July 23 2021

How to pick the right social media platforms for your business

With 100’s of new platforms it is difficult to know where to start…

Navigating through the growing number of social media platforms can feel daunting for many business owners. With the growth of apps such as Facebook, Instagram, and now TikTok, it’s difficult to figure out where your business fits, and where you should focus the majority of your social media marketing.

However, this is vital, as social media forms such an important part of business and consumer relationships – with 4.2 billion active social media users as of January 2021.

To help you figure out what platforms are best for you, we’ve consolidated some top tips!

First, let’s look at the stats.

Statistics

90% of people with access to the internet use social media
Facebook has the largest number of users, with 2.79 billion monthly active users
In terms of downloads from the Apple App Store, WhatsApp has the most, with 9.39 million downloads in May 2021 alone
Social media platforms gained 490 million users in 2020
44.8% of global internet users used social media to search for brand information in 2020

So how can you reach them?

1. Identify your target audience

Arguably the most important step to any marketing plan is identifying your target audience. If you don’t know who you’re aiming to reach through your marketing, how can you figure out how to best reach them? Start by asking yourself who your typical customer is – what is their gender, their age, their attributes? By creating a target audience profile, you can begin to understand what kind of social media marketing will work best for your business, as you can aim your content towards your specific audience.

2. Find out what platforms will best reach your target audience

Different platforms are better for reaching different audiences, so it is vital that you understand where your target audience’s social media presence lies. For example, if your target audience is male, aged 40+, you probably want to focus your efforts on platforms like Facebook, rather than TikTok where the majority of the audience will be in the 18-24 age range.

This information will differ for every business, as different target audiences require different channels of communication, so it’s important that you consider the popularity of different platforms for different demographics.

3. Consider which platforms best align with your business persona, products, and services

Social media platforms are not all the same. Instagram focuses on photo-sharing content, where Twitter leans toward text-based posts. Depending on your business, the type of content you want to share might be different. Art and beauty businesses would be sensible to share on Instagram and Pinterest, as these offer great opportunities to show images of their work, whereas businesses focused on networking and contracting might find LinkedIn to be where they have the best business prospects.

4. Decide on your goals and what you want to get out of social media

By deciding what you want to achieve, you can begin to understand what platforms will work best for you. Instagram offers a chance to be creative and show the personality behind your business, so if you’re hoping to grow more of a community and loyalty with your customers, this may be the best platform to you.

Take your hopes for the business into account and decide whether each platform will help you to reach these goals.

5. You don’t have to use every platform!

A common question is whether every business should be on every platform…. The answer is no!

As discussed, different platforms work differently for every business, and it’s not worth investing time and energy in platforms that won’t help to build your brand or won’t reach the right audience. Consider the steps laid out above, and decide which platforms will be most beneficial to you. By doing this, you can focus your time on the right areas, and build your online business persona.

In Practice:

To find out more about business social media habits, we took to Instagram with some polls. Here are the results:

90% said that they focus on 1 or 2 platforms rather than using all
92% said they prefer using Instagram over Facebook for their social media marketing
78% said they prefer LinkedIn to Twitter
92% share image content more than videos
90% said that when they do share videos, these tend to be less than a minute long
73% said they don’t boost their posts
89% don’t share ads on Facebook

Deciding what platforms are best for your business is vital to marketing success.

Don’t just focus on the apps with the biggest number of members, and don’t try to perfect every single platform.

If you want help with your social media marketing?

Click here for more information on our social media marketing services.

This blog was written by Ellie House with us via the Employability Points scheme. Ellie has been experiencing what it’s like to be part of the marketing team here at I Do Marketing. Ellie is studying a Law (LLB) degree at the University of Kent.