Choose the Best Platform for Social Success!
As I regularly talk about in my blog posts, social media for business is becoming an ever essential aspect of running a successful business. Today I am going to discuss how best to choose the appropriate platform for the purpose of your business. Having a strong and effective presence on a social media platform that does not best serve your needs is not an effective use of your time or resources.
Before we discuss how to find the correct platform or platforms for your business, let us first touch quickly on a few key concepts that you should always pay attention to.
First of all you need to remember that social media on the whole is a marketing tool and should be treated with the same professionalism that you want your business to be synonymous with. This applies not only just to your text content but also to any images and videos you might wish to use. Additionally you should have the right balance of self-promotion and entertainment. As a rule you should always aim to entertain and educate your audience much more than you push your own agenda. Furthermore, relying solely on your own content will be exhausting for you and boring for those you are feeding it to. Discovering, digesting and then sharing the content of others will help to keep things fresh and interesting.
With those rules in mind, let’s take a look at which platform you should be focusing your initial efforts on.
If you are a business that sells to consumers then an effective Facebook presence is essential. This is where the real people are, viewing your adverts directly alongside photos and updates from their family and friends. Build a business page, invest a little bit of money each week creating targeted ads and be sure to communicate with your followers regularly. Once a day should be the maximum number of times you post otherwise you will run the risk of annoying and therefore losing your audience. The many different targeting options allow you to gain maximum visibility with the correct demographic and also the ability to geo-target is especially useful!
On the other hand, if you are a business that markets their services towards other businesses then LinkedIn is the most sensible choice. Create your company page, build a following and spread your message. You should only share your own company news or completely relevant pieces of information to LinkedIn in order to keep your message on point.
Regardless of the type of business you run, having a voice –and a loud one at that – on Twitter will help to bring customers to your website. Within reason, it is almost impossible to over-use Twitter and you should aim to tweet about your products and services at least five times a day to catch attention.
If your business sells visually appealing products then Pinterest and Instagram are the places to be. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t also be on Facebook, but you should ensure your products are being seen here too! As with Twitter you can post much more liberally than you would on Facebook or LinkedIn and you should certainly aim to do so several times a day!
Being strategic when it comes to where you focus your efforts can help you to reach your business goals with much greater ease. Check back soon for information and advice on how to make the most of each of these platforms!
By Alix Jones
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