How to Choose the Right Social Media Platform For Your Business

Social media is a very effective marketing strategy but not all social media platforms are the same. Each platform has particular users and different ways of how they interact with posts.

Businesses should be aware of these things when choosing to invest in social media marketing because it can affect how well their business will do on social media and the audience they will build.

1. Let Your Business Direct You To The Right Platform

First, what is the nature of your business? This is an important question to ask yourself because If your business is operating as a B2B (business-to-business) company, you will want to stick to more professional platforms where you can easily reach more business to work with. LinkedIn should be your first choice when choosing a social media platform as there is a lot of business on there. It also helps you get connections with professionals while still allowing you to connect to potential clients. If you are operating as a B2C (business-to-customer) business, you will reach more customers on platforms like Instagram and Facebook. Think about your businesses’ goals and that should direct you to your efforts.

2. Meet Your Target Audience Where They Spend Most Of Their Time

Once you find the best platform type for your business, you also need to consider where your target audience will spend most of their time. The way users interact on each platform is different and you have to understand the demographics of your target audience and what their behavior is like on each app. This will help you know where they’re most active and where you’ll most likely get interactions.

3. What Kind Of Content Will You Be Sharing?

This part can be a bit complicated. This is because you want to create content that will help you showcase your business and what you will provide but the platform you use will impact the kind of content you can post or share. Think about what the best platform to reach your targeted audience is first and then find a way to make your content to better suit their tastes. For example, if you audience loves watching videos and spend most of their time on YouTube you will want to start a channel and post there. If your audience is on Instagram, post pictures to showcase what you’re selling on there!

4. Have Your Platforms Support Each Other

Do you want to post on multiple social media platforms? This will help you target multiple audiences as well as help you to post different kinds of content to interest other people. If you’re interested in doing so, make sure all of your social media supports each other. For example, if you post your videos to YouTube you should also post to IGTV (Instagram TV).

5. Take a Peek At Your Competition

If you’re unsure how your marketing efforts will turn out and if they’re effective, take a look at your competitors to see what efforts they’re taking. Doing so will help you get a better idea of how effective different strategies are and what you can also do!

6. What Are Your Goals?

Don’t make your decision just by looking at different social media platforms. Choose which ones will help you business and help you achieve your goals. Even if it is a popular platform or it’s easy to use, always evaluate whether the platform will help you with your marketing goals.

7. Remember to be Consistent

When it comes to posting on social media, you need to be consistent. Users are constantly updating their feeds and you need to stand out. You will not see results by only posting once a month. Consistently will help your brand and your social media platforms!

Who Are My Ideal Customers?

Your ideal customer should be somebody whose needs will be met with what you’re selling. To find your ideal customer, start by asking your current customers questions about themselves. This will help you to understand who your ideal customers are and who you should be targeting. If you already use a website or social media where you can check your analytics, you may already know who your ideal customers are.

Steps On How To Find Your Ideal Customers

Here are some questions to ask yourself when trying to find your ideal customer and to who you want to market your product. This will help you to narrow down your focus and know who you should be targeting.

What Are The Demographics of Your Target Audience?

To find your ideal customer, you will need to know the following:

• Sex

• Age

• Location

• Profession

• Do they have children?

Asking and finding the answers to these questions will help you find who you should be marketing to. With this information, you can tailor your message to people who will listen.

How Much Are They Willing To Pay?

Using the information you know about your ideal customer, find out what their budget may be and how much they’re willing to spend on what you are selling. This is important because if your pricing is too high, customers may be turned away. If your product is priced too low, your product may then be seen as undervalued.

Where Do They Get Their Information?

After finding who your ideal customer is, find out where they spend their time online and where they get information. Do they use Facebook? Instagram? Read blogs? Once you find out, this will help you know where to post and publish the most to reach your target audience to sell and market your product.

What Do They Want?

If you’re targeting the wrong audiences with your ads, the results would be poor as you aren’t targeting the people who would want your product. For example, if you are selling cat food and your ads show up to a bunch of people who only have dogs, you may not get too many clicks or investments. You need to find the right audience for your product and then market it to those people. If you are only serving and showing your product to everyone, you may actually end up serving nobody.

Email Marketing and The Benefits

It can be difficult to conclude where you’ll put your marketing dollars but email marketing can help your company communicate with customers and get your company’s information out quicker. It can take patience and hard work but in the end, the results will be worth it!

You Can Promote Content Instantly

People are constantly checking their emails. You can instantly promote your business and your products by sending out emails to potential customers to see.

Save Money

Compared to other marketing strategies and ads, email marketing will save you a lot of money. Running Facebook and Instagram ads can be costly especially when you haven’t found your ideal audience yet. Email marketing helps you find that ideal audience quicker and for a cheaper cost.

Automated

You can create lists that people can join and you can schedule emails for people to receive on a routine basis.

Control Your Audience

You have total control of your contact list and what you send to your audience. You can gather information and find an audience that will be interested in your business.

Open Up Lines Of Communication

People can send emails back and interact with them. This allows your business and your customers to communicate and ask questions. Allowing communication will help your business build connections and credibility.

Collect Feedback

As people reply and interact with your emails, you’ll be able to collect feedback and know what to improve on and what you’re doing right. The most important feedback is the feedback from your customers and audience.

Generating Site Traffic

Emails are a great way to get more potential customers on your site. Including links to your site that are relevant to the content in the email can lead more people to your site to purchase and/or look at the content on your site.

Build Credibility

People are more likely to do business with people they know and trust. Emails give you the ability to build that trust by allowing you to share informative content to your audience.

Boost Sales

Customers are able to simply click a link and head to your website to make a purchase right from their laptop or phone. Email Marketing also allows you to re-engage with customers who haven’t purchased in a while and upsell to your current customers.

Get Immediate Results

With how quickly emails will get out and be seen, you’ll get quick and immediate results! You can view all the interactions and sales that have happened from your emails and watch as your sales go up.