There are many factors that go into selecting what social media platforms make the most sense for your brand. First, the brand needs to be clearly defined. Your brand has to maintain a consistent message from your website to social media, the transition should seem natural. The brand look and feel, personality and other elements will all have to remain consistent for your social media presence to be received successfully.
Secondly, all social media platforms have their own pros and cons. We’ve broken a few of them down to make your selection process a bit easier:
Facebook is great for business to consumer (B2C) brands, and there are billions of Facebook users with millions signing on daily. This means that there is a very large network available to interact with your brand on this platform. The more negative side to Facebook for businesses is that only a fraction of your followers will actually see your posts. Facebook has an algorithm it uses to display content in users’ feeds. Sometimes, your business’ post may not make the cut and could get filtered out of a user’s feed by the Facebook algorithm. Fewer than 20% of your posts will be seen by a particular Fan.
Twitter provides a place for businesses to really show their brand personality. 100% of your tweets go into the user’s feed, and the time of your business page’s update and the time the user logs in will determine if they see your tweet or not. Twitter is a more casual environment that moves quickly, so posts are constantly being pushed through users’ feeds. The hashtag is extremely important on this platform. Users will look at trending hashtags, and if your brand’s tweet has used the hashtag they’re looking for, they will stumble across your brand. The struggle with Twitter for businesses is that you can only update using 140 characters at a time. Your messages have to be concise or they don’t work, which can sometimes be tricky for a business – especially with promotions or contests. The personality of your brand is able to shine through on Twitter, but if your brand’s personality doesn’t relate to the user, they’re not going to follow you.
LinkedIn, as most would suspect, is great for Business to Business (B2B)-based operations. Updating your business LinkedIn page is a great way to attract the correct people in your industry as well as keep them informed on your operations. The downfall to LinkedIn for businesses is the posting features are limited. A business is not allowed to post in a group or like/comment on someone’s post, which makes it more difficult for your business to get noticed by professionals – unless you are utilizing LinkedIn advertising.
Instagram is where you can share images of your products or images relating to the look/feel of the brand. Keep in mind that all of these images should be consistent with your brand’s look/feel on your website as well as any other platform you’re on. The captions can be as long as you want, so you are not limited with what you can say, and you can comment/like anyone’s posts as your business. Users will look for photos on Instagram frequently using hashtags that they are interested in. This means when you use an appropriate hashtag on one of your images and a user is searching that hashtag, they are already interested in what your brand is offering before they even see the image. However, make sure your hashtags are pertinent to the image (not just a popular hashtag to get more users to see your image – those users are less likely be genuinely interested in your product/brand). The negative to Instagram is that some brands find it difficult to keep up with the amount of images that it takes to post daily. This issue is especially difficult if your business doesn’t have a photographer to take images to keep them original or if your business doesn’t have a tangible product (insurance is a great example).
With all social media platforms, keep your posting consistent… But don’t post just to post – find valuable content to share or create valuable content. If you don’t have anything valuable to share with your followers, don’t put something invaluable out there just so your business’ page has a post for that day. Social media is a quick method of marketing and it’s extremely accessible, but it needs to be done with strategy.
