If you manage a business or marketing department, you can’t ignore social media marketing. But there are so many platforms out there that choosing the right one can be confusing. Some platforms are more appropriate for certain business models and campaigns than others. Understanding how to promote strategically on various social media platforms can boost the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns and deliver optimal results.
Why Use Social Media for Marketing?
Most marketers today would agree that social media has increased their exposure. Using social media also:
- Increases traffic to your website
- Generates leads
- Boosts fan loyalty
- Improves brand awareness
- Enhances your marketing through social customer service
- Allows you to learn more about your target audience
The average company benefits most from using a well-known, highly visited social media platform. The platforms below are the most effective, and you can customize your marketing strategy for each one.
Before you get started, it’s essential to know which platforms your audience uses the most. These are the channels that you need to focus on. However, your B2B audience is likely different than your B2C targets.
Therefore, you’ll have to apply the proper strategy to the appropriate channel, depending on the audience that you’re trying to engage. Your industry and brand also influence the social media channels that work for you.
Visual Platforms
The following platforms are ideal for brands that can get their message across with an image or short video. You can include text content, but you should keep it concise and direct.
Instagram began as a way to share short blurbs of content along with an eye-catching image. Today, live videos, stories, and reels are also popular. Some of the reasons to have an Instagram business account include:
- Share your visual brand narrative – Using Instagram is a no-brainer for businesses who sell products. But even if you sell services, you can create a visual story surrounding your brand to enhance awareness. Design your visual content with your brand’s colors and style in mind. But present anything that complements your message, such as topics that are important to your viewers, customer testimonials and giveaways.
- Use it as a communication tool – Conduct marketing research by analyzing the comments that your audience leaves on your posts as well as your competitors’. You’ll learn a great deal about what your leads want to see more of and what elicits engagement.
- Attract new audiences – Use hashtags appropriately to reach out to new clients who are searching for those topics.
- Network – Instagram offers a quick and easy way to network with other brands with a similar audience. You can use it to solicit brand ambassadors or simply make meaningful connections with partners who are passionate about what you do and want to share it with their followers.
TikTok
TikTok is one of the newest social media platforms. It features short-form videos and has a lighthearted tone. TikTok doesn’t have as many users as Instagram, but its viewership is growing. Although the majority of TikTok users are young, 36% are between the ages of 35 and 54. There are several reasons to use TikTok:
- You have a young customer base – If your products and services appeal to people under the age of 54, you have an audience on TikTok.
- Low advertising costs – Paid advertising on TikTok is generally less expensive than on Facebook and Instagram.
- Short-form content – You don’t need to produce a professional, full-length video or write an e-book to share content on TikTok. The best videos are quick and punchy. Create a loyal audience by using humor and creativity to put together brief snippets, and share new content frequently.
- Network – If you want to capture someone’s attention on TikTok, you can use the integrated features, such as responses and duets, to engage with them directly. This can help you make B2B and B2C connections.
Content-Based Platforms
Although LinkedIn and Twitter let you share images, these platforms are also excellent for text-heavy content.
LinkedIn is a social media platform for professionals. About 94% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn for lead generation and sales.
- Ideal for B2B marketing –LinkedIn users are often visiting the site for professional reasons. Therefore, they’re more likely than someone who is scrolling through cat videos on Facebook to respond to business promotions.
- Create a professional profile – You can create a profile page to help visitors find you. LinkedIn offers the most comprehensive profile page of almost all the social media platforms. Keeping this profile active and relevant demonstrates that you’re a credible company.
- Share company news – This is an ideal place to share information about new blog posts, launches, services and industry news.
- Make strategic connections – You can join different groups on LinkedIn. Use these to get resources and information as well as to highlight your strengths.
Twitter is a fast-paced platform that largely relies on text to get the message across, although you can post images and videos too. It’s especially important to exude an authentic voice on Twitter. It’s fine to follow trends as long as you maintain your brand identity.
Some of the advantages that Twitter offers include:
- Hashtags – You can capture new audiences by using highly searched hashtags.
- Fast and convenient – Twitter is designed for bite-sized snippets of information. You don’t have to develop complex videos or posts. This is a great place to share brief fragments of longer posts that you share elsewhere.
- Deliver customer support – Creating a transparent customer support portal on Twitter shows your clients that you’re responsive and helpful when it comes to finding solutions to problems.
- Connect with others – Twitter makes it easy to have conversations, which leads to networking opportunities and enhanced engagement.
Mixed Platforms
Every platform combines visual elements with other types of content delivery. But YouTube and Facebook may be the best options for sharing different kinds of content.
YouTube
YouTube has 2 billion active monthly users and is considered one of the top search engines. Although YouTube content must have a visual element, it can deliver great value in other ways. You can produce slide shows, animations, or full videos and include as much detail in your content as you want.
Some of the reasons to use YouTube include:
- Establish yourself as an authority – If you produce content that satisfies common search terms in your niche, you’ll set yourself up as an authority in your industry.
- Improve your Google rankings – Google ranks video content highly. Also, you can link blog posts to your YouTube videos and vice versa to improve backlinks and Google rankings.
- Evergreen content – Unlike some social media platforms, which showcase the most current, relevant posts, content on YouTube is easily searchable at any time, making it an essential resource for highlighting your best content.
Facebook is a social giant. With 2.91 billion active monthly users, it’s the most widely used social media platform. Some of the areas in which Facebook shines include:
- Lead generation – You can advertise to specific demographics with distinct goals, such as lead generation, as your objective.
- Building relationships – Facebook marketing is all about engagement. You should share content that people want to talk about. You can also share other influencers’ content and participate in groups to network and build relationships.
- Variety of content – Facebook marketing strategies work best when you share various types of content, including text-heavy posts, humor, behind-the-scenes, reviews, videos, and photos.
Streamlining Your Social Media Game
Don’t let your social media strategy overwhelm you. Even if you use several social media platforms, you don’t have to come up with brand-new content for each one. Every time you come up with a content idea, ask yourself how you can showcase it on each particular platform.
By using this strategy, you can take a long-form white paper and transform it into a series of Facebook posts that highlight one major point each day. Put those posts together in a video format for YouTube. Share a snippet of the YouTube video as a reel on Instagram. In other words, you can recycle one piece of content for use on multiple social media platforms. Doing this allows you to take advantage of the benefits that each social media format has to offer.
And if you want a social media management tool that allows you to post and manage all your platforms at once, Zoho Social is an excellent solution!
