With all of the social media platforms available to businesses, where to market can feel like an uphill battle. It can feel stretching to include every single social media site in your digital strategy and the secret is, you don’t need to be on every platform. Instead you marketing should focus on only a few platforms.
How do you choose the right social media platform for digital strategy?
You focus on the social sites that work best for your business.
Be where your customers are
Do you have clear buyer personas outlined for your business? If you do not, get started. Having clear customer profiles will help you identify how your customers use social media. Strategically it is so important to go to your customers, doing so eliminates the need for research and multiplies your lead generation capabilities.
Each social media platform supplies very specific demographic and attribution information, for example, 80% of Pinterest's users are female, between the ages of 18-35 years old. Not your target customer? Then perhaps Pinterest would be an ineffective platform for your business. Paying attention to the different attributes and demographics of each platform can help you to corner your market.
Identify the type of content that works best for you
Written, visual, video?
Different types of businesses excel with different types of content and different types of social media also excel with different types content.
Instagram - For businesses that are image-friendly and have a story to tell
Pinterest - For businesses who have strong imagery, you’ll get discovered here
Twitter - For businesses that have news to broadcast and want to have conversations about their business and market
Facebook - First every business should be on Facebook. Facebook is for businesses with all types of content work
Google + - Is favourited and frequented by tech savy industries and is friendly to written, visual and video content
LinkedIn - For businesses that want to drive content and build their network
Use lead intelligence to identify your sources
If you have a website, you most likely also have access to lead intelligence platforms, like Google Analytics. These types of platforms can tell you where your traffic is driven from. If you already have company social media, you can further identify what, if any of those platforms are currently significant drivers of traffic.
This will also be helpful to you moving forward with your social media strategy. As your start to strategically build out your social media content, you will be able to refer back to your lead intelligence to determine what social media platforms are functioning best for your business.
Learn from your competitors
Take a look at your competitors social media channels. Where are they present? Which sites provide them with the most engagement/following? This will help you get an idea of how others in your market are successful in their social strategies.
A strong social media strategy on focused platforms will help to turn your website into a lead generation machine. Whether you're just looking to use 1-2 platforms or want to maximize your reach with all the platforms, trust the social wizards at H&C Inc. to bring your social channels to life. Connect with us today to develop your next social media strategy.