Which is the Best Social Media Platform for Business?
Trying to determine the best social media platform for your business is a smart move.
Attempting to have a meaningful presence on them all is time-consuming, and often a waste of energy. Focusing on one or two is a much better use of your resources.
So, which is the best platform?
Is it Facebook?
Instagram?
Tik Tok?
Well, the answer is that it could be any of those platforms.
Your quest to find the best social media platform is more of an inward journey than an outward one. Every platform is different, and finding one that fits your business requires a bit of introspection and research.
The good news is that you’re in the right place to embark on that journey of discovery!
In this blog, we’ll walk through the steps you need to take to find the right social media platform that fits your business, and give you an overview of the main contenders.
Let’s get social!
WHICH IS THE BEST SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM FOR BUSINESS?
How To Determine The Best Social Media Platform For Your Business
To figure out which social media platform will provide the best value for your business, you need to answer some basic questions.
Let’s compare it to shopping for a car. If a stranger came to you and asked you what the best car is for them, you’d have to do a little digging to make an informed recommendation. Sure, you could research the best-selling vehicle in their region, but without knowing some vital personal information, you could totally miss the mark.
You need to know the purpose of the vehicle, how often and how far they’ll be driving, how many people need to be transported, not to mention their tastes and budget.
A parent with four kids to transport won’t want a tiny, two-door hatchback, and a farmer looking to get around his property won’t have much use for a Ferrari.
It’s all about matching the right vehicle to the right use – just like with social media.
So, let’s look at the vital information you’ll need to help you pick your social media vehicle.
1. Understand Your Audience
The whole point of social media is to reach – and connect with - your target audience. To do that, you need to know exactly who your ideal customer is.
Identifying and understanding your audience is a vital part of your marketing strategy, so the work you do in this area will offer enormous value for your business.
Find out who your ideal customer is, where they live, their age, education level, jobs, hobbies, and interests. The more you can find out about your audience, the better equipped you are to know where to find them online.
2. Find Your Audience
Now that you have all the intel on your people, you can find out where they spend their time online. The demographics of users on each social media platform will give you some guidance, but you can also ask your customers directly via surveys.
3. Identify Your Goals
Figuring out the best platform isn’t just about your customers. It’s also about you! Spend some time defining your goals for using social media.
Are you hoping to direct more people to your website, increase sales, build brand recognition, reach new audiences, or improve your customer service offerings?
Different platforms may better serve different objectives, so getting clear on your goals will help you find the best social media network to achieve them.
4. Review Your Content
The kind of content you typically create will also impact your decision. For example, YouTube and Instagram are focused on visual content, so longer-form text-based content obviously won’t work for them. But if you are more of a wordsmith, Facebook or LinkedIn could suit you better.
5. Assess Your Resources
It’s also worth assessing how much time, money, and experience you have to manage your social media marketing. Some platforms are lower maintenance than others. If it comes to a choice between two, it’s a smart move to select the social media platform that you are confident you can show up consistently on.
Having said that, it could be worth investing in the extra resources required for a platform if it turns out your target audience spends the majority of their time there.
The Social Media Rundown
Once you’ve collated all the essential information above, it’s time to pair it with the most suitable social media platform. Here’s a quick rundown of each one to get you started.
Facebook is the most established and largest platform with a broad age range of users (18-54). It is great for creating targeted advertising and lead generation.
The platform supports a range of content types. It is especially useful for sharing external links and more text-heavy content, although images and video do very well here too.
Originally created for sharing photos instantly, Instagram is still an ideal place for visual content, particularly short-form videos. It is more popular than Facebook among younger users (18-30) and was created for mobile use, rather than desktop.
Instagram is excellent for building brand awareness, however, it requires consistent posting and interaction to achieve this.
YouTube
This video giant has enormous reach that extends to those who haven’t even signed up to the platform. It is one of the biggest search engines around. Because it is owned by Google, you can post videos to help your SEO rankings. “How To” videos are especially popular.
Video is an excellent way to showcase your brand personality and authority while engaging your audience, so the ultimate video sharing platform is the place to post it.
Don’t discount Pinterest. It is not just a place for recipes and failed craft projects! The platform holds huge potential for driving traffic. And when it comes to paid advertising, boosting views is relatively affordable compared to other platforms. It is a highly visual platform, but content creation and consistent posting can be time-consuming.
More than half of Pinterest’s users identify as women and are aged from 25-54. Pinterest offers an impressive ROI of $4.3 return for every $1 spent on ads.
Twitter isn’t hugely popular in NZ, but could be worth a look if you have an international audience. Most users are under the age of 50. It is suitable for sharing easy to digest text-based content. Ideal for announcements, news, and general chit chat.
Like any social platform, it can drive traffic but not necessarily sales. Tweets have a brief lifespan, but ads have a higher engagement rate than Facebook.
TikTok
Growing in popularity quickly, this relative newcomer is useful for targeting 18-24-year-olds, but the age range is increasing.
With more than 800 million monthly users, TikTok has the highest user engagement rate per post of any social media platform. It’s ideal for businesses with a youthful brand and can be a great way to reach a new audience.
Once thought of as the dinosaur of social media, LinkedIn has had a revamp and most users are now aged between 30-49. As a professional platform, it is primarily business-focused – no distracting cat memes or trolling found here! Because of that, it is ideal for B2B businesses, networking, and building brand authority.
So, Which Platform Is Best?
Social media offers a wide variety of ways for you to connect with people and grow your business, but not all of them will be right for you.
With a little bit of research, you can ensure you get yourself in front of your ideal clients on the social media platforms that best showcase your brand.
And if you need some help working it out, then get in touch with us here at Face Up Now and we can help you devise the perfect social strategy for your business.
