Jumping online and starting social media accounts on every currently popular platform is easy, but it doesn’t always make sense. Picking and choosing where to showcase a business is necessary for a few reasons; namely doing it well, reaching your intended audience, and meeting the goals of your marketing plan.
Scott Levy author and social media guru explains it well, “most people and companies can't be amazing on every platform; that takes a huge amount of bandwidth and resources. Instead of having a sub-par representation in a lot of places, be awesome on a few of them (Levy, 2013).”
Obviously the different platforms are good for different things and different types of businesses. This graphic offers a starting point for seeing the purpose of each social media outlet and also learning the limitations of each.
(Accion
Marketing and Sales, 2015)
Accion, an online lending service and business blogger, created the chart above and they also offer some insight on getting to a place where you can choose what sites are right for you. To get started take a step back from the computer and make a plan:
First, determine your audience. Write a detailed description of your typical customer. How old are they? What gender? How much money do they make? Did they go to school? What are their hobbies and interests?
Next, choose your goals. Are you trying to make sales? Build a relationship? Provide customer support? Network? Show off your beautiful products?
Finally, find your audience. Once you have a clear picture of who your customer is and what you want them to do you will need to locate them online. Are your ideal users super-young Instagrammers or are they an older group predominately interacting with brands on Facebook (Accion Marketing and Sales, 2015)?
Facebook
Facebook is clearly the most popular social media outlet with 1.3 billion users (Accion Marketing and Sales, 2015) and all businesses, brands, and personalities should probably have a page to represent them (except maybe brands that have more detractors than fans, like toxic waste plants or mass-murderers). Facebook is a great place for building an audience, telling a story, and creating a group of loyal and engaged consumers for whatever product you are selling (Levy, 2013).
As you can see on the graphic from Sprout Social, Facebook really has a great mix of everyone; men and women, old and young, rich and poor, educated and non-educated.
(Jackson, 2015)
Facebook Con: Because organic reach is hard to come by on Facebook it can be expensive to get your content in front of your intended audience. (Schaefer, 2015).
Twitter
Twitter has a much smaller and more targeted customer base than Facebook, again Sprout Social does a great job of outlining this in graphic form. Users are younger, wealthier, and more educated (Jackson, 2015). Twitter is a good tool for businesses to reach out and speak to people directly. It also provides a platform for those who have a constant flow of information to share including “breaking news, updates, questions for your followers, or if you want opinions now or even need to announce a recall (Levy, 2013).” Twitter is also a popular site for celebrities or public figures to share their thoughts and opinions on topics.
Twitter Con: Tweets have a much shorter lifespan than posts on other sites. It can take a lot of time, energy, and effort to keep up with the continuous flow of conversation happening on the site. Successful Twitter accounts require constant monitoring and multiple posts per day (Jackson, 2015). From personal experience, I also think Twitter is better for larger, more national businesses than smaller ones. Because there is so much conversation happening it is hard to find a hyper local and connected audience.
Pinterest
Pinterest is a super-visual, very easy to use site that is full of female users. The site also has a large number of users with more disposable income (Singh, 2015). Pinterest is a great choice for industries that are highly-visual, for instance “if you focus on wedding planning, travel destinations, interior decorating, fashion or foods (Levy, 2013).”
Pinterest is also really good at driving customers to a website (Schaefer, 2015) and selling products; shoppers who come to a site from Pinterest have been tracked to spend 10% more than shoppers from other sites (Comcowich, 2014).
(Singh, 2015)
Pinterest Con: Pinterest can be tough for brands that target men
because there are so few actually using the site. Because the site is built so
much on sharing content from other sources the original sharer can easily get
lost (Comcowich, 2014) . Using the site
regularly you often find pins of items you want to buy, items you want to make,
or patterns you want to replicate that are simply missing or point to bad
links.
