Choosing Successful Social Media Platforms for Your Business

Over the past six years, social media has seen drastic growth with a 38.5% jump in users from 2016 to now. Currently, it’s estimated that 3.96 billion people user social media worldwide, which is up 4.8% from 2021. However, the rapid growth is expected to plateau after 2025, slowing to a 3.7% annual increase. But the growth within the past few years have caused irreversible changes. People are dependent on social media to satisfy both their consumerism and ecommerce needs. In fact, social media is a huge platform for small businesses, but with the addition of the shop feature in 2021, more big brand name businesses are beginning to sell products on social media, as well, and treat it like an ecommerce tool (Oberlo, 2022).

How to Choose Which Social Media Platforms Your Business is on

Social media is often the first place people turn to in order to verify or checkout a business. That’s why many different businesses within different industries must have a social media presence. But the platform each company is on depends entirely on the industry, the content, and the target audience.

One of the best ways to choose a social media platform for your company is to analyze the company’s customers and target audience. On average, people have eight social media accounts, but they’re often not active on all eight. So which ones are they active on? And what kind of content works best on those platforms? Facebook has more active users than any other platform, but if your product is more visually or design driven, then it likely won’t perform well on Facebook. However, it would perform well on Pinterest, Instagram, or even TikTok. B2B companies are the ones that perform best on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Another way to determine which social media platform your company should choose is by analyzing what your competitors are doing. Are they on Instagram? Facebook? What content are they posting? What does the engagement look like on each post? After seeing how your competitors perform in each space, you can make a more informed decision about what platforms and content to focus on the most.

Finally, you need to align the platform with the company’s business goals. Social media isn’t something that you just tack on to a marketing strategy. Instead, you must carefully implement social media and make sure it moves the needle for your company. If it’s not moving the needle, it’s not worth it. So does high engagement with your followers fulfill a business objective? Does a certain amount of video views? Then, choose the platform that best helps you reach these goals (Horzewski, n.d.).

Should Your Company Use One Platform or Multiple Platforms

When you’re making the decision about where to invest your time and resources, you need to consider what will give you the most in return and where you can provide the most quality content without over-extending your team. The answer to this question follows a similar logic to the one above. If multiple platforms suit your business objectives and you can produce quality content consistently on all of them, then you can use multiple ones. If you’re over-extended and want to focus on video, then you shouldn’t pour valuable time into TikTok and Facebook, for example. Your audience also determines the answer to this. Your customers probably have one or two favorite platforms where they engage with the content more often. Focus on being present there, rather than on numerous platforms. Your goal is to catch your target audience’s eye and convert people into followers, potential leads, and future customers. If you feel stuck and don’t know where your audience is the most, consider creating a poll or survey for actual customers and analyze what platforms they’re on the most. If it’s Gen Z, around 73% will prefer Instagram. If it’s Baby Boomers, around 78% prefer Facebook (Pyle, 2021).

Does Content Vs. Conversation Media Matter?

If you’ve never heard of the difference between content media and conversational media, here’s a great distinction.

“The most significant difference between conversational media content and social media content is that conversational media enhances a conversation between two or more people in a private messaging environment, whereas social media is a one to many structure that elicits a larger group reaction” (Holler, 2021).

Data shows that 75% of people say they’re most authentic on chat apps, while 69% of people say they’re authentic on social media apps. People share content to express how they’re feeling, to get a reaction out of others, or to avoid misunderstandings and communicate clearly. COVID spiked conversational media by 30%, but content media was also being shared consistently. All of this to say, conversational vs. content media does play a role in which platforms a company turns to. They suit different needs and further different goals (Holler, 2021). If you want to get a conversation started about your brand, hit up Twitter. But if you want a video to go viral, you have to lean into content media instead.

How Do You Allocate Marketing Resources?

You have to choose where you put marketing resources based on how important your social media strategy is to you. To grow a following, in general, you will need to run some ads on whatever platforms you choose, targeting people who are your ideal audience and potential leads. It’s important to view your time as a marketing resource. How much are you dedicating to social media? That may be based on how much you’re getting in return. Finally, you may want to invest in a social media planning tool and design software to produce quality content.

References:

Oberlo. (2022). How many people use social media in 2022? Retrieved from https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/how-many-people-use-social-media#:~:text=The%20latest%20figures%20show%20that,jump%20in%20just%20six%20years.

Horzewski, Avery. (n.d.). 6 tips for choosing the right social media platform for your business. Aventi Group. Retrieved from https://aventigroup.com/blog/6-tips-for-choosing-the-right-social-media-platform-for-your-business/.

Pyle, Samantha Owens. (2021). Should your business be on every social media platform? The Business Journal. Retrieved from https://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/how-to/marketing/2021/07/should-your-business-be-on-every-social-media.html.

Holler. (2021). Conversational media | Defining a new digital medium. Retrieved from https://www.holler.io/insights/conversational-media-defining-a-new-digital-medium#:~:text=The%20most%20significant%20difference%20between,elicits%20a%20larger%20group%20reaction.