Businesses these days are beginning to take social media into account a lot more than several years ago and that is because it can have a massive impact on their bottom line. However, while that may be true, it seems that many companies are still confused about which social media platform is right for them. So as a business owner, how would you select the right platform for your company?

In the paragraphs below, we’re going to take a closer look at some of the best steps you can take in order to determine the right social media strategy for you. This includes defining your goals and then finding the social media platform that suits both your audience and company best.

What social media strategy do you have?

Your social media goals

Prior to choosing a social media platform on which you’re going to be active on, you need to establish your goals for it, goals that will eventually help contour your social media strategy. It’s true that some platforms will feature a lot more tools that businesses can use in order to expand their online reach, so that is why it’s important to know what you want. To include some of the business aspects social media can have a great impact on, they are:

Your retention rate.
Customer loyalty.
Brand awareness.
Sales.
Website traffic.

The truth is that, social media can have a marginal effect on all these things, but it’s hardly ever possible for a business to be able to focus on all of them concomitantly. So in this case, your best bet would be to just choose two of them and focus all your time and energy on them. Just make sure that your goals are as measurable and specific as possible, because if they’re not, then it’s going to be very hard to know whether you’ve achieved them or not. And what’s even more important about it is that you’ll be unaware of the actual effect of your efforts.

When you have clear goals, it helps you think more about what boosting brand awareness actually implies. For most business owners, this is a vague notion, but when you have a target to increase your Facebook likes by 50 percent for instance, then your efforts are a lot easier to understand and eventually measure.

What social media platform perfectly suits your business?

Prior to creating a social media strategy, you need to know very well how being on a specific social media platform is going to help your business. For instance, does that specific medium complement your company’s branding and message? Better yet, does it offer you the reach and also options you’re looking for?

If you carefully study all social media out there, you’ll find that the majority of platforms are harmless, but if you think of Snapchat, it certainly wouldn’t be the best place to spread the word about your new SEO company. In fact, it’s only going to damage your professionalism and any credibility you may have already worked hard to attain. And most importantly, it won’t get you any customers, since your clients won’t be engaging with your content there or aren’t using Snapchat to begin with.

On the other hand, platforms such as Twitter and Facebook offer a plethora of options to advertise and make your company and brand well known to your followers and beyond. If you were to use other platforms, then reaching the same goals would be very difficult, not to mention it would also require a lot of hard work. Because of that, it pays to be well informed prior to diving into social media and know exactly what kind of results you can get and goals you can achieve by using a specific platform.

Think about what being active on a certain platform would mean for your company, but also the way people are going to look/think about it. It’s essential that it aligns perfectly with the way you want your company to be viewed.

What social media platform is your targeted audience on?

People can use a wide range of social media platforms and that’s why you need to learn more about the platform your audience is mostly on. But before you can know that, you first of all need to get to know your audience. Sure enough, this will require a lot of research and hard work, but in the end, it’s going to be worth it.

For example, if your company works in the B2B area, it’s recommended that you get an account on LinkedIn. On the other hand, if your audience is young, then you should use platforms such as Instagram, Tumbler, Vine and also Snapchat.

Keep in mind that this advice is solely based on numbers and it could be that your audience is a lot more diverse. In this case, the best way to find out exactly how many of them use a specific social media platform is to ask them directly by using a survey.

Some companies don’t yet have an audience and if this is the case for you and you’re still building it, then don’t worry. There are plenty of websites you can use in order to get a good idea of what type of users can be found on each social media platform. In this case, the Pew Research Center may be of great help, so you may want to check them out.

Social media you cannot ignore

Presently, there’s only one social media platform you cannot afford to ignore and that’s Facebook. But why is that? Well, the biggest reason is because they currently have 1.5 billion users that log into their account every month. That accounts to over 20 percent of the global population using Facebook at least once a month. Now you probably know why hopping on this bandwagon is a good idea.

Focus on your social media strategy!

The most important thing you should learn from this post is that you need to first of all determine your social media strategy prior to becoming active on any platform. In this day and age, wasting money and effort on the wrong goals and media is very easy, so that’s why you should consider the following three questions before doing anything else social media related:

1)On what social media platform do I find my target audience?
2)Which platform best complements my company/business model?
3)What goals do I want to achieve with social media?

If you have any social media strategies you plan on using in the near future, feel free to post about them in the comments section below.

If you don’t have enough time to manage your social media channels and need good quality content and video for your presentation you can call us today for a free consultation.