What is the best social media platform?
One of the most common business dilemmas is figuring out where to start with social media marketing. Today I would like to introduce a few ideas to help you decide where to put your time for the best results for your business. As with anything in life, there is often a trade-off between effort and business benefits and social media is no different.
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I need to make a very important point right upfront. There is no common solution or strategy that fits every business. What I am proposing here should not be taken as “the answer.” This post contains broad generalizations, you still have to use common business sense to determine what fits best for you. Let’s get started!
The ultimate goal
There are lots of amazing things a business can do to create benefits from the social web. Customer service, business intelligence, and creating awareness to name a few. But today I want to assume that your primary goal is to create an interactive audience. Develop an online community that will create some business benefit for you over time. Let’s cover a few key concepts about building that actionable social media audience:
Weak links versus strong links
A common misconception is that “audience” equals “action. It does not. If you are reading this post, you might have discovered it through Linkedin or Facebook. But if you have no emotional connection to us as bloggers, are you going to hire us? Buy our books? No. Social media marketing simply opens up the door for connections through weak relational links. You still have to do the hard work to turn those folks into buying customers.
Reliable reach
If you post something, it’s kind of like throwing a message in a bottle into the ocean, isn’t it? You don’t really know who will read it or if anyone will. However, if somebody subscribes to a blog or YouTube channel, they are asking for your content. There is a good chance they will actually see it. The goal of social media marketing is to direct more audience members to subscriptions. Reliable reach over time. There is generally a relationship between the time you put into social media and the level of reliable reach you attain.
Role of content
Content is the catalyst that leads to awareness on the web. Awareness may then lead to engagement and engagement may lead to trust and even loyalty over time. Creating, curating, and distributing content is the economic driver of social media success. The different platforms require different types of content, some simple, some complex. This is important for a business to consider.
The best social media platform for your organization. The default position for social media marketing seems to be Facebook. While Facebook is undeniably important, let’s not forget the other big platforms in the context of our ultimate goal of building an actionable audience.
So to wrap it all up. It depends on you to choose what the best social media platform is for your company.
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