Designhill

How To Choose The Perfect Social Media Platform For Your Online Business?

Choose the Perfect Social Media Platform For Online Business

Last updated on April 26th, 2023

With 3.8 billion active users, social media is a whole different world in itself, hands down! Whether you’re a new entrepreneur, established organization, or just a user, social media is a go-to destination for interaction these days, isn’t it? It is no longer a question if social media is necessary for businesses or not. In this post, we’ll share how to choose the perfect social media platform for your online business as per the current market situation.

Marketing is no longer about the stuff you create, but about the stories, you share to sell your products.

And, social media platforms are the only place where you can make your stories heard by millions of people. These are the utmost required assets used by the big to small businesses.

Instead, its a marketing tool that needs to be deeply embedded in the marketing plan of almost every business that is here to stay.

Well, getting started can be difficult as social media marketing for businesses is different on every platform and demands a unique approach from all kinds of business.

Every social media platform comes with a set of features and limitations where you have to focus on making the most of what each one has to offer.

Now, that we have introduced you to the importance of choosing the right social media network, let’s move forward to a deeper understanding of each platform.

Footprint Statistics Of Social Media Platforms

01. Facebook

With over 2.6 billion (Statista) monthly active users and growing, Facebook stands to be the most used platform of all. This platform works for all kinds of content, i.e. images, videos, text, live streams, stories, etc.

But that’s not all, Facebook has also been leading and innovating in the social selling space with new features like Facebook Shops.

[Source:Pew Research Center]

Use Of Facebook

While also being used by the other age groups, it is primarily accessed by people from their mobile devices, and 94% of Facebook Ad revenue is from mobile devices.

Even with several social media networks just a click away, Facebook still received 1.62 billion users daily (74% of all users).

Moreover, you can also schedule Facebook group posts in advance, which can save you a lot of time and effort.

02. YouTube

It is the second most popular platform on the internet known for video sharing from creators to viewers. Businesses on YouTube can make the most of it by creating skippable or unskippable commercials, search ads, bumper ads, etc.

[Source:Pew Research Center]

YouTube

03. Instagram

This particular platform breaks the social market with one billion monthly users. In addition to photos & videos, it has recently developed features such as Instagram live, IGTV, REEL (similar to TikTok) & stories.

Instagram is for businesses with more visual content, whereas social media trends tend to make a boom on this platform. Using some Instagram growth hacks can level up your online presence.

[Source:Pew Research Center]

Pro Tip: Creative video posting edited with the help of video editing tools can increase engagement on this platform.

Instagram

[Source:@rachealskitchen (Instagram)]

04. Pinterest

Pinterest is another photo-sharing platform that allows you to link the picture back to your website. It also allows its users to pick up a published pin to promote their content.

[Source:Pew Research Center]

Pinterest

Pro Tip: Utilize Rich Pins to display more data about the content you’re sharing on Pinterest.

05. LinkedIn

It is, mostly known for B2B businesses is prominently used by people of all age groups. LinkedIn ads appear in the news feed and sidebars while you can also give a shot to Sponsored InMails.

[Source:Pew Research Center]

Hashtags on LinkedIn can help you discover trending topics of interest and allow you to engage with relevant audiences.

For better insights, you can always try your hands on LinkedIn tools available in the market and execute a better strategy to connect with professionals.

LinkedIn

06. Twitter

Twitter supports text, images, video, GIFs, links, etc., to its audience and remains to hold 330 million monthly active users (Omnicoreagency). With a 280 character limit, it makes the content posted there to be brief and precise.

[Source:Pew Research Center]

Twitter

After knowing quite a bit about social media platforms, let’s talk about how you can get started.

Start With A Plan, Always!

Before you begin, it’s necessary to lay your groundwork. If you have reached till here, it may seem tempting to dive in at first but wait back.

As important as it is to strengthen the plinth for a building to stand, a social media manager also needs to strengthen its marketing plan.

Remember, your target audience can never be “everyone”. Direct your market message to the ones who can make the most of your product/service.

List down a set of typical demographic segments of your target audience on social media. Go knee-deep and figure out your audience in each of these terms possible:

Getting an idea of your target audience will help you decide which social media platform can boost your social media presence. With a plan right in your hand, let’s dive into knowing how to choose social media platforms that are best suited for your business.

Choose The Perfect Social Media Channel For Your Business

01. Identify The Nature Of Your Business

The type of your business and its customer can directly influence the social media platforms you are going to use. If you have a B2C company, social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram can get you the right audience to directly approach your potential customers.

