Choosing the right social media platform for your brand

A marketing head once said that social media is like the swan made out of vegetables lying on the salad table. It looks great but not edible. I couldn’t have put better perspective to how social media is used by most brands.

It is a given that one needs to be on social and utilize the reach and stickiness that the medium provides. But what most brands don’t understand is what to do there. Generate engagement? Sure, after all it does allow conversations. But then the question arises, what kind of content works here. With social media demographics, especially in India, such that 15-25 is the biggest audience group, a lot of brands do content which might interest this TG and hence result in a high engagement rate. But is that the best idea for say a BFSI brand. Other bad examples are using humour or celebrity images (without brand co-relation) just to get likes. If it doesn’t uplift your brand or lead to sales, it’s of no use. Social, like any marketing activity, needs to help achieve its objective. And this could be brand growth or any other tactical goal.

But with multiple social platforms available, how should a brand decide where all it needs to be present. There are 2 things that they should keep in mind while taking such a decision -  

1.      Is the TG present there

2.      Do they have content related to their brand which is consumed on that particular platform

While the first point is self explanatory, the latter can be better explained with an example. Citibank present on Instagram makes sense as they have a strong association with food and travel but might not work for say Airtel broadband even though their TG is present on Instagram. And this decision is getting more and more difficult for advertisers with the advent of multiple social platforms. Below are some dos and don’ts for prominent social platforms.

1.      Facebook: If it was a country, it would be most populous in the world. It has all types of audiences from 13 year teenagers all the way to 80 year olds. Infact there is no better platform to reach the 50+ audience than Facebook. While the young generations are also present, they are being distracted by newer channels(maybe because their parents are already on FB and its ‘uncool’). But still, just for this reach, it’s unavoidable for brands to be present here. And with the amount of time being spent on it by users to watch videos and read content, a brand has good chance to engage with its audience. But we all know that there are no free lunches. And Facebook, by dropping its reach drastically, has made sure that you need to pay to reach your audience. Infact, now unless one is promoting content, it is not worth the time and effort that goes to create content. So one can maybe do less content but should try & promote as much of it as budgets permit. The other important thing is getting user participation which of course increases virality of the content. But asking for selfies or contests should be avoided as while the former has been done to death, the latter only gets contest mongers. Engaging images and videos rule the roost here. Thankfully with Facebook having stopped ads to increase page fans, advertisers are forced to push actual content.

2.      Twitter: The second most prominent platform is Twitter. The audience is apparently more discerning than Facebook. While it was always used for customer support considering it is the complaint box of the world, it rose to fame (for marketers) after the famous dunk in the dark Oreo tweet during super bowl. And for that reason, it has become a go to channel wherever there are real time 2 way conversations or live commentary on events. Businesses can also use it as a PR tool to disseminate news & information. But other than that, I don’t know of anything big that it has been used for. Would love to hear from everybody.

3.      Instagram: This has grown at a rapid pace and as per Facebook, on an average, each content piece on insta gets more engagement than twitter. Again demographic is SEC A with a bigger skew towards under 40s. It’s a highly visual medium though quotes also get some traction. Food & travel does really well. E-commerce has also utilized it well to sell apparels, shoes, bags, cosmetics & even jewellery. A lot of DIY channels have also cropped up with the increase in video content.

4.      LinkedIn: There is no better platform for B2B marketing or if you want to showcase your company as a good place to work. While one can also position themselves as a thought leader or to sell products, but the cost of targeting on the platform is such, that premium products work better here. Content primarily needs to be serious which either provides “intellectual” value to readers or shows the work culture of a particular place.

5.      Snapchat: The social media platform of the millennials. The beauty of the medium is creativity and real time updates. Amongst all others, this medium needs you to be quick and worry less about quality. Infact, Snapchat has become so big, that as per one report, it has more video views than FB. Like Twitter, it has done wonders for brands which have real time updates about events like was done for last year’s Oscars. Brands that are not too fussy about playing with their brand identities like logos, product packaging, etc can have good fun here getting the desired ‘love’ from their TG.

6.      Quora: One could call it a refined version of Wikipedia where questions are answered. Good platform if the brand has a complex product or multiple products where a lot of comparison is done before it is bought. So for example, auto companies with multiple models & variants or insurance with little differentiation can put this platform to good use. Quora also works well for SEO purposes as it’s a good way to direct traffic to your website.

7.      Whatsapp: Maybe the biggest social platform in India. The IM has become omnipresent on every mobile phone. But so far it has neither allowed advertisements nor allowed brands to communicate with users because of things like restricted group sizes etc. But it is a matter of time when it will be. Already there is news that very soon it will be open to be used as a bot platform for brands and allow payments. Just a question of when rather than if.

You might have noticed Youtube is conspicuous by its absence in the list above. That is because I consider it more of a video discovery platform rather than a social one. But videos are here to stay. All platforms are promoting it majorly. Most of them are even promoting live streaming to get more and more content. But nobody is better than Youtube when it comes to the number of content creators and hence the enormity of video content. Also with advertising options like cost per view(where a view could be as high as 30 seconds as against 3/10 seconds on FB) shows their confidence in getting viewers as well advertiser dollars. One thing to keep in mind here is that one should not consider TVC as video content that can work on social. Yes, one can push it using media but content that goes viral is the one which has a story.

Do let me know if I have missed any major platform that should be part of this list.