What Are the Right Social Media Channels for Your Small Business?

What Are the Right Social Media Channels for Your Small Business?

In less than twenty years, social media platforms have transformed the digital marketing landscape. Not long ago, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram were meaningless words to small business owners. Today social media marketing is a crucial component of any content marketing strategy. However, for a small business owner with a limited budget, it’s hard to determine which social media sites are the right ones to use to connect with potential leads and increase brand awareness.

What Should You Consider?

The point of social media marketing is to connect with your target audience. Therefore, your audience is the most important aspect to consider when determining which social media channels to use for your small business.

For example, if your business is targeting younger millennials, you’ll want to consider using Snapchat because 60 percent of the platform’s users in the United States are 24 years old or younger.  However, if your ideal demographic is between 25-54 years old, your small business will want to develop a Facebook persona, as women in this age group make up 32 percent of users and 29 percent are men.

In considering your audience, you want to examine the goals of your business as it relates to your customers. For instance, maybe your burgeoning enterprise is a B2B company. In this instance, it’s absolutely imperative to build a following on LinkedIn because this is the social media platform that focuses on developing and nurturing professional relationships.

Social Media Channel Summaries

• Facebook: More than 2 billion people use Facebook, which makes this social media channel the one with the largest pool of potential leads. Also, with the targeting capabilities of paid Facebook marketing, you can allocate a portion of the budget to promote content to specific users. With 1.15 billion Facebook users logging into the site daily, your small business can make a big splash with this platform.
• Twitter: There are many misconceptions about Twitter. Simply posting content on this platform won’t do much for your business. However, if you can afford to have someone actively liking, retweeting, following and engaging in conversations relevant to your business on Twitter, then you might stumble into an opportunity where your content goes viral. This platform also allows you to pay to promote your posts to a specific audience, but not nearly to the extent that you can with Facebook.
• LinkedIn: As a small business owner, you should have your own personal LinkedIn account for networking purposes. As mentioned before, if your business is in a B2B field, then a company page on LinkedIn is an absolute must. Like Facebook and Twitter, you can pay to promote content. Also like Twitter, a successful LinkedIn strategy includes regular engagement by your brand. Fortunately, with Linkedin Groups, it’s easy to focus efforts on your industry or audience.
• Instagram: Is your business creating something that is visually appealing? Is the process for generating your product or service easily captured and explained in pictures and videos? If your business is trying to target millennials (people between the age of 13-35), especially those outside of the United States, Instagram is the platform for you. With 80 percent of their users located outside of the U.S., Instagram is an ideal platform for connecting with twenty-somethings internationally.
• Pinterest: With 150 million active monthly users and 81 percent of them being women, Pinterest is the ideal platform for female-driven businesses. You have to invest in high-quality images (pictures, videos, graphics, etc.) for your efforts to be worthwhile. If you have the staff and budget to do this, you could see some great results marketing on this platform.
• Yelp: Customer reviews on this platform can make or break a business. Your company should use this platform to engage with shoppers who have left feedback and use this information to improve practices. With 28 million mobile unique visitors and 83 million desktop unique visitors monthly, Yelp is the platform many of your clients will use to praise or bash your company.
• Industry-specific: In addition to the popular social media channels, several business verticals have social media networks that are specific to their industry. For example, real estate agents often use Active Rain while Doximity is popular with medical professionals. You’ve probably heard of Houzz, which is widely used by architects and interior designers. Even the brewing industry has its own social media network called Untapped. If you’re not sure what social media channels exist for your industry, take some time to check in with the networks your competition is using for their online marketing efforts.

There are dozens of social media platforms. Ultimately, your social media marketing strategy will include using a combination of the channels mentioned above but might also require the use of more niche platforms such as Tumblr, Xing, or others to really engage your target audience. Rather than trying to develop a social media marketing blindly, work with the experts at Alt Creative. Contact us today to launch a successful social media marketing strategy for your small business.