Introduction
When it comes to developing an online strategy social media simply cannot be ignored and will form a key part of a successful marketing campaign and help build and engage your audience however choosing the wrong platforms to focus on can result in wasting time marketing and has the potential to attract a different audience than your ideal customer.
This article aims to breakdown some of the popular social platforms online and help you better understand them and decide whether they are suitable for your business.
Getting started
Before embarking on any marketing campaign asking yourself the following is important to help make the right decision:
1) Who is my ideal customer?
2) What sort of content does my customer consume?
3) Where do they consume this content?
4) What are your business objectives? (Get more calls, leads, signups, installs or purchases)
A breakdown of different platforms and where they fit in:
Facebook:
Facebook has to date is one of the largest general social networks and is a must for almost every business, like most platforms pushing your products or services all the time is not the way to go but instead sharing regular high quality content, memes, images and videos can capture lots of traffic from Facebook.
Facebook is also a great choice for local businesses to get people to call you or send messages through Messanger where customers can ask questions about what you offer.
Facebook users tend to stay on Facebook for long periods of time so keeping them engaged is of great importance. In addition the age groups and demographics on Facebook are varied between ages from 13 all the way to people in their 50’s and older so it can be a great place to reach your ideal customer.
LinkedIn:
LinkedIn the professional network is geared towards businesses offering services or consulting and is a great way to network and promote content around your business.
If this is the area you operate in LinkedIn is very good to find decision makers in a company and approach them to contact. Like all the other networks you can also buy advertising to reach more potential customers.
Twitter:
Twitter is another great choice to include in your social media marketing efforts and business branding primarily designed for short simple bursts of content like quotes or images.
Twitter should primarily be used to interact with your customers such as sales questions, complaints and other discussion rather than pushing your products and services all the time. When doing this along with sharing relevant content on a regular basis Twitter can be a great asset to attract lots of traffic back to your website, build up your readership and gain brand recognition at the same time.
Instagram & Pinterest:
For businesses that are highly visual like fashion, travel, food and lifestyle Instagram and Pinterest are very good options to capture users with high quality eye-catching images leading back to your website.
Both these platforms can drive lots of traffic especially from mobile devices and can be a great asset for your business content.
GitHub:
GitHub is a code-hosting platform where programmers can store and collaborate on software projects most notibly associated with opensource projects like Linux.
If your audience is highly technical and you have opensource software then GitHub is where a lot of users are likely to hang out.
From here you can share code or work you have completed and invite other developers to make commits and get involved helping to build up your community.
VK (Vkontakte):
Vkontakte or VK for short is a popular Russian social network used extensively within the country as well as throughout Eastern Europe and other parts of Europe.
VK is very similar to Facebook in design however users tend to focus more on pages where there is discussion functionality.
If your target market is in Russia or neighboring countries like Ukraine, Kazakhstan and other places then you will most likely want to be on VK.
Other Russian-based social networks you may want to check out as well include ok.ru (Odnoklassniki) and ICQ for messaging.
Conclusion
If your interested in developing a online marketing campaign for your business leveraging our services please get in touch with our team or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other places to get updates on new content.