Choosing Right Social Media Channels For The Brand!!

Here are 5 questions to ask yourself before taking a deep dive into any social media channel:

1. Is my brand B2C or B2B?

2. What is the age range of my audience?

3. What types of content do I have the resources to create?

4. How often am I willing to post content to a social media channel?

5. What is my goal for being on a particular channel and is it in line with my overall marketing and business objectives?

Which social media should I use for my business?

When it comes to figuring out the best social media for your business, the first step is to prioritize what’s important to you. Is it expanding your reach? Is it generating more leads? Is it about brand awareness?  

From there, it’s about determining which platform will give you the right exposure with the right audience. Is your brand very visual so it lends itself to platforms like Instagram or TikTok? Is it focused on real-time events and would work well on Twitter? Or is your audience diverse and so needs a combination of platforms such as YouTube and LinkedIn? 

Define Your Social Media Goals

There are many benefits to using social media, but it’s important to have specific goals before you move forward. That way you can create a successful social media strategy for your business.  

For one, your objectives will help determine not only the social platform you choose, but also the content you create, the audience you target, and more. Here are some of the most common benefits of using social media that you might want to focus on:

• Improve your customer service offerings by providing another platform on which customers can reach out with complaints, questions, and concerns. Get some ideas of how to do this by seeing what other brands are doing to apply social customer service successfully. 
• Identify new leads and prospects who are similar to your best customers.
• Reach out to new audiences and social media demographics who might be receptive to your products or services. 
• Increase brand awareness and expose your business to new people.
• Learn about the needs, wants, and habits of your audience and customers. Increasing traffic to your site and boosting sales.

Determine What Channels Your Audience Uses

The entire point of successful social media marketing is to put you in contact with your most receptive audience. So, it’s not advisable to choose a platform where your audience doesn’t operate. 

Unfortunately, there's no ‘Field of Dreams’ opportunity here where your prospects will start using the social platform of your choice just because you’ve created a profile. Instead, it’s a much better idea to analyze which platforms your audience prefers and seek them out on the networks they already use.

A key thing to do when starting this process is to conduct some audience research to define a buyer persona. That way you know who you are looking for and can narrow down the platforms that they use by gender, demographics, interests etc. 

There are a few different ways you can go about finding where your audience is hanging out online. One of the most straightforward is a simple customer survey. Ask questions like what social sites they use, where they get their information online, and which influencers they listen to. 

Another way to get information about your audience is through the social media sites themselves. For paid advertising, you can tell platforms like Facebook about your ideal customers, and they'll estimate the audience size for you. You can also use analytics to determine who your audience is and are what they are doing.

 

Examine the Type of Content You Create

Different types of content work better with certain social media platforms, so it’s key that you consider carefully the type of content you like to create and distribute that will work best with your brand. 

Instagram, for instance, is all about visuals, so it may not be the right place to share long-form content like whitepapers. The type of content you create will depend on several things, including your industry, your brand, and your target audience.  

Uses of different social media platforms and successful content:

• Blog posts - Business blogs can be just as great as personal ones for audience engagement
• Podcasts - Collaborate with industry leaders to tap into their audience on social networks and use hashtags when sharing to increase reach
• Testimonials - Your customers are your most important asset, so make sure to use their opinions and experiences to promote your brand
• User-generated content - This is the holy grail of content as it’s not you creating it but your brand advocates. Get inspiration from some great UGC campaigns. 
• Webinars and live streams - Live video is great for audience engagement and learning more about your buyers particularly through a Q&A session at the end
• eBooks - This type of long-form content can provide huge value to potential customers and are great for lead generation
• Whitepapers - The perfect content to demonstrate industry knowledge and generate leads through downloads
• Videos - The ultimate in content, videos can expand your reach widely if something you create goes viral. Check out these 9 ideas for social media videos to get you started. 
• Photographs - Using photos to showcase the inner workings of your business, your team or even something humorous can help drive engagement and traffic.
•