There’s no longer any question that social media is a necessary marketing tool for every business that wants to remain relevant and visible. In fact, 88% of marketers say that social media has helped increase exposure followed by increasing traffic at 77%. This means that if you’re not using social media to its fullest, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity. But getting started can be difficult, and even something as seemingly simple as choosing a social platform can be more complicated than you’d think. There are many social networks out there and choosing your channels and creating a strategy can be daunting. But, the good news is that you can start by narrowing it down to the most popular and widely used platforms.

Which social media should I use for my business?

When it comes to figuring out the best social media for your business, the first step is to prioritize what’s important to you. Is it expanding your reach? Is it generating more leads? From there, it’s about determining which platform will give you the right exposure with the right audience. Is your brand very visual so it lends itself to platforms like Instagram or TikTok? Is it focused on real-time events and would work well on Twitter? Or is your audience diverse and so needs a combination of platforms such as YouTube and LinkedIn? Let’s dive into the social media networks to find out!

How to Narrow Down Your Choices

As you probably already know, there are social media uk mobile phone database platforms out there for everything and everyone, including ones to connect people with shared interests, similar hobbies, comparable demographics, and much more. The point is that there are way too many for you to be active on them all. Plus, your time would be better spent focusing on the sites that help you reach your goals.

Define Your Social Media Goals

There are many benefits to using social media, but it’s important to have specific goals before you move forward. That way you can create a successful social media strategy for your business.

For one, your objectives will help determine not only the social platform you choose, but also the content you create, the audience you target, and more. Here are some of the most common benefits of using social media that you might want to focus on:

• Improve your customer service offerings by providing another platform on which customers can reach out with complaints, questions, and concerns. Get some ideas of how to do this by seeing what other brands are doing to apply social customer service successfully.
• Identify new leads and prospects who are similar to your best customers.
• Reach out to new audiences and social media demographics who might be receptive to your products or services.
• Increase brand awareness and expose your business to new people.
• Learn about the needs, wants, and habits of your audience and customers. Increasing traffic to your site and boosting sales.

Determine What Channels Your Audience Uses

The entire point of successful social media marketing is to put you in contact with your most receptive audience. So, it’s not advisable to choose a platform where your audience doesn t operate. Unfortunately, there’s no ‘Field of Dreams’ opportunity here where your prospects will start using the social platform of your choice just because you’ve created a profile. Instead, it’s a much better idea to analyze which platforms your audience prefers and seek them out on the networks they already use. A key thing to do when starting this process is to conduct some audience research to define a buyer persona.

Another way to get information about your audience is through the social media sites themselves. For paid advertising, you can tell platforms like Facebook about your ideal customers, and they’ll estimate the audience size for you. You can also use analytics to determine who your audience is and are what they are doing.

Pair Your Goals, Audience, and Content with the Right Platform

Once you’ve settled on the social media goals, have determined where your audience is, and decided what type of content works best. Therefore, you can compare the different social media platforms to determine which one will meet your needs. To help you decide, here’s a rundown of the top platforms by audience size. Therefore, what they’re good for, and what a typical user looks like:

Facebook for Business: This is currently the largest platform, with over 2.89 billion monthly active users, with India and America leading the way in terms of country usage. Facebook is great for lead generation, and its advertising platform can be highly customized to target specific audiences. Many different content types do well, but the key is content that shows a different side of your company – behind the scenes content, along with user-generated content and interest-driven community groups. Video is also hugely popular, with Facebook Live performing well amongst users rising in popularity by 26% in 2020 and predicted to continue an upward trend. Facebook (and Twitter) are both excellent for reaching large numbers of people, but it’s important to remember that there’s a great deal of competition, so your content needs to stand out.