Ultimate Social Media Channels for Business Guide — Part 1

There was once a time where social media channels were numbered, full of glittery and sparkly profiles, with no such a thing as business pages or for that matter reactions (yes I am talking about MySpace, Hi5 and Tagged). But times have changed and now we have an endless list of social media platforms to choose from.

No you don’t have to

Whilst social media pages are a key element in any business’ marketing strategy; offering direct customer interactions and relationship building aspects, It is a misconception that your business needs a page on every single social media platform out there (That is a lot of pages to maintain).

Choosing the social media platform that suits your business the most will save you a lot of marketing money and get you the highest ROI as you will be marketing directly to users that fall within your customer’s persona.

So which platform should you use? there are a few questions you have to ask before determining the channels utilised in your social media strategy, creating a customer persona by answering the following questions will help you determine which channels to use.

• Who are they? Age, gender and location.
• What is their job or role?
• What are their pain points? and what are you offering to alleviate or eliminate them.
• Where do they go to find information?
• What are their major interests?

Answering those questions will help you create a rough sketch of what your ideal buyer would look like and in turn will make it easier to determine which channel will work best for your business. Now it’s time to dissect some of the most popular social media channel to help you determine which one(s) to pursue.

Social Media Channels

Facebook

The behemoth of all social media platforms with 1.44 Billion monthly active users, an average of 20+ minutes spent per day and 1.3 million shares a minute makes it the holy grail of social media marketing.

Demographics:

Source: Pew Internet Report 2015

• 77% Female Users and 66% Male Users.
• 87% of users are within 18–29 years of age.
• 74% Live in an urban area.
• 77% Make less than $30,000 annually.

Facebook Brand Page Statistics:

• 49% like a page to support a brand.
• 42% like a page to get a coupon or a discount.
• 41% like a page to receive regular updates.
• 35% like a page to participate in contests.
• Drives almost 25% of referral traffic.

While Facebook has to be the centre piece of you social media marketing strategy, there are a few considerations you have to put in mind, Facebook users are extremely critical about ad targeting, most just ignore its existence and they do NOT like the sales pitches so your posts have to be educational rather than just sales offers.

Conclusion: Facebook is a great medium for Business to Consumer marketing, while Business to Business marketing might not be as effective.

Tip: Best days for engagement by industry.

Twitter

The land of the opinionated and the 140 character limit god, with 284 Million active users a month, an average of 170 minutes spent monthly and 500 Million tweets per day, makes it the land of the efficient marketing, it is a great way to communicate with your prospects with a high chance of going viral; after all 34% of marketers use twitter to successfully generate leads.

Demographics:

• 24% Male Users, 21% Female Users.
• 37% users are between the age of 18–29 , 25% are between 30–49.
• 25% Live in urban areas, 23% live in suburban areas.
• 27% Make more than $75,000 annually.

Important Tips:

• Tweets with images get 89% more favourites and 150% more retweets.
• Salesforce found asking followers to retweet yielded 12x higher retweets.
• Use Call to Actions, don’t just tweet about an event ask your follower to do something after reading (use verbs).
• Use hashtags wisely (with great power comes great responsibility), using the right hashtag and joining trendy hashtags can increase your brand awareness.

Twitter is a very great marketing tool, but to stand out you need great content, repeated tweeting and responding to tweets, make sure you have a plan and schedule tweets using tools like HootSuite or Buffer.

Conclusion: In a recent survey 49% of respondents prefer connecting and interacting with brands on twitter than any other social media channel, on Twitter your customers and prospects want to hear what you have to say.

Linkedin

Linkedin is the network of professionals, with 347 Million users over 200 countries and an average of 4 hours of surfing spent per week, Linkedin is the ideal social media channel for businesses and professionals to connect.

Demographics:

• 28% Male Users, 27% Female Users.
• 31% of users are between the age of 30–49 and 30% between 50–64.
• 32% of users live in urban areas.
• 44% of users make more than $75,000 annually.
• 50% of users are college graduates.

Important Statistics:

• 91% of marketers focus on Linkedin in their B2B strategy right after twitter.
• 80% of users want to connect with companies because it provides them with an opportunity to enhance their professional decision-making.
• 50% of users are likely to buy from a company they engage with on the platform.
• 45% of users are in an upper management position.

Conclusion: Linkedin is the perfect platform for your B2B strategy whether you are a new business after generating new leads or a freelancer.

To be continued, in Part 2 will discuss Instagram, Pinterest and Snapchat.