Which Social Platform Is Good For My Business?
With all of the different social media platforms out there, how do you know which one will work for your business? It’s essential for any company to be present on at least one social media site as a part of their marketing strategy in today’s world. Not having a presence throughout social media hinders your chances of communicating with your target market and current supporters, which gives your competitors a chance to scoop up those potential clients and customers from you.
So moving forward, how can you know if a specific social media site will fit your business or not? Simple – do your research on which one will attract your followers. We’re going to break down the bigger platforms and also touch on other social sites that are good to have a presence on.
There are over 1.2 billion people on Facebook to date. That’s A LOT of people and they are all potential customers or clients. Facebook is the largest social media platform currently out there and because of that fact alone, it’s essential that your business (no matter the type) has a presence on Facebook. It’s become expected to have a presence on Facebook now-a-days and not having a presence, well, that’s like saying “I don’t want to reach out to over 1 billion people who could use my services or product.” Setup is easy and with the new features Facebook has to offer like Graph Search and hashtags makes it that much easier for users to find your business page.
There are currently about 500 million Twitter users.Twitter is good for businesses that have a lot of information to share on a rolling basis – specials, news, tips – or they just want to engage with their followers in real time. Because Twitter is more instantaneous than Facebook, it’s ideal for companies who tend to promote more often. When using Twitter, it’s essential to constantly post content throughout the day, otherwise your post may get lost in the infinite pool of status updates also referred to as the Twitter Feed. Twitter isn’t for every business and not having a Twitter won’t necessarily hurt your business either.
Pinterest is slowly making its way up there as another major social platform to get involved in. However, it may not work for certain industries because it is visually based. Pinterest is perfect for creative services, beauty/health related businesses, or restaurants. But before you shy away from it, Pinterest has also been proven to work for non-profit organizations as well. The trick with Pinterest is posting interesting, “re-pinnable” pictures. You can also link them to external sites, which basically creates a backlink for you – it’s a no-effort SEO tactic.
The biggest pro with Pinterest is how low-maintenance it is. Once you build up your boards and join or create group boards, you’ll start to notice an increase in re-pins and followers over time, even if you haven’t “pinned” in a while. For more tips on how to effectively use Pinterest, use our guides here and here.
Some other sites to get involved in are:
A professional online networking platform. Business often will put basic information about the business – an about, a website, etc – and some business will also post information about job openings as well. If you join LinkedIn, join groups that relate to your business and then share content. Sharing content will also provide a backlink to your website.
Google+
Google+ is highly underrated and received a great deal of criticism when it first launched. It is wise to join Google+ to just have a presence because Google favors profiles and shares done on their own platform. If you’re a company who is looking to get more involved with SEO, having a presence on Google+ is a great place to start. Also, Google+ is ideal for companies who have a variety of content to share (similar to Twitter) because it is a more public platform compared to other social sites.
Instagram/Vine
I like to think of these platforms as a hybrid of Twitter and Pinterst. You don’t create boards, but it is visually based. Instagram allows you to share photos and most recently videos too. Vine allows you to create 6-second videos to share. Both can work for any business, but it has to be updated regularly or you could lose followers. If you don’t know which one to choose, check out our breakdown of both here.
As you may know, there many more social media platforms out there, but it’s almost impossible to cover them all in just one post. These are just the top sites that we believe are great to have a presence in, but as we mentioned earlier, it’s not necessary to have a presence in every single platform, just those applicable to your business.
Which social media platform(s) are you currently on?
Source: MSM DesignZ, Inc. is a Westchester based NY web design firm specializing in SEO, social media, web and graphic design and much more.