There are 4.33 billion social media users worldwide. That’s more than half the world’s population! These users are spread across a variety of platforms.
If you own a business in 2021 and aren’t using social media to get in front of your audience, you’re missing a huge opportunity.
With dozens of platforms to choose from, how can you get your social media campaigns right?
Take a look at this list of social media marketing platforms to help you decide which is right for your business.
Why Use Social Media Marketing Platforms?
There are hundreds of reasons you should choose social media platforms as a tool for small business marketing.
Using these platforms is an easy way to get in front of your target audience. It’s a way to deepen your understanding of your customer and conduct market research.
If you use social media well, you can strengthen your brand’s voice and build an online community.
What Are Your Goals?
Before using social media marketing, you need to know what it is you want to achieve. Do you want more sign-ups to your emails, sales, brand recognition, or grow your community?
Build a strategy before you start and set measurable goals. Such as obtaining a certain number of followers by a specific date or increasing sales by X%.
If you know what you’re trying to achieve, setting out a plan to do it will be easier.
How To Choose the Right Platform Social Media Platform
To choose the right platform for your business, you need to understand who your target audience is. Which social media marketing platforms are they most likely to hang out on?
For example, if you are a b2b business, you aren’t likely to find potential clients on TikTok. You would more likely make use of Facebook or LinkedIn.
Find out where your customers and potential customers are most active and what type of content they are engaging with. This will help you design the best social media strategyfor your own content.
1. Use Facebook for Community
If you want to build a community around your brand, then Facebook is your best option.
There are billions of users on Facebook; your customers will be out there somewhere! You can run very targeted ads to find them; Facebook ads are an effective way to grow your audience.
Facebook is also a great way to directly interact with your audience, share articles, and answer their questions.
Create a Facebook group, make the group’s topic very niche, and invite people with interests related to your business.
2. Use YouTube for Educating
Want your customers to learn more about your business and give them access to what you’re up to behind the scenes? Then create a YouTube channel.
YouTube is a fantastic tool for creating highly shareable content useful to your audience. Film how-to tutorials or educational videos about your product or service.
The platform helps with your SEO and gives you content that’s shareable on other platforms.
3. Use Instagram for Influencer Marketing
Every second, 1,074 photos are uploaded to the app. Instagram’s visual concept of sharing photos and videos is extremely effective for brands to share their latest products.
There is an integrated shop function with the app that maximizes the ease at which customers can make purchases.
Whatever your business, there are easy ways to make engaging content for Instagram and easily engage with your followers.
The other effective way to use Instagram is with influencer marketing. There are hundreds of people in your niche who already have a huge following. You can pay them to promote your business to their followers.
Influencer marketing is extremely effective and has grown in popularity over the last few years.
Another way to promote your content on Instagram is through paid ads. You can sponsor your content to be put in front of a relevant audience. This is a great way to grow your followers.
4. Use LinkedIn for Networking
If you want to search for other businesses as your clients, LinkedIn is the platform you should use.
There are thousands of professionals on LinkedIn who you can reach out to for potential custom or collaboration. The community is very open; people are willing to engage with you if you reach out to them directly.
LinkedIn is also a great place for you to share thought leadership pieces and opinion pieces.
You can also share job listings on LinkedIn; it’s a great way to get high-caliber applicants without paying a steep recruiting fee.
5. Use Twitter for Conversation
Actively engage in conversation with people in your industry and potential customers using Twitter. Follow the conversations of others and get your voice heard.
You can also use Twitter to share a photo and video content as well as thought leadership pieces.
One of the most popular trends on Twitter right now is to share a long-form piece of content in the format of a Twitter thread. This means breaking down your message into bite-sized chunks and posting them as replies to one initial tweet. People can engage and interact with your points as you post them.
If you want to have thought-provoking conversations with your audience, then Twitter is the place to be!
Ready to Boost Your Social Status?
Social media marketing platforms are a complex beast; you can’t just invest your time into one and hope for the best.
You need a clear plan, mapped-out strategy, and a way to measure your goals. Do this for each of the platforms and use a combination of all five platforms if you want success.
No social media account got big without a bit of trial and error. Test different types of content to see what works best for your business. Get some expert advice if you need a little boost.
Follow these tips, and you’ll be winning at social in no time!
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