Featured photography: pikisuperstar (modified)
W
e’ve all lived through the rise of social media and felt the change in the business world. A social media strategy is now integral to any great marketing plan. But, amongst the never-ending trends and the new platform popping up every year, what is actually worth considering for a business?
We’re here to untangle the mess and give you our best professional advice.
A short recap of the benefits
So, we all know the benefits of social media…
- Save money on advertisements
- Boost website traffic
- Raise brand awareness
- Gain market insight
- Get a secondary income (for some of them)
…and we all want a slice of this cake!
Now, you need to determine which platform will be best for you.
It’s important to note that not all these platforms will fit your business needs and target market.
Your choice of weapons are:
- YouTube
- Tik Tok
.
“determine which platform will be best for you”
Here’s our advice…
Which platform for whom
Facebook – The giant that started it all
The largest and oldest social media platform! It’s safe to say that you want to be on there.
- Nearly 3 billion monthly active users (MAU)
- How to use the platform:
- Share content & info with your customers – the algorithm favours content that sparks engagement (likes & shares), and conversations (comments), so post only if you have interesting content.
- Actively promote your business with their advertisement tools – you can target very precisely with these tools, so make sure you address your buyer persona.
- Create a community – the ability to create a group for many like-minded social media users to be a part of, is a powerful way of connecting with a large number of users all at once. Some of them could be your next potential customer.
- Target audience: the main users of this platform are between 35yo and 45yo
- Who is it for: B2C companies, especially small businesses
Tip On-Target: You can use this tool to create and interact with your community – the best way for a brand to appear benevolent is to help their customers in some way that, at first glance, doesn’t benefit the company. For example, a yoga brand that strongly focused on eco-friendly material created a group for their customers to share daily life tips on eco-friendly options and up-cycling. It’s a good way to stay connected to your customers and inspire brand loyalty.
.
Instagram – Esthetically pleasing content only
A great and efficient platform if your company can focus on creating consistent, valuable and relevant content.
- 2 billion monthly active users (MAU)
- How to use the platform:
- Share content – behind-the-scenes, creative process, how-tos, funny or cute videos,… only post stunning photos, incredible designs and esthetically pleasing videos with your audience that has a WOW factor (emotional, incredible, one-of-a-kind, motivating, inspiring, funny, etc.)
- Actively promote your business with their advertisement tools – link it with your Facebook tools, and use hashtags and geo-tagging for more efficiency.
- If you’re an e-commerce business, it is really worth considering setting up an Instagram Shop. Invest in great photos to showcase your products and in time to create valuable content. The check-out tool is definitely helpful, as customers can buy your product without leaving Instagram.
- Target audience: the main users of this platform are between 18yo and 35yo
- Who is it for: B2C companies, small businesses, entrepreneurs, e-commerce.
Tip On-Target: You can use the live-stream tool to connect with your audience and answer questions, film a launching event or bring them on tour.
.
YouTube – The unbeatable video-sharing platform
It’s the second most popular search engine after Google.
- 2.6 billion monthly active users (MAU)
- How to use the platform:
- Only consider this platform if you can invest time in creating valuable videos that people will want to watch for more than a minute. Videos that work well are entertaining, informational (e.g. product review) or educational (e.g. tutorial – learn a new language, yoga flow, breathwork,…)
- Target audience: the main users of this platform are between 15yo and 35yo
- Who is it for: B2C & B2B companies, small businesses.
Tip On-Target: Drop the link to your website in the video description to drive traffic, and don’t forget to use your community tab to extend your reach – it features many tools that both Facebook & Instagram have from within YouTube (polls, sharing photos etc.) and is another source of engagement.
.
LinkedIn – The serious business platform
It is not just a networking platform anymore.
- 310 million monthly active users (MAU)
- How to use the platform:
- It’s always good to at least have a basic page on the platform, as it shows your seriousness about your business.
- Share content like longer blog posts with your customers that showcase your values, spark conversations and can drive more traffic to your website.
- Share technical & professional documentation such as PDFs, Word documents & Powerpoint presentations. Some of them could even be lead magnets (more on those in a future blog post of ours)
- Promote your business through targeted personal messages to people that match your audience.
- Target audience: the main users of this platform are between 25yo and 40yo
- Who is it for: Mainly to work in B2B.
Tip On-Target: This platform is mainly used to reach out to industry leaders to recruit talents but if you decide to use it to share content, you need to make time to stay active answering the comments.
.
Pinterest – The platform that inspires
A visual search engine.
- 433 million monthly active users (MAU)
- How to use the platform:
- Keep in mind how people use the platform. Think of it like a bookmark – users shop for inspiration, discovery of new products and ideas. Pinterest says that 80% of the users that pinned something end up buying. So, use this platform to drive traffic to your website and make a sale.
- Target audience: the main users of this platform are women between 18yo and 55yo
- Who is it for: if you’re in the business of travel, home decor, garden items or landscaping, fashion, beauty, lifestyle (e.g. wedding), photography and DIY.
Tip On-Target: This process is such a thing, it has its own name – ‘Pinspiration’. It’s definitely for you if you’re in the business of inspiring or helping achieve people’s dreams.
.
Tik Tok – The newbie who’s breaking records
A short video-only platform.
- 1 billion monthly active users (MAU)
- How to use the platform:
- Challenges content and themed hashtags are working on Tik Tok right now. Use the platform to run ads or reach out to influencers to make creative content with your product.
- Some examples of what’s working right now – sport curated content from ESPN or NBA, some beauty tutorials from Fenty Beauty, favourite recipes or dance challenges from Chipotle, workout challenges or inspiring journeys from a Gym brand, fun skits about news from the Washington Post, cute animal videos from a zoo.
- Target audience: the main users of this platform are women between 10yo and 29yo
- Who is it for: B2C targeting a younger demographic.
Tip On-Target: Think fun, cute or inspiring.
.
Twitter – The newspaper 2.0
Potential to go viral quickly.
- 436 million monthly active users (MAU)
- How to use the platform:
- Twitter strongly emphasises real-time information – think news, entertainment, sports, politics, and opinions.
- To share short updates and links to your blog and engage with your followers (liking, retweeting, etc.)
- Potentially huge user engagement via viral conversations. The retweet feature is more than just sharing – a user can quote re-tweet to add an extra quote/opinion of their own on top of the original tweet. It’s not uncommon for a single reply to a tweet to become a whole new conversation thread via that reply being retweeted.
- An interesting development in this platform’s life is that it is now used as an alternate customer service channel. Salesforce even called it the number 1 tool for it.
- Target audience: the main users of this platform are men between 18yo and 30yo
- Who is it for: B2B companies, companies focused on news.
Tip On-Target: It’s a great tool to study your audience and see what they’re talking about. If you decide to use it, make sure you post interesting content as well as links to your blog posts.
.
Final advice from us – the same content can be reused and shared on several of your platforms to save you some time in the creative process. Some videos transfer well from Tik Tok to Instagram and Facebook.
We know this process is time-consuming, that’s why we created our 5 Alive! Social Strategy – we designed it for the social media newbie and the already established brand. You can choose the best offer for you depending on the number of platforms you are on.
.
Creative genius, talented wordsmith and all-rounder copywriter up for the grabs! If you can’t stand the look of your copy right now, she’ll shape your rambles into the most compelling words.
Marie Rene | LinkedIn
