How to Choose The Best Social Media Channels For Your Business
Are you having trouble deciding which social media channel is right for your brand? This guide will help to choose the right social channel for your brand and make it thrive. It can be confusing and overwhelming to navigate the waters of social media.
There are so many social media platforms to choose from that you might feel overwhelmed or overwhelmed by the responsibility each one requires.
You may wonder if your business or brand should or shouldn’t be on Twitter. Or if it is worth creating a Pinterest account. It might be a good idea to step back and assess your entire social media strategy.
Don’t take on more than what you expect, or worse, burn yourself out . Instead, focus on the channels that will allow you to connect with your target audience, drive engagement, and increase revenue for your company.
Not everyone channel is right for you. You can nurture trust and build relationships by choosing the right channel for your customer and your team.
How to Choose the Best Social Media Channels for Your Business
1. Identify your target customers: Where do they (and their friends) hang out online?
You should first ask who your audience is and what social media platforms they use.
Setting up an Instagram channel would not help you reach your target customers if your customers spend the majority of their time on LinkedIn.
You can pinpoint their online habits by defining your audience as precisely as you can.
As a starting point, use your customer personas to create a social profile for each one. The more detail you can provide, the better.
2. Take stock of your brand or industry. Which channels align with my brand/industry values?
Next, consider your brand and industry.
Some social media channels are not compatible with your brand or industry.
B2C ecommerce beauty brands can use Pinterest and Instagram’s visual interfaces to showcase their products, reach the right audience, and have greater creative freedom. Instagram and Pinterest have e-commerce-friendly features like product pricing and product tagging .
3. Analyze your Traffic Sources: Which Channels are bringing in the Most Traffic?
Your traffic report can be a valuable resource if you are an established brand. It will help you determine which networks are responding to your products/services.
The Google Analytics Social & Network Referrals Search Report gives you a quick overview about which networks are driving the most traffic to your website. An digital marketing agency Thane can help grow business by using the social media channels.
If Pinterest is not the best place to start a Pinterest account but it generates more traffic and converts than Pinterest, you might consider moving there, or increasing the frequency of your publishing.
4. Find out where your competitors are on social media: What can I learn from their successes and failures?
You can also look at your competitors.
Find out which channels are being used by your competitors and then analyze the performance of their social-media strategy.
You should not invest in channels that are not performing well for your competitors.
This one-step approach can provide valuable insight and save your team from costly mistakes.
5. Find out what type of content resonates best with your audience
Next, you need to be realistic about how much resources are required to make your social media presence shine.
It may take more resources to build a professional, consistent presence than you realize.
You can now get a better understanding of your competition’s channels and the content you will need to post on each channel.
This will allow you to determine how much time, talent, and tools you need.
If you already have an audience, you can ask them what content they like. This is a great way for you to show you care and engage with them.
6. How do you set your social media goals?
This sixth step involves deciding what you want from your social media strategy.
This is a crucial step that will help you decide which channels you should join or skip. It also allows you to shape the content you create for your audience.
This page will allow you to quickly determine the KPIs that you should track from the beginning.
You may have as one of your goals increasing:
- Online and offline brand awareness
- Customer service
- Traffic to your site
- Conversions/revenue and leads
- Building community
7. Choose Your Channels
Now it is time to collect all your answers and match them with the channels that will help reach your target audience and accomplish your goals.
Different social media channels may not reach the same people, or provide the same results. To make it as simple as possible, we have broken each channel down by content type, usage statistics and pros and cons.
The best content to post:
- Video and images of high quality.
- Instagram Story: Behind-the-scenes footage personalized with Story stickers and interactive content
- IGTV: High quality vertical video or longer behind the scenes videos and tutorials.
- Live Q&As and live coverage of events
Instagram Pros :
- Most popular social media network among millennials.
- This is ideal for businesses with rich, visual and immersive content.
- Businesses that produce lots of videos are best served by the optimal channel.
- It is easy to reach new customers via hashtags, follower lists, direct messages, and tagging.
Instagram Cons
- Instagram’s new algorithm is reducing organic reach.
- It can be costly and difficult to create consistent visual content.
The best content to post:
- You can choose videos and content specifically for your Facebook audience.
Facebook Pros
- The King of Social Media with the Largest Audience (1.59+ Billion Users).
- This is the most comprehensive of all social media channels.
- There are many great reporting options.
Facebook Cons
- In recent years, organic reach has dropped.
- It can be hard to see through the noise and reach your target market.
The best content to post:
- Link to news about your industry or brand
- Blog posts for companies
Twitter Pros :
- Effective for social customer service.
- This is a great tool for website content promotion, quick thoughts and quotes.
Twitter Cons
- It can be hard to reach your target audience because of the volume of tweets and average followers of brands and people.
- The network’s growth remains stagnant.
The best content to post:
- News, articles, and professional resources for companies and job postings.
LinkedIn Pros –
- The best network to reach professionals.
- Do not be too suffocated with noise.
LinkedIn Cons
- Users aren’t always the most active users.
- Spam is a major problem.
YouTube
The best content to post:
- Video of high quality and long-form
YouTube Pros –
- YouTube is second in search engine traffic after Google.
- You can up-cycle content to be used on different channels.
- Videos are more likely to be shared with friends and become viral.
- YouTube videos are given priority in Google search.
YouTube Cons
- High quality, long-form videos require a lot of time and money to produce.
- It is difficult to reach users directly.
The best content to post:
- Vertical images for women in fields such as fashion, beauty and food.
Pinterest Pros :
- It is easier to make connections with strangers because the network focuses on sharing with like-minded businesses and people.
- The half-life of a pin is 3.5 months, compared to a Twitter’s 24-minute half life and a Facebook post’s 90-minute half life.
- Pins can be hyperlinked to the source of their pin, which makes it easy to drive traffic back to your site.
Pinterest Cons:
- It is difficult to re-pin content from other users because of copyright issues.
- This network is attractive to a niche user.
- To see the best results, you need to pin a lot of pins daily. If you want to be successful on Pinterest, a scheduling tool such as Sked Social is essential.
