In today’s day and age, it is very difficult to find someone in a clothing store, who went there after seeing an advertisement in the newspaper, or hearing about some promotion on the radio. This is because traditional marketing methods are slowly being used less and less, as they are being replaced by social media marketing.
This is probably no surprise, as at least half the world’s population owns a mobile device, and so many people are connected to one social media platform or another. However, as a business, how do you choose which platform to use? What makes one platform better than another? What questions should be asked to choose one?
If you are looking for a social media platform to use for your business, but are unsure of which is the best and why, here is what you need to know about choosing a social media platform to use for marketing.
What Social Media Platforms Are There?
There are many social media platforms to choose from, and as mentioned, each have their advantages and disadvantages. Below are a few of the best, and what they should be used for and why.
- Instagram: Most businesses use Instagram for brand awareness, as it is a great platform to develop a brand image. The ones that recognize the importance of having a real audience who truly engages with their content can really boost their online presence. There are services available online such as Growthoid that can help in achieving faster results by finding the most ideal followers and audience. There are over 1 billion Instagram users in the world, so your audience is probably using the platform. Another reason Instagram is great for business is because business profiles are visited every day by around 200 million users. Instagram also makes engagement easy by providing users with many methods to connect with customers, making it a good choice for the humanization of brands.
- TikTok: More and more businesses are now using Twitter to also increase their brand awareness since the platform is focused entirely around entertainment, so brands have the opportunity to let their hair down and engage with customers so to speak. The platform has over 800 million users, making it almost as popular as Instagram, and the age of users is mainly between 16-24, which makes marketing a little easier and organic.
- Twitter: Twitter is still the favorite of many businesses, simply due to the fact that it has a diverse user base between the ages of 24-34, and the platform allows for many different types of content. There are around 330 million people that use the platform every month, and around 70% of those use the platform to be informed, which means the content from businesses should do just that. It is also a fantastic platform for customer service, which is what many brands use it for.
Your Audience
The first step to choosing a social media platform is knowing your audience, and if you haven’t done that yet, then it should be to identify them. This might sound a bit confusing, but there are certain questions you can ask in order to do that.
You should be asking questions like:
- What is the age of your customers?
- How much do they earn?
- Are they female or male?
- What are their interests?
These questions are relevant to understand the approach you would take when marketing, as well as which social media platform to use, since every social media platform has a different audience and marketing style.
Consider Your Brand Image
Your brand image, or personality, plays a large role in the approach you take when marketing on different social media platforms, and if you haven’t figured out what your personality is, then marketing is going to be particularly difficult.
You could consider this; you would not use the same marketing for senior styled shoes as you would for sports shoes aimed towards younger professional athletes. This means that you need to understand the tone of each platform, the users, and your own brand image, before you can adjust it to interest the audiences on the various platforms.
Know Your Goals
The next step in deciding which social media platform to use is to identify your goals. There are many businesses that are now using social media, and the ones that do it effectively have identified their goals and the purpose for using each platform.
Some of the typical goals that businesses have are things like; increase brand awareness, communicating with customers, using the platform to generate traffic for their website or store, to increase sales and conversions, and many more. If you want to use social media for customer service, or to communicate with customers, then Twitter is a good choice. If you are wanting to improve or increase brand awareness, then the go-to is either TikTok or Instagram.
This means that depending on your goal, there is a platform that is better suited to it than another, but the first step is identifying your goals and knowing why you are using the platform of your choice.
