Social media has emerged to be one of the most powerful marketing tools of all time. The reach of social media, its wide range of audience base and ease of posting has contributed to it becoming such a strong marketing tool for all kinds of businesses. The best thing about social media marketing is small businesses can compete as equal with multinational giants. In the eyes of the social media audience whoever provides better service, greater quality product and competitive prices are the winners, regardless of the size of the company.
Different strengths as marketing tools
However, the thing about social media is that it does not consist of just one channel. There are different kinds of platforms with each having different strengths as marketing tools and serving mainly to a certain demographic of audience. For instance, LinkedIn by and large sees professionals congregating, while Instagram is a place mostly popular with young adults.
Focus more on the channel that serves your business
Hence, it is imperative to choose a social media platform for marketing your business wisely. It does not mean that you will confine yourself to marketing on just one social media platform and blatantly disregard the others. What it means is that you should focus more on the channel that serves your business purpose the best than the others. The factors that you should consider to know which social media channel is best for your business are:
- The kind of business you have – If it is something to do with visuals like apparel business or cosmetics, Instagram is the place to be. Similarly, if you are offering services, focus on LinkedIn and Facebook more.
- Your customer base – Like it is mentioned above, be where your customers are. Depending on the demographics of your audience choose the social media platform they frequent. For example, if you are targeting business professionals, LinkedIn and Twitter should be the best place.
Build engagement with your audience
Once you decide on the social media platform you want to target, your next step is to build engagement with your audience. Here are some tips that can come in handy for doing the same:
- While it is not a smart move to just stick to one single social media channel, engaging into too many can be troublesome. Especially so for small businesses. It takes a lot of time to strategise content for different social media platforms owing to how different they are. Hence managing too many channels at once could become cumbersome for a small team. My advice would be to choose a maximum of three social media channels.
- Research your audience and the kind of content they show interest in. Develop content that targets the exact pain points of your audience and provide a straight forward solution. In simple terms, develop content that is relevant to not only what you are offering but would attract your target audience too.
- Stay updated with the latest trends on your chosen platform and utilise it for your business. For example, the stories on Instagram are all the rage now. Make sure you don’t fall behind other small businesses by just sticking to regular posts and ignoring this trend.
Social media as a marketing tool
Your main motto while exploring social media as a marketing tool for your business should be research and more research. Make sure you spend time on learning and understanding the various social media platforms, how businesses utilise each of these platforms, the kind of content that is most sought after and the kind of audience each platform mostly receives. Hopefully, this article helps in giving you a direction on how to proceed.