On the other hand, B2B companies can work well on LinkedIn to target likely client companies.

Although platforms are never always divided in terms of types of businesses, Youtube, as a social media platform should be explored by all kinds of companies to enhance their authenticity and interaction.

Different platforms work for different businesses where a primary identification of the business nature is essential.

Google’s LinkedIn presence is recruitment oriented but they also share the latest news and trends. Moreover, it talks about its employee’s achievements and is inclined towards showcasing the best of itself.

Nature of Business

For example: Chumbak, a lifestyle brand, showcases its visually appealing products on Instagram, where they directly divert the customer from the picture to their e-commerce website.

Chumbak

02. Consider Buyer’s Demographics

Never stop knowing your buyers when it comes to social media marketing!

Knowing your buyer demographics, i.e. age, gender, location, interests, etc, is inevitable but the challenge lies in giving a thought beyond those demographics.

Just having data cannot do the work, and which is why you should always ask yourself questions throughout your marketing journey, such as:

You can achieve several insights when you start pondering over these questions, which can eventually guide you in choosing the right social media platforms.

03. Go Where Your Ideal Customer Is

In social media marketing, it’s more about reaching the right place than just reaching everywhere. So, invest your time and efforts in juggling data about where your customer spends most of their time.

Once you’ve figured the platforms where your buyer persona is the most active, aim your marketing arrow right at it.

If you are a B2B company, the first platform you should go to is LinkedIn while if you are an e-commerce company, Instagram can be your most beautiful shot.

It might also differ from business to business according to the range of products/services they offer. Once you have figured out where your potential customers reside, it’s easier to go and knock.

Forever 21, an American fashion retailer company, showcases its products while making it visually appealing for the age group that resides on Instagram.

As Instagram appeals to more women than men and has the age group of 18-49, this could be the best possible platform to promote female clothing.

Forever

Forever clothing

04. Research Your Competitors

Business owners can never get enough of keeping an eye on their competitors, and the same goes for businesses on social media pages.

On social media, researching your competitors includes knowing what content they are posting, how often they are posting, what is working for them, and what isn’t.

Dig deeper into which platforms are the most used by other businesses in your sector and go back and forth from your brand strategy to their brand strategy every once in a while.

Remember, this isn’t a one time task to perform. Researching your competitors should be as frequent as your regular marketing tasks.

Once you develop a habit of keeping an eye on the market players, you will eventually come up with different strategies for different platforms.

05. Focus On The Backbone Of Your Business

With all the data collection, analysis, and creating content, don’t forget the core of your business. It might be a website, a blog page, an e-commerce website, etc., where you would want your social media audience to reach in order to be converted into customers.

For example, your blog posts might work well on Facebook but you are getting more conversion rates from Instagram.

In this case, your brand awareness is created well on Facebook which should be further worked on to convert customers as the audience there is already interested in your business.

And with Instagram, you should continuously work towards keeping the audience engaged and gain more customers at the same time.

madewell

While making it visually attractive, @madewell didn’t miss on linking back every product in the image to their website for immediate conversions. This method, being quick and effective, also works well for busy scrollers & social media users.

06. Match The Platform With Your Audience

Businesses often end up stretching similar content on all platforms, and that is where it all begins to fall. Using relevant social media platforms for individually relevant and valuable content can work wonders for your business.

Also, using a right form social media template to showcase the content is very important part of any social media strategy. And it’s never necessary to spread wide on all platforms, instead, you can give your best on the platforms that add value to your business.

For example, your business might not need a LinkedIn profile to convert customers to an e-commerce website. Instead, Instagram and Facebook might be enough for your business.

This again takes us back to researching buyer demographics which can probably guide you better to match the platform with your audience.

It’s A Wrap!

Choosing social media platforms can be tricky because no one can tell you what can work best for your business except you. Y

ou can only know that when you always experiment and execute. Who knows, you might even get surprised by the audience’s behavior on your platform!

Keeping these guidelines in mind while choosing relevant social media platforms can be beneficial but confusing too.

You can’t just live with a single social media platform in today’s world while you also wouldn’t want to spread thinly on all of them. Juggle your resources and find the right balance.

Keep in mind that your business should always be master of a few and not the jack of all.

Research thoroughly to become more aware of the social media world and use the right creatives using any social media pack, and with these guidelines in mind, I am sure you will fit in. Let us know what social channels you are using and which ones work best for you.

Also, feel free to add to our ‘how-to’ list in the comment section below.

We hope for you to make the right social choice!

Get Your Social Media Page Design

Exit mobile version