Social media has changed the way that businesses interact and communicate with their customers. Many social media platforms are household names, like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube (yes, YouTube is a social media platform. Its core functionality beyond showing videos is to allow for social interactions).
Some social media platforms you may not be so familiar with.
For example, have you heard about Tik Tok? It’s a social media platform where users create and share funny videos while singing, dancing, or lip-syncing to their favorite tunes. It’s taken the Generation Z audience (those born between 1996-2010) by storm. It has 500 million active users worldwide (Datareportal, 2019) which puts it ahead of better known platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest and Snapchat.
So what are right social media platforms to use for your social media marketing? Unfortunately, the answer is that it depends on a number of different factors.
Know Your Audience
It’s important that you know exactly who your audience is because if you don’t, it’s hard to know what platform to use. Also, some industries are better for different platforms. Look at different platforms to try to figure out how your content would fit in with that platform, but only if your audience is there.
Know Your Goals and Objectives
When choosing a platform, think about your goals and objectives for using that platform. They might have rules against your products or services or the way that you want to do things.
What Platforms Does Your Audience Use?
Knowing what platforms your audience uses will help you also determine which ones you may want to use. After all, if a large portion of your audience is there, then you’ll likely want to be there too.
Where Is Your Audience Most Active?
While your audience may be on many different platforms, which ones are they most active on? They may be in high numbers on one platform but not active and not engaging. For example, some people only use Facebook to talk to friends and family, while they may be more likely to take advice on YouTube.
Start with the Top Choices
After doing your research, start with the choice that has a lot of your audience engaging, buying and being active. It’s OK to create profiles on more than one, but pick one or two to focus on.
The important thing to remember is that you don’t need to be on all platforms even if your audience is there. It’s good to be on a couple in case one platform goes away.
Don’t laugh – that can happen. Google+ (owned by the mighty Google itself) was shut down in April this year. Even Facebook may not exist in its current form in a few years, so never put all your eggs in one basket.
The important thing is to rely on your audience to lead the way along with the goals you have created.
For free, no-obligation, consultation to discuss how you can get the best results from your branding, design, advertising, printing, social media, internet and marketing projects across all sectors of your business please contact us.
AI Studio Team
Think. Create. Grow.