Do you need to be on every Social Media Platform?
All businesses will benefit from a social media presence these days, but that’s not to say that all businesses should be on every social media platform. So, how do you decide which platform, or platforms, are right for your business?
One of the best ways to answer this question is to look at what types of content you can create for your business. For example, the content you will find on LinkedIn is completely different from the content you will find on Instagram. The audiences across these platforms are almost the complete opposite, LinkedIn focuses on business relationships, whereas Instagram is more personable.
Instagram is a visually-led social media platform, it showcases images and videos that are interesting and aesthetically pleasing. Not all businesses have the capacity to create visual content that will capture the interest of their target audience, for example a hairdresser or a travel agent will have no trouble producing visual content because of the nature of their business. On the other hand, businesses like an insurance company would have to put in a lot more effort and use a lot more creativity to produce visual content at the same level as a travel agent.
The real purpose of LinkedIn is to be a platform for B2B (business to business) companies. This means that anyone who sells to businesses or is looking for investments or business deals should have a LinkedIn profile, and be active on there. It’s the perfect platform for fact-based content, though recently is becoming slightly more like Facebook.
Twitter is a strange one when it comes to social media, looking at it from a business/marketing perspective. It’s essentially a mini blog and requires a huge amount of interaction and time in order to see any ROI (return on investment). If you take a look at any business that has used Twitter successfully you will notice that they post several times a day, every day, furthermore, whenever there is a big, relevant event happening in the world they will provide an almost constant stream of tweets. The downside to this is that it’s going to need someone who can take that time out of everyday to post, which means employing a member of staff for that purpose, which you may not be able to afford or want to do.
Twitter isn’t a platform we recommend often, purely because the ROI is so small compared to how much time and effort is needed. It can, however, be a useful tool for tackling issues from a customer service point of view, and can help you gain credibility and respect.
The one you’ve been waiting for. It isn’t often you’ll hear us advise against Facebook, but there are some companies that won’t benefit from using it, these tend to be B2B companies, such as a courier company, that would be better suited to a social media platform like LinkedIn and find it difficult to generate leads on Facebook. The thing that makes Facebook so appealing and easy to use is that it combines the three aforementioned platforms. A variety of content will work well on Facebook, whether it’s images, videos or interesting articles/blogs. Whatever your business, you should be able to produce content that will work well on Facebook for your target audience. Facebook advertising is quite advanced and can be incredibly useful, even going so far as to help you target a very specific market to ensure your adverts are as efficient as possible.
Snapchat
Snapchat’s popularity died down when Instagram introduced new features, like the ‘story’ feature. That’s not to say the app doesn’t have users. You do need to consider though, your target audience here, because the majority of Snapchat’s users are under 25. Snapchat, a little like Instagram, is visually led, with the focus being on video more than images, so to be effective you need to be able to regularly create and post entertaining video content.
At the start, we said that the kind of content you can create is one of the things you need to consider. The other, is where your target audience is. Taking the example of the courier company, they may be able to produce content for Facebook or Instagram, but it’s highly unlikely that their customers are going to be looking for the services a courier company provides while on Facebook. If you have any questions about social media marketing you can contact us here.