How to choose the right social media platform for your brand
As you are probably fully aware, social media is among the most effective marketing methods that a small brand has at its disposal. However, it’s key to note that not all social media channels are created the same. Each platform has its particular set of users with their own quirks as to how they interact with content.
Brands need to be aware of these nuances when deciding to invest in social media marketing on a platform since it could impact how well their marketing efforts do.
Consider The Nature Of Your Brand
Is your brand business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C)? For B2C companies, Facebook, Tik Tok and Instagram help gain visibility, visually engage and interact with customers. For B2B, LinkedIn helps target current and potential clients and builds a personal connection. Also, every business should use YouTube to interact and share. It's Google-friendly and adds authenticity to your brand.
Focus On Your Core Target Audience
Small brands can't afford the luxury of failing often, so you need to make sure that your advertising budget is working hard. Instead of running after the newest social media property, spend time really understanding their audience and where they can find them. In many cases, Google search will deliver the best return; in others, it might be Facebook or Instagram.
Consider Client Demographics
What do you know about your customers as far as demographics? Are they older, younger, male, female? Start by doing a bit of research on this. When you dive into demographics, you'll be able to narrow down your platform and find the most beneficial one to pursue. Whichever you choose, put some time and effort into it. Don't spread yourself too thin by trying to manage multiple platforms at once
Go Where Your Ideal Customer Is
When choosing a social platform, it's less about your business and more about where your ideal customer spends their time. For example, if you're B2B, go to LinkedIn; if you're e-commerce, go to Instagram. You want to be visible, so once you've identified where your customer resides, you can be consistent and valuable to truly master your chosen social platform. Mastery makes the biggest impact!
Empower Advocates To Find The Right Channels
Instead of focusing on a specific publishing outlet or social media, we'd suggest the marketing team focus their time on empowering advocates, directly and via social channels. By putting effort here, instead of on promoting your brand in social media, you'll be able to see where these advocates get the most traction, allowing you to better target your activities as your brand grows.
Research Your Competitors
Research all your top competitors. Check each of their social media pages and see what content they are posting, how often they are doing so, and how many users are engaging with that content. Once you conclude which social media platform is yielding the greatest results, choose that one. However, before you start you should set goals and KPIs that correlate with those goals.
Focus On The Backbone Of Your Digital Footprint
Your website is the backbone to your digital footprint and communications. Websites are on emails, business cards and search engines. Think of it as a home before getting a car or beach house. Make it awesome, add great content and make it aesthetically pleasing. With time add blogs, social media platforms that you can direct to it. But beware of DIY -- just because you can doesn't mean you should!
Match The Platform With Your Audience
A common mistake for small brands is to push content to every available platform and stretch themselves too thin. Just because your company could have an Instagram page doesn't necessarily mean it should . Review your brand's goals and determine the right target audience. Then research social media platform demographics and create an account where your content will have the biggest impact.
Build A Consistent Strategy Across All Platforms
For small brands, maximising reach for minimal effort is key. Thus, more important than focusing on a specific social media site is creating a consistent social content strategy that is maintainable, then pushing that content to all main platforms. There are many free scheduling tools available that make it easy to schedule one or two posts per week pushed out to multiple places.
Understand And Align On Your Social Goals
Choosing a platform to focus on is dependent on understanding your goals for social. Prioritising Twitter to enhance customer care may be beneficial, given it is a top platform for customer feedback. Brands in the travel and hospitality industries may consider Instagram to showcase their offerings and properties in a visually compelling way. Aligning platform benefits with business goals is key.
Let Your Product Or Service Guide You
When a small brand is starting out, it's important to be functionally lean, to engage in the activities that will generate the highest ROI. When deciding which content platform to focus on, let your product or service guide you. For instance, if you're building a consumer-facing small brand, start with Instagram. If you're focused on generating quality leads, post value-add content on LinkedIn.
Participate In Forum Discussions
Medium, LinkedIn and Reddit provides the opportunity to share content and get it seen in front of many people, but don’t take advantage of that by sharing low-quality, uninteresting content. Make sure to put down your self-promotional hat, understand your audience, choose a catchy title and participate in discussions regularly.
Start With Email Software
Email marketing works for almost any industry or demographic. If someone has a social media account, they have an email address. Not only is email marketing an effective tool for communicating with your customers, but it's also a great way to find prospects! Email addresses are gold. If you can collect them, they're yours forever -- unlike social media followers, who could disappear at any time!
