform that aligns with your budget. For instance, Facebook is best for those who want to post at least two pieces of content a day.
If your brand’s current resources are limited, you don’t need to sacrifice a good social media presence. Instead, focus on creating smart decisions based on the reality of your brand’s decisions. Once you focus your resources on the right social media platforms, you’ll be able to see results in the long run.
6. Study Your Competitors
Another way to choose the right and best social media platforms for your business is to research more about your competitors. To do this, you can perform a competitor analysis, which may include the following:
- What platforms they’re currently using
- Type of content they share
- Hashtags they typically use
- How often they post
- Which posts get tremendous engagement
- How they respond to the comments
- Who they tag
Once you gather such details, you’ll get better ideas on what to focus on. Depending on your niche, you can check at least five competitors and perform in-depth research about the social media strategy they use.
If you think it’s time-consuming to check the websites of your competitors and visit their social media links, you can always use the available tools in the market to make things easy for you. Fortunately, at present, there are many affordable marketing tools that’ll help save your time and help you get things done in an instant.
7. Measure And Test Your Efforts
It’s quite impossible to predict which social media platforms you must focus on the most, particularly if they all show promising results for your brands. However, if you don’t want to waste your time and money on other social media platforms and focus only on what works best for your brand, you have to test and measure your marketing efforts.
There are many things to watch out for when you’re posting to several platforms. One of these is to determine where you get the most engagement. Check the engagement rates of every social media platform you use and know what platforms offer you positive results.
You should also determine what posts are converting and if you’re getting the right amount of traffic to your website traffic. To get more information about your marketing efforts, consider using analytics and know which social media platforms send the most traffic.
Depending on what content you publish, consider their impact as well. Videos are known for being the most engaging type of content, but, sometimes, other content such as images and text posts also perform great.
8. Keep Your Brand In Mind
One of the reasons why you should take into consideration your brand when choosing social media platforms is that several brand personality styles don’t fit well on some platforms. So, spend more time considering what kind of brand personality you’re trying to cultivate to know where your brand fits well.
For instance, if your brand focuses on professional reputation and has an informative and more serious tone of voice, LinkedIn is the best choice for you. YouTube may also be a good consideration to create useful and informative videos.
For brands hoping to cultivate a fun or snappy tone, Twitter is the right social media platform for you as you can communicate with your audience better. Just weigh what makes sense for your brand and know what’s available for your needs.
Bottom Line
Not all social media platforms can benefit your brand. So, the key is to choose the right and best ones that’ll work for your brand. Once you know the social media platforms that benefit your brand the most, combine them to achieve a broader reach and get the results you desire.
