Don't place all your eggs in one basket, especially with Social Media.
Most big businesses these days use social media to grow their business because this is where a large number of customers are found.
Almost 2.5 billion users worldwide use the social platforms. In the U.S. more than 50 percent of small business owners depend on social channels as their main digital-marketing strategy because of its efficiency in connecting and finding new customers.
These platforms are also cheap and easy to use, unlike some old marketing strategies.
If you are a business owner and still afraid of what using social media, what are you waiting for?
In short, being on Social Media will help you gain new clients, create awareness and make sales.
But, with a significant population around the globe using the different social media platforms, reports show that 70 percent of the businesses are not able to interact with clients via sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube and other platforms.
So, what does that mean for you? You need not necessarily market your products or services on every channel. But instead, it makes more sense to present your business on social media platforms where you'll reach and interact with your clients easily. Below we go through some of the popular social platforms for growing small businesses; Facebook It is the oldest site which still has a vast usage capacity in the modern time; Facebook has been a broad platform with users all over the globe.
Businesses can decide from different options, like paid post promotion, organic advertising, and professional pages. Now whilst there are some businesses that create a Facebook Page and then divert their domains to this rather than to a free-standing website, I would strongly suggest that you do still have a website, and not rely wholeheartedly on Facebook alone. Instagram After Facebook, Instagram comes second. Instagram has been around for several years and has a relatively large following.
In terms or user demographic, the primary audience is for teens and millennials, but Instagram's expansive following is similar to that of Facebook.
The reliance of pictures on Instagram is the only distinguishing factor; you must present high-quality video content and images to be successful on this platform.
However difficult it is for many small businesses to work with Instagram, it’s worth a shot, especially if you are a product based business. Instagram also provides paid advertising alternatives.
LinkedIn This social media platform is the most business-oriented channel. Choose LinkedIn as a great way to connecting with other professionals and businesses.
It's a platform that depends more on text-based updates however the recent incorporation of video has been widely received and it’s become a great place to share vlogs (video blogs). It is an excellent field to find employees, form connections and perfect for B2B niches and small businesses.
However, it is not the best space for a gimmicky campaign, you want to remain as professional as you can on LinkedIn. Pinterest Pinterest is a visually oriented space that allows clients to display and save content by attaching digital bulletin boards, which are (can be) organized by category. E.g., an individual user may have photography dedicated board or a food board dedicated to pinning recipes, and much more.
The channel has an array of unique kinds of pins known as Rich Pins. Brands can use the pins to attach valuable data to their pins, like location maps and product details. Each pin fixes a video or an image, and similar to Facebook, post frequency is fairly low-maintenance. It can be time-consuming to keep your boards search friendly and organized. Pinterest is more of a niche social network than Twitter or Facebook. Hence it may fail to work for everybody. The site has several categories like fashion, food, exercise, photography, DIY projects, and beauty. This does not mean that businesses not included in these groups can't make it on the site but makes Pinterest a perfect marketing tool for businesses in those areas. YouTube Besides being a large search engine, the site is owned by Google therefore when it comes to search engine optimization, their videos mostly appear on Google’s top search index results. YouTube serves as a feedback platform.
The video-sharing site has more than 48 hours of newly uploaded video to the platform every minute. Using video as a small business owner in your online marketing strategy, and as YouTube video back-end keywords are just as vital as your other online strategies. Finally, choosing a social media channel may take some time to engage with your clients, get to know each network better, how it works and the kind of the demographics it uses.
Those mentioned above are the basics you need to understand about today's popular social media platforms.