Social media is growing every day. There are new platforms popping up every time you turn around. Social media marketing has become an important part of brand recognition. If you have not created an online account for your business, you are missing out on a lot of opportunity to reach your audience. But with so many social networks available today, how do you know which ones are best for your business?
There are some brands that sign up for every social channel available to them: Facebook ,Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat , Meerkat, and many more.
The problem with trying to be present on all of the networks is that you cannot really be present on all of the networks. Social media marketing requires a good amount of time investment to make it worthwhile. You must be active and engaging. On top of that, you also have to run your business.
If you are spending all of your time trying to juggle all of your social accounts, you drop the ball when it comes to handling your daily business matters. On the other side of that coin, if you are spending all of your time focusing on your business, then you have no time to focus on social media, so what is the point of having all of those accounts?
What you need to do instead is determine which social networks are the most valuable for your brand. Where will your investment of time be better spent?
Here are some hints that will help you figure out which social networks are best for your business:
Look for your competition
What networks are your competitors using for online marketing ? Find out where they are spending time. Don’t worry about how many followers they have. Look at the level of engagement. Are they getting a lot of comments and shares for their content?
If you see that the brand has a lot of interaction with its followers on that site, it is probably a good one for you to consider.
Know who your audience is
Do you really know who you are trying to reach? Figure out who is in your target audience: age, location, occupation. When you narrow down who you are trying to reach, it is easier to find out where they are spending time.
Most younger age groups, those between 18-34, tend to hang out on the newer social networks like Snapchat. More mature audiences can be found on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
Find out what they want
Figuring out how your audience wants to be reached. Do they enjoy videos? Photos? Trivia? Contests?
Determine what gets your audience the most excited online. See what other similar businesses are doing online and what the response is from the audience. This gives you a clue about the best format for reaching and engaging your target audience.
If videos seem to do very well, then you can be confident that sites like Facebook and YouTube will be good for your brand.
Know what you have time for
Social media marketing takes a lot of time. It is not something to squeeze into your lunch break. Keeping this in mind, figure out how much time you really have to invest on social networks.
If you know you only have an extra hour each day for social media, then you want to keep your reach limited to only one or two channels that will make the most impact.
If you think you absolutely have to be on more channels, consider outsourcing your social media management to a third party.
Once you get into a routine that works, you will see the results of your effort on social media. Don’t spread yourself too thin in an effort to reach a large number of people. If you are not getting a high level of engagement on those channels, then it is not worth the time spent.
