With so many different social media sites available these days, how do you work out which is the best one for your business?

Using social media is all about quality engagement with prospective and current customers. Building a relationship with your target market helps your business to grow and encourages new traffic to your website. If your business is marketing to consumers, it is important that you optimize your marketing investment, content and business impact by reaching the right prospective customers through the right channels. When it comes to using these platforms, quality comes before quantity, so using one or two websites well is better than using all of them poorly.

There are several factors you might want to consider when deciding which channels are the right ones for you:

  1. Demographic of your target market
  2. B2B or B2C
  3. Location of your competition
  4. Available resources you have to spend on social media

Once you have an understanding of these factors it will be easier to decide which channel is best for your business.

Facebook

Facebook has a database of over 1.11 billion people worldwide and generates up to 645 million business page views per week, so it’s no surprise that businesses are taking full advantage of this trend to capitalize on their consumer reach. Remember to update your business page regularly, interact with your customers to help build brand loyalty and encourage discussions about your industry with fellow businesses. People tend to use Facebook in their spare time so it is important to remember to keep your interactions light and social.

Twitter

This is the perfect channel for offering you a large following base. Tweets attract the attention of your audience, driving leads and increasing brand awareness while staying up to date with industry trends. Monitoring and tracking twitter feeds will help you identify consumer needs and drive traffic to your website. There is software available such as Hootsuite which can help you stay on top of your twitter profile and enable you to monitor feeds.

LinkedIn

Businesses are now starting to realise the opportunities to build relationships and sales leads using this site. In order to maximize the use of this platform, make sure you have a personal and a business page which provide key information about you and your business. Approach this channel seriously and assume that users will want serious, profession information. To generate leads on LinkedIn, join and create groups which connect you to others in your industry, participate in discussions and show your knowledge in the Answers section.

Google+

This is by no means as empty as some people would have you believe. Google+ works like a combination of Twitter and Facebook by increasing the relevancy of search results which makes it a marketing dream. Using Google+ will also mean great search engine results for your website as your most recent posts will be displayed when people search for your business, whether they follow you or not. Attract visitors to your page by using cross-promotion from Facebook and Twitter and by adding the Google+ button to your website.

YouTube

The YouTube market is highly competitive but if your business is able to visually convey its services and product and how your brand is different from others, then this platform is ideal. YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google so having content here is key if you want to capitalize on those searching for your business on this platform. This site is also owned by Google so when it comes to boosting your SEO ranking your videos are much more likely to appear on the first page of the search results.

Instagram

If you have a visual product and you regularly take photos on your smartphone, Instagram is perfect for promoting your business. Users can apply filters to their images and share them instantly with their followers. It is a simple, fast way of staying in touch with your client base, letting them know what you are up to and what your latest products are. The vast majority of users tend to be females between the ages of 18 – 35, as such it is important to remember whether this platform will reach your required demographic.

The right social media sites can have a huge impact on your business. Watch the latest video to learn more, or get in touch to find out how we can help here at Xanda. Call us on 0208 44 44 757 or email us via the Contact Us page.