Social media platforms can be a powerful tool to grow your business. The question is: how to choose the right social media channels for your business?
The importance of social media to your business
Social media allows you to communicate in real time with your customers and interact with them, increasing brand trust and loyalty.
Social media can also help you get new customers, and increase brand awareness and recognition. Don’t forget that social media has a high reach, thus helping you reach many potential customers all over the world.
Another social media advantage for businesses is that it allows you to do market research and access important insights about your audience.
Questions you should answer to choose the right social media channels for your business
The first thing you should do to choose the right social media channels for your business is to answer the following questions:
- What are your social media strategy objectives?
- What channels is your target audience using?
- What channels are your competitors using?
- What kind of content do you want to create?
- How many channels are you able to manage?
Once you have the answers to these questions, you need to understand each social media channel and know its benefits. With this information in hand, you will be able to choose social media channels that will help you achieve your business goals.
List of social media channels and when to use each of them
In order to help you understand each social media channel, we will analyze the available channels and give you some insights about them.
For a business to be present on Facebook, it should create a page. A strong Facebook presence is a great way to form genuine connections with customers, get new leads, and stay relevant to your audience.
However, despite Facebook being one of the most used social networks in the world, audience engagement on pages may be low, because Facebook’s algorithm prioritizes posts from friends and groups. Your business will need a strong Facebook strategy to be successful.
One of the key advantages of Facebook is the ads. Facebook has a very complete and useful platform that helps you set effective Facebook ads. Moreover, Facebook ads reach is huge!
Some key aspects of Facebook’s audience:
- 2.93 billion monthly active users
- The largest demographic group of Facebook users is between the ages of 25 and 35 years.
- Gender distribution: 56% of Facebook users are male and 44% of Facebook users are female.
- Countries with over 100 million Facebook users include India (320), the USA (190), Indonesia (140), and Brazil (130).
Instagram users use the platform not just to follow people and post pictures, but also use the app to research new products, stay in the loop with their favorite brands, and make purchases.
Besides the high number of active users, Instagram also has several options to create different types of content, enabling businesses to choose between posting stories, pictures, short and long videos, or even lives! And you can also create an Instagram store and sell your products directly on Instagram.
With this being said, we can conclude that Instagram is a very versatile platform, adapts to different types of business.
Instagram should essentially be used by businesses that want to interact closely with their customers and create relationships of trust and loyalty. But be careful, because when using Instagram, businesses have to understand that to be successful on this platform, they need to create a content strategy and be consistent. Instagram’s audience follows an account with the expectation of seeing valuable content, so you should understand your target audience and create content that they found valuable to take the most out of this platform.
Some key aspects of Instagram’s audience:
- 1.44 billion monthly active users.
- The largest demographic group of Instagram users is between the ages of 18 and 35 years.
- Gender Distribution: the ratio is pretty balanced! 49.3% of Instagram users are male and 50.7% of Instagram users are female.
- Over 90% of users follow at least one Instagram business account with their personal accounts.
Twitter has a large audience and it is an excellent platform to engage and connect with your audience closely.
However, to have a successful Twitter presence, a business must have a well-defined personality and identity. Also, don’t forget that Twitter is a platform with a specific language and the type of publications that work best are publications that generate a connection with the public.
Twitter requires a time commitment. You need to keep up with trend topics, post frequently, and interact with followers by responding to tweets and comments. And in all these moments the brand identity must be maintained.
However, if it makes sense for your business and you manage to have a Twitter account where you can interact with your customers, the benefits can be many! Essentially, you will be able to establish a strong relationship with your customers, increase brand recognition, convey a good image of your brand, better understand your customers and quickly respond to their needs.
Some key aspects of Twitter’s audience:
- 1.44 billion monthly active users.
- The largest demographic group of Twitter users is between the ages of 18 and 35 years.
- Gender Distribution: 56.4% of Twitter users are male and 43.6% of Instagram users are female.
- Twitter is one of the most liberal social media platforms
LinkedIn is by far the preferred social media channel for B2B businesses. So if you are a B2B company you should definitely think about creating a Linkedin page for your business.
Besides B2B businesses, Linkedin can be helpful to any company that wants a channel to raise the company’s profile, build a professional network, and get the attention of potential customers, partners, and employees.
Some key aspects of Linkedin’s audience:
- 310 million monthly active users
- Gender distribution: females account for 42.8% of the total LinkedIn users, while 57.2% of LinkedIn users are male.
- The countries with the most LinkedIn users: U.S. (185m), India (85m), China (56m), Brazil (55m), and the U.K. (32m).
TikTok
Tiktok is one of the fastest-growing platforms today. In addition, it is a platform with a high organic reach, although it is also possible to invest in ads. Thus, Tiktok is a good platform for businesses that want to reach new customers.
Businesses cannot forget that TikTok is a trending platform, so it is necessary to always be up to date. Planning content for the long term may not be the best strategy, it is necessary to create content within trends quickly to ensure the best results.
Some key aspects of TikTok’s audience:
- 1 billion monthly active users
- Age distribution:
- 25% of users between the ages of 10-19
- 22.4% of users between the ages of 20-29
- 21.7% of users between the ages of 30-39
- 20.3% of users between the ages of 40-49
- 11% of users are more than 50 years of age.
- TikTok has the highest social media engagement rates per post
- The most popular content category is entertainment.
Youtube
Youtube can be a powerful channel because people tend to respond better to video than other types of media, retaining 95% of a message consumed via video, compared to 10% when reading it in text.
However, remember that people use Youtube to learn or be entertained. So, in order to be successful on Youtube, you need to create videos that are either entertaining, informative, or both.
Taking into account these characteristics of Youtube, you should look at your business and understand what type of content you could create that would be interesting for Youtube users and at the same time could help you to achieve your business goals.
Some key aspects of Youtube’s audience:
- 2.6 billion monthly active users
- Gender Distribution: 56% male & 44% female.
- The largest demographic group of Youtube users is between the ages of 25 and 34 years.
- Youtube is the second largest search engine in the world.
- 40.9% of watch time happens on mobile, but this number is decreasing as users on connected TVs are increasing.
Pinterest is a social media platform where you can create and share pins, and create boards to attract new customers to your business, but you also have the option of direct selling on the platform.
This way, Pinterest is a great place to display your business visually. You should create a Pinterest account for your business if you can create good-quality images that showcase your product. If you have a service, you can create, for example, an infographic.
The most important aspect is to assure the attractiveness of your pins and boards, with that you will be able to increase your brand exposure and reach a wider potential customer base.
Some key aspects of Pinterest’s audience:
- 433 million monthly active users
- Gender Distribution: 76.7% female, 15.3%were male and 8% unspecified.
- Age Distribution:
- 32% of Pinterest users are 18-29 years old
- 34% of Pinterest users are 30-49 years old
- 38% of Pinterest users are 50-64 years old
To sum up…
In order to choose the best social media channels, you need first to understand your business needs, goals, and opportunities. Then, analyze the available channels to see which one suits your business.