When we approach clients, there is one common question we face from them. Which all social media sites do you operate on? There is a never ending list of social media sites coming up every day. However, as a marketing consultant, we have to ensure we provide advice to clients based on what will work best for them. Having said that, most of them will have already heard people tell them over and over – your business is not on this platform, hence it will not succeed. This new platform is where everyone is now and if you are not on it, you are losing out on a large chunk of business.
A major example is Twitter. A few years ago, everything we heard about was twittering this, twitter that, tweet this, tweet that. Everyone literally HAD to be on twitter or their business failed. Then came Pinterest, then Instagram and most recently, Snapchat. I wonder – how does dog faces and puking helps increase one’s sales revenue?
Ok, this maybe an exaggeration or overreaction, but no matter what new trend is out there on the social media platform, you have to choose wisely on where you spend your time promoting your business and why. In this article, we shall discuss some of the key tips to keep in mind before selecting the social media platform of your choice.
This platform is a must for all businesses. No matter what, Period. Some may disagree with this notion saying, “come on, we are a B2B business and not B2C, we cannot engage with people online”. Facebook can be considered to be today’s Yellow Pages or one of the biggest directory listing. If your business is online on Facebook, you are listed! Facebook is in fact, the first place someone turns to look up a business or individual.
If your target audience is even remotely involved with social media, they are on Facebook! With the geo-tagging facility on Facebook, it is becoming quite prominent with other social media as well for store front businesses as you can tag it in other portals as well.
Before selecting the other forms of social media, you have to think a big question aloud – Where are your target audience?
This is not rocket science. If you are a B2B business, LinkedIn or Twitter might be the place where you can discuss and engage with your target audience and build a following of sorts. If you are retail or B2C, Instagram, Pinterest or Snapchat might be the place for you.
If you are someone who is starting out on social media and you may have a comfort zone with any particular social media platform, start there. Try out different strategies of engaging with customers. Bring out innovative content which your following will respond to. For example, if you are into cooking, make some innovative videos and share it to your friends and followers. Pretty soon, you will have a huge following, guaranteed!
Before signing off, you need to know a major factor before selecting where to focus on. Know where your competition is. Find out what social media platforms they use, where do they have the biggest audiences and how do they get their engagement?
Being smart and effective on one platform doesn’t necessarily mean you are great on all platforms. It takes time, energy and efforts to work around the different social media platforms. Keep at it. Success will come to you.
