So you’ve decided to follow your dreams and start your own business. Most startup businesses have limited resources on cash flow and manpower. Social media platforms are allowing people to start their e-commerce businesses with just an idea and a computer and providing a marketing platform that will help you grow your business every day. With social media, you can directly access your target audience and have a meaningful interaction that will help you get loyal customers for your products or services.
Although social media is among the cheapest forms of marketing and advertising it can be demanding. Doing your due diligence on how to get the right social media platform to work for your business will save you a lot of time and resources. It is hard if you don’t know how to stay updated on the latest best practices, news, and trends that come with any social media network. Finding the right social media platform to invest in that will provide you with direct ROI and at a low cost can be tricky.
Before you choose the platform best for your business you need to know who your target audience is, your ultimate goal, and the type of business you have if it’s a B2B or B2C. People are using social media for fun and also to shop so any social media site you invest in you will most likely get new customers. These are some of the best social media networks for your business.
Facebook has over 2.27 billion monthly active users and 1.5 billion of those users are daily active users 29.7% are between the ages of 25 to 34 years. This means that you can take advantage of Facebook’s wide demographic and user base to get your target audience from the 53% of Facebook female users and the 47% of male users. This gives your business a huge arena of potential customers. Facebook will help your business in lead generation, brand awareness, online conversions, and website traffic if used properly.
For your target audience to notice your business page you
need to advertise your business. Facebook has one of the most developed
advertising platforms that you can use to target your audience by being
specific on their age, interests, gender, purchasing behaviours, employment and
many more. This will give more power to your ads and content. However, you need
an advertising budget to reach a wider target audience which is a great
investment considering the huge market potential.
Instagram has over 1 billion active users and it’s owned by Facebook so it has most of the same features that will help you in brand awareness and consumer engagement. Instagram is a great social media site if you have a visual product to present your target audience. Instagram has the same advertising platforms like Facebook but, it also has its own organic benefits. Which means that you don’t have to directly pay for some of the results you achieve. Whereas you pay for advertising on Facebook to reach more followers and increase popularity for your posts and page, on Instagram you can gain more followers and likes organically.
You can use high-quality auto likes for Instagram to gain thousands of likes and followers for your profile every time you post your photos or videos. Instagram is a great option for your business since you don’t need an advertising budget and because it’s a visual platform. It’s said that 80% of the people will remember what they’ve seen and not read.
If your target audience is mainly women then Pinterest is your social media platform. Pinterest’s main focus is on the creative industry with 175 million active users of which 83% are women. If you’re in the food industry, art, and crafts, food and beverage, gardening, home décor, event planning, etc. then Pinterest is the platform you need to drive traffic to your page. Pinterest’s paid ads will increase the reach of your posts and your online conversions. You can also use Pinterest organic reach to gain more followers for your page by having your content contain most of the frequently searched words on Pinterest.
LinkedIn is not only a resume and job search site it’s a professional social media network where you can establish your presence in your industry and attract highly qualified talent. You will also have the opportunity to interact with other industry experts to network and share ideas as you build your business. You can advertise on LinkedIn by sending personalized ads and blog poststo boost your page following. LinkedIn has over 250 million active users most of whom are working around the world.
Twitter is a social media platform whose main focus is
informing you on the latest entertainment, news, politics, sports, etc. It focuses
on giving you real-time information as it happens. Twitter has over 330 million
active users.You can engage with potential new customers using hashtags by
tailoring your posts and videos to contain commonly used hashtags to drive more
customers to your page. Your content has to be creative and attractive to get
tweets, retweets, likes, and shares from users.
YouTube
YouTube is a video sharing platform where users can upload and watch videos. You can create a video about your business and upload it on YouTube for over 1.57 billion subscribers to comment, like, view, and share. YouTube is unique in that it’s owned by Google which means you can take advantage of Google advertising when running your ads on YouTube. YouTube also works as the second largest search engine after Google. With the proper keywords in the video description and title, you can achieve a higher search ranking on your business YouTube videos.
Conclusion
Before you choose which social media platform is best for your business you need to consider which social media platform your target audience is most active in. Finding the right platform(s) that fit your business will save you a lot of time, energy, and resources that you can use to help build your business.