It is generally the first question that people ask us – Which social media platform is best for my business?
The best answer to give is to say all, but in reality, businesses rarely have the time nor finances to have a presence across all of the major social media platforms so we need to study which platforms will generate the best results for your business. In order to answer this question we also must look at you and your business:
- What products / services are you selling?
- Who is your target audience such as gender, age and location?
- How much time / budget can you commit to social media?
- What are you looking to achieve on social media, direct sales or increased brand awareness?
Generally companies will use any of the following platforms: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Instagram. How to decide if one or more of these platforms would perform better than another you need to think about:
- Your current competitors, are they on social media and if so what platforms are they having success with?
- What content is being shared within your sector on social media?
- Is there a gap in the market for you to change the way in which your sector is being marketed, can you adopt videos, viral or guerrilla marketing, Apps etc?
- Where is your target market active and what times are they active?
- Trial and Error. Think about trialing each of the major platforms and using analytics, research which is performing better.
To answer the common question, which is better Facebook or Twitter, there needs to be research because for some businesses both are better and for others results are far more productive from using only one of the platforms.