One of the questions we are asked the most is which social media platform is the ‘right one’.
The answer to this question depends on a few factors, including your budget and the nature of your business. While it helps to have a presence across platforms, it makes sense to focus on the one which will provide the best returns.
Here’s an idea of how effective the major social media platforms are, depending on what you do, and how to leverage them for the best results.
The big kahuna. If you’re not on Facebook, you’re in the minority, even as a business. This platform has 16 million users in Australia, which is more than half of the population. Rule out children and the elderly and you have pretty much every consumer using Facebook, with many scrolling through their feed several times per day.
Facebook is an excellent way to reach customers if you have a B2C product or service. You can share blogs, pictures, videos and company updates, or you can create advertisements to promote a special deal or product.
The beauty of Facebook advertising and promotion is you can target the people who see your content. For example, you can create a post and promote it to reach women who live in Sydney, are between the age of 25 and 45 and who have children. Alternatively, you could focus on men over the age of 50 who are interested in weight loss.
With business numbers reaching saturation levels on Facebook, the catch is you do need to commit some budget if you want to get seen. Facebook does this of course to make money but also so that our feeds are not packed with advertisements from shonky providers.
Set aside some budget for Facebook, play around and see what works. You can cancel your campaign at any time or try a new tactic.
Ideal for B2B organisations, LinkedIn keeps things professional.
This platform is essential for those who want to be seen as thought leaders and who offer a product or service to other businesses.
Post a mixture of content including company announcements, shared articles, videos and original content. Make sure you go beyond a basic sales pitch and aim to craft content which can help your audience. Include a quality personal and company profile to add credibility when people take the steps to research your business.
To make the most of LinkedIn, connect with people who know your current connections to expand your network. When reaching out, be subtle in your pitch; LinkedIn is not so much about the hard sell. Be an active participant by commenting on and sharing other people’s posts and more of your ideal clients will start to take notice.
There are several paid tools to help you make the most of LinkedIn. These may be worth the investment if you see regular results.
All the pretty pictures live on Instagram. Building a following can take a lot of work but you can also promote posts so your brand gets noticed.
Instagram success goes hand in hand with expert photography and videography. Your images and videos need to be eye-catching to prevent people from scrolling past them.
Posting things ad-hoc won’t get you very far. To make an impact on this platform, you need to be consistent and post multiple times a week, if not per day. This means a well-planned strategy and hiring a person or provider who is dedicated to maintaining your content.
You can also use Hashtags to increase your reach, and other paid platforms to increase your followers. You can also run ads on Instagram, via the Facebook Ads dashboard.
Twitter’s popularity is fading somewhat as a general platform but it can be very useful to get noticed by the media or industry influencers. Follow your favourite industry journalists or thought leaders and post content they may be interested in, or share a response to a current issue and tag them.
These experts are always looking for fresh voices and they may reach out to you for more information (and some free publicity).
The beauty of all these platforms is you can try different wording and images to see what works. Don’t be afraid to experiment so you can see what really works. Craft a few advertisements to reach segmented audience members and draw more sales your way. To make things easier, you can also try a platform like Hootsuite, which will allow you to post on every social media outlet from a single web browser.
Want to learn more?
You can learn many more tips like this, and we go into a lot more detail at our FREE One-Day Business Growth Workshop called 52 Ways. Visit 52Ways.com to claim your free ticket for an upcoming workshop.
