Social Media – What’s Best For My Business?

I’m going out on a bit of a limb here, but I strongly believe there are now very few businesses and organisations that social media, in one way or another, does not apply to.

According to a recent report, as of January 2022, analysis shows that there were more than 4.6 billion users of social media around the world, which to put into context is almost 60% of the entire population and 75% of the eligible population (most social media platforms restrict use to those under the age of 13). That’s massive!

Now I never was very good at maths and even worse at working out odds and statistics but even I can see that the chances are, some of your target audience will be using social media which in turn means you should be on there too.

The stats don’t stop there either and make a compelling case for at least considering social media as a potential marketing channel. The report goes on to reveal that over 93% of internet users use social media each month and spend a combined total of 10 billion hours using them each day. That’s 15% of their waking hours looking at social media.

There’s plenty of social platforms to choose from.

Social media falls into a number of different categories including…

1.?????Social networking - LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook

2.?????Video sharing – Youtube and Vimeo

3.?????Blogging and community building – Reddit

4.?????Photo sharing – Instagram and Pinterest

5.?????Interactive – Snapchat and TikTok

Choosing the right platform for your business.

We hate to break it to you, but not every platform is going to be relevant to your organisation and your audience.

Not every company should be on TikTok and not every company should have an Instagram account.?

How do you find out though whether a platform is going to work for you? Have a look! Are your customers on there? Are your competitors on there and if they are, are they successful?

You’ve committed, social media is going to be a winner for your business. Revolutionary in some cases. So, you’ve signed up, you’ve set up your profile. What now?

You’re going to need a social media strategy…

Below we’ve listed some of the questions that we consider when creating social strategies for each of our customers…only some though, we’re not giving away all our secrets (wink wink).

·??????Who is your information targeted at? This needs to be considered for every message you share. Is it current customers, potential customers, new customers, lapsed customers?

·??????What are you going to post about? Is your content going to be informative, educational, entertaining?

·??????What types of media are you going to share, and do you have the inhouse capability to create it? Will it be a video, a photograph, an infographic, a PDF, or something else entirely? Which tools are you going to use to create your different assets?

·??????How are you going to share your content? Will you do this directly on each platform or will you use a content scheduling tool to help you keep on top of posting across multiple channels.

Hint…Create a diary template for all your posts so you can work out exactly what you’re going to be saying on each day and what you’re going to need in terms of media. Work ahead as much as possible so that you have all your proactive assets. This then gives you enough breathing space and time to create reactive content.

Next up content. And you’re going to need plenty of…

It needs to be interesting! You’re no longer competing with your competitors; you’re competing for your audience’s time. You’re competing with all the other accounts that they follow. Your content needs to make them stop and what makes them stop on one channel won’t necessarily work on another.

You need to be aware of the requirements and limitations of each channel. What size media do you need to post, is there a character count that you need to adhere to?

You’re going to need to work out when the best time to post is. When is your audience online, when are they looking on their social channels?

Rinse and repeat.

There’s no point in doing something if it provides no results. It’s a waste of time!

You need to work out what works best by reviewing your analytics. Break this down into days and posts so that you can see on a granular level what is working for your audience.

One final word. If you’d rather someone else take on your social strategy, then we know a great agency (wink). Get in touch with [email protected] to find out how we can help.