Snapchat? Twitter? Which Social Media Site is Right for Your Business?

There are a lot of choices out there when it comes to social media networking.
How do you know which social site is right to promote your business ideas?
Let’s learn about some popular social media platforms to find out if they are the best choice for your brand.
A social networking site where users can share instant information with the others, founded in 2006.
Twitter is a microblogging platform and this means users must keep their messages to 140 characters or less.
Twitter’s mission is to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.
Today, Twitter has 328 million monthly active users around the world with 82% of active users on mobile.
Is it right for you? Twitter users can follow people and brands they find to be engaging. The platform can be a useful tool for growing your professional network and promoting your business ideas.
Through the use of hashtags, Twitter can be a great way to connect at events, conferences, and other networking opportunities.
For a business looking to grow, Twitter can be an effective part of an overall business marketing strategy.
To find success on Twitter, consider keeping your messages short. While 140 characters is the limit, tweets under 100 characters are more likely to engage users.
In addition, always aim to add a visual element to your tweets — videos are especially engaging on Twitter.
The visual platform describes itself as the world’s catalog of ideas and was founded in 2010.
Pinterest is a photo sharing social site where users can pin photos, videos, or other objects to their inspiration boards.
Users can create a pinboard of images related to a theme such as film or interior design. Users can also follow a brand or company page.
Pinterest has more than 175 million monthly active users. Women account for over 80% of active users.
In the last year, international markets have been driving much of Pinterest’s growth, with countries such as Brazil, France, Germany, and Japan seeing significant year-over-year growth.
Is it right for you? Pinterest has a lot of untapped marketing potential for businesses considering its user demographics. Using Pinterest well means your business or organization could achieve a significant return on investment by creating customer conversions.
Of active users, 93% said they use Pinterest to plan for their upcoming purchases. Around 87% of active users said they have purchased a product because they saw it on Pinterest.
Visually appealing products can find success on Pinterest so consider investing in photography to showcase the branding and aesthetics of your products.
The mother of all social media sites, Facebook was originally founded in 2004 as “The Facebook” for the use of Harvard University students only.
Facebook now has 2 billion monthly active users.
Yes, you read that correctly, billion with a ‘b’ are networking on Facebook these days, and this number only continues to grow as the company expands its global reach and as users migrate to mobile devices for social.
Facebook can be a great tool to generate awareness about your business because of its global reach.
Is it right for you? Facebook allows you to set up a company or business page and this is useful if you have a company and want to promote your services, or if you have a local business and want to bring customers into your shop.
For a business looking to grow, Facebook can be an essential tool in reaching new customers because of the ability to create two-way dialogue with the public and provide real-time customer service.
Critically, advertising on Facebook is affordable. By targeting your ads by user location, interests, and demographics — you can create more brand visibility at a significantly reduced cost when compared to traditional print advertising.
Make use of Facebook Audience Insights to find success on Facebook. This tool will allow you to deliver more meaningful messages and engaging content to your target audience.
With Audience Insights, you can learn more about your customers, their interests, and purchasing behaviour.
Snapchat
Snapchat is not the kind of social media app that deals with monthly active users, Snapchat is about what is happening now.
Snapchat is a social messaging app made for discovering and sharing. On any given day, Snapchat reaches roughly 41% of 18 to 34 year-olds in the United States.
The company claims over 166 million daily users who watch over 10 billion videos every day.
Users can add captions to the photos and videos they take throughout their day and then share these images with friends, or create a 24 hour timeline or “story” of these images to broadcast to others.
Is it right for you? Snapchat is definitely not for everyone. The app skews heavily towards younger users and has been constantly evolving its features, too quickly for many businesses to keep up.
How people use Snapchat goes against all of the traditional rules of marketing because the app is about sharing authentic, personal, and instant stories.
Increasingly, social media as a whole is moving towards authenticity and away from the fake and heavily airbrushed ideals sold by traditional marketers.
This means we will see many corporations adopting a more authentic approach to social media in order to reach younger generations of consumers.
If you have the time needed to tell quality stories on Snapchat, you might consider this app for your business or organization.
Summary
It is an opportunity wasted not use social media to promote your business because through social media you can potentially reach billions of people around the world at very little cost — people who might have no idea your business existed without social media.
You should not feel pressured to join all social sites and all sites may not be right for your brand.
In order to grow your online networks, aim to use social media regularly. This means not only sharing regular content your followers will find engaging but also participating in conversations with others and being an active member of the social community.
Remember, not all content is appropriate for all sites. Consider creating platform specific content or tailoring your content before you post it on each of your social media sites.
A good rule of thumb is quality content over quantity, so if you find yourself stretched too thin as a member of too many social media sites, you might consider scaling back your presence and focusing on a few key platforms for your business.