Instagram
Instagram is still fairly new, but it is the fastest growing
social site. The space is also highly-visual making it an excellent choice for
celebrities, fashion brands, crafters, designers, and other industries that
have goods to show off. It also has 50 times the engagement rate of Facebook
and has become the social media channel of choice for many young users. It is very
mobile friendly, a pro for brands trying to reach markets that are connected to
their devices.
(Singh, 2015)
Instagram Con: Instagram still makes it tough for users to
share content, plus you can’t include links in the comment areas of photos
making it tough to drive sales or website traffic (Comcowich, 2014) .
LinkedIn
LinkedIn users are highly educated, mostly urban, and wealthy
(Singh, 2015) . Recently the site has
grown beyond a place to just a place to post your resume and see what your
college classmates are up to; they are now all about networking and their
updated platform allows users to create a blog for their business and publish
information and articles with their connections (Schaefer, 2015) .
(Singh, 2015)
LinkedIn Con: LinkedIn is nice for business influencers,
CEOs, and even individuals, but may not be productive for small business
owners.
Google+
”Google+ is the most mysterious of all the platforms. Is it
vital and vibrant? Or, is it a desolate ghost town? The answer is, both.” Google+
is good at creating communities centered around a subject (Schaefer, 2015) .” Some also feel the SEO powers of
Google+ are too strong pass up, especially for small businesses (Steeves) .
Google doesn’t share a ton of data on their demographics,
however the site is thought to skew more male than female and users tend to be
younger, however income levels seem to be represented across the board. One
thing to note is Google+’s large international presence which may be important
to some users (Singh, 2015) .
Google+ Con: Google+ doesn’t have a ton of users and it is
hard to tell how many are active (Schaefer, 2015) . Plus, it is hard to
find a convincing reason to use a site that people are constantly assuming will
die off soon.
Unless you are a giant company like Target or Starbucks,
being on all platforms and doing a great job monitoring and engaging customers
on each isn’t possible. Even though using Pinterest or Instagram might be fun,
it doesn’t mean it is a smart choice for every company. A business can only
commit to the channels it can keep up with or there is really no point. This
makes going through the process of determining where value can be added necessary
before posting anything. It is also a good exercise when new social sites comes
on the scene because not everyone needs to jump on Snapchat or Periscope,
especially if they are a bad fit.
References:
Accion Marketing and
Sales. (2015, February 9). Choosing the Right Social Media Platform for Your
Business. Retrieved January 31, 2016, from Accion:
http://us.accion.org/business-resources/articles-videos/choosing-right-social-media-platform-your-business
Comcowich, W. J.
(2014, May 9). Pinterest vs. Instagram: Pros and Cons for Brands.
Retrieved January 31, 2016, from Cyber Alert:
http://www.cyberalert.com/blog/index.php/pinterest-vs-instagram-pros-and-cons-for-brands/
Jackson, D. (2015,
September 15). Facebook vs. Twitter: Which Is Best for Your Brand.
Retrieved January 31, 2016, from Sprout Social:
http://sproutsocial.com/insights/facebook-vs-twitter/
Levy, S. (2013,
December 2). How to Choose the Best Social Media Platform for Your Business.
Retrieved January 31, 2016, from Entrepreneur:
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/230020
Schaefer, M. (2015).
What are the best social media platforms for your business? Retrieved
January 31, 2016, from Grow:
http://www.businessesgrow.com/2015/06/01/best-social-media-platforms/
Singh, P. (2015,
December 3). Understanding The Psychology Of Social Networks: The Secret
Ingredient To Social Media Success. Retrieved January 31, 2016, from
Blogging Wizard: http://www.bloggingwizard.com/psychology-of-social-networks/
Steeves, N. (n.d.). Pros
and Cons of Google Plus for Small Businesses. Retrieved January 31, 2016,
from Wishpond:
http://corp.wishpond.com/google-plus-marketing-resources/pros-and-cons-of-google-plus-for-small-businesses/
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