Which Social Media Platform is Right for You?

A social media strategy is more than just throwing up something on your Facebook or Instagram Page. It is about creating powerful customer engagement and web traffic. However, this takes time to happen organically and it will need a marketing budget if you want to make an impact quickly.

Simply put, this means that every action you take on social media should be part of a plan to engage and give your audience the information, interesting tips and things that they are interested in. You should know your business voice and use this when commenting, replying and engaging on social media. This may seem complicated but if you take the time to gain a cohesive voice on social media, you will find that the rest of your social efforts seem to follow naturally.

Social media is constantly evolving and growing, and you need to be aware of this as you plan your marketing.

To start here are some simple steps to get the most out of social media.

  • Know where your target audience hangs out on Social Media – it’s no use putting up a 1000 photo’s on Instagram if your audience can be found on Pinterest.
  • Know your Branding – what does your audience want to know, why and where and are you giving them a consistent look or all over the place.
  • Understand that your social media should work in conjunction with your website to create buyers from your audience.
  • Know which Social Media Networks will work for You. Even though there are many main social media platforms out there, you can also find smaller ones that may work for your business.

So here’s a quick summary of some of the social media channels available and why/why not you should use them:

  • Great first platform
  • Extremely vibrant, consumer-focused social network.
  • People use heavily to stay in touch with friends and family
  • App integrations with games.
  • High engagement.
  • Fan pages integrate with newsfeeds.
  • Free and paid marketing solutions.
  • Sponsored post opportunities.
  • Strong performance in the mobile ad network.
  • Rich in multimedia.
  • Viral traffic driver.
  • Consumers exceptionally critical about ad targeting and banners.
  • People don’t like to be hit over the head with a sales pitch on Facebook.

  • Image-Based visual platform
  • Strength in visual impact – using on saying “a picture is a thousand words”
  • ’Hashtags’ for discovering and participating in new conversations.
  • Heavy emphasis on connections
  • Ad platform.
  • Influencers have a big impact in today’s market

  • Micro-blogging platform for rapid and efficient distribution of information
  • Strength is in short-form communication; Twitter users are masters of condensing information into short spaces.
  • ’Hashtags’ for discovering and participating in new conversations.
  • Heavy emphasis on connections and meeting new people.
  • Ad platform.
  • Short-form messages can sometimes complicate or trivialize in-depth communication.
  • Ad platform can be limited to delivering web traffic; can be stronger for branding (but you need to test and see)

  • Virtual pinboard for curation of your favourite topics.
  • Can be extremely strong referral traffic driver.
  • Strong skew towards female-focused demographic.
  • Visually engaging and friendly format.
  • Opportunity for a community to share and pin products that they love.
  • Can be a challenging marketing medium for non-visual brands.
  • Self-promotion is really not big over here

  • Question and answer engine.
  • An audience of entrepreneurs, marketers, engineers, VCs, and students.
  • Genuinely curious and intelligent community.
  • Opportunity to promote and get distribution for blog posts.
  • Amazing opportunity to research topics in depth and to learn.
  • 1:1 connections can be difficult to achieve.
  • Requires dedicated time and effort.

  • Largest business-to-business social network.
  • Designed for networking and making new connections.
  • 1:1 outreach
  • Market intelligence
  • Employee recruitment
  • Variety of paid channel solutions
  • Interest-based groups
  • Some professionals don’t consistently use LinkedIn
  • Advertising on LinkedIn is relatively expensive
  • Don’t ‘spray and pray’ strangers with messages.

  • The world’s biggest video network.
  • Significant referral traffic driver.
  • Ability to reach a large audience.
  • If you are unfamiliar with how to produce quality videos, the learning curve may be a bit steep.
  • The qualifications to get Adsense (YouTube revenue program for creators) gets more stringent each year as more and more people join the platform.

It may seem overwhelming but remember, you don’t need to have a social media account on every single platform. Choose the ones that suit you and your business and running social media campaigns should be a lot easier in the future.

Posted in Online Marketing, Social Media