Many startups or companies inexperienced with online marketing get sidetracked asking which network is the best social media platform for marketing. It’s understandable.
The market is fragmented with billions of active users and myriad purposes behind them. And quite frankly, many of the “professionals” don’t know what they’re saying. In this article, we’ll be looking at how you can gauge the appropriate platform for your purposes.
Before Finding the Best Social Media Platform for Marketing
Effective social media marketing varies based on a number of factors. There are three elements, in particular, that you’ll want to pay close attention to as you begin building a strategy. Let’s have a quick look at each one.
B2B vs B2C
A business-to-business company (B2B) counts other businesses as its customers. An example of this would be a credit card processing company, which provides technology that other companies then use to accept payments for their businesses.
A business-to-consumer company (B2C) directly serves the consumer with no go-between. B2C companies include Amazon, Walmart, Target, and Google. It’s important to know the difference, because some social networks are better suited for B2C while others are for B2B.
Target Customer
A natural extension of defining the type of company you are is to flesh out your primary customer. Is it a corporation? If so, what products do they sell, who is making the buying decisions, and how do they most prefer to be reached?
The industry they serve will also factor in heavily. A government agency looking to buy office supplies will use different methods than a startup of two people who can make fast decisions and aren’t held to the same accounting standards.
Learn as much about your target customer as you can. Then, you can decide on the right platform.
Goal of Social Media
Not every company uses social media for the same reasons. Some want to sell directly off the platform, while others are just looking to build brand awareness.
Still, others may want to build connections that they can nurture into an email signup. Doing so has a massive upside when it comes to return on investment (ROI). That’s because you’re not exhausting ad-spend or giving up a share of revenues.
How Social Networks Differ
The success of your social media and digital marketing efforts next turns to the platforms you choose. Particularly, how you choose to use them. Getting the most out of these entails knowing what each of the major platforms are used for.
Facebook is usually at the top of any list of digital marketing strategies, because that’s where billions of active social media users are. Billions!
Facebook has many uses. It’s a place to connect with friends and family members at a distance. It’s a place to share funny memes, political opinions, important news, and relevant information surrounding a passion or industry.
It tolerates both longer and shorter posts. Visual content (videos, gifs, and images) perform well.
Twitter is perhaps the narrowest of the social media platforms in focus. That’s because you only have 140-280 characters to communicate what you have to say. Become a master of brevity and ride current trends to get noticed.
How can you make that fit into your business? It can be a challenge, but is certainly possible. As with Facebook, Twitter posts do particularly well with videos, images, and gifs.
Instagram is the platform many think of for social media marketing strategies because it’s so influencer-based. Instagram influencers build a following by sharing their lifestyles through images and video.
It’s phenomenal for connecting with an audience and building brand awareness. What doesn’t do as well? Negativity and politics. That also makes it seem like a safe space for businesses.
YouTube
YouTube is a video-only platform, but that hasn’t hurt its adoption. In fact, as of February 2021, it was the most widely used social media platform out there, with 81 percent of activity happening on its servers.
Your Next Steps
By now, you probably know there aren’t any easy answers to the question posed in the headline of this article. There’s only the best social media platform for your purposes.
Considering your business has many goals, that can mean different answers depending on which goal we’re discussing. As long as you keep the following actions top-of-mind, you’ll make the right choice.
Tailor the Message to the Platform
Nothing says you should be active only on one platform. In fact, getting more socially active has many benefits, provided you’re not just copying and pasting the same thing verbatim.
If you’re on TikTok, do a short video that resonates with those users and leans on something intriguing or humorous. Twitter?
Check hashtags to see which conversations are most trending in your industry, and drop a relevant message with visual that links out to your website. The point is to use each platform purposefully.
Avoid Boosting
Working with an agency that encourages you to boost your best performing posts? You might want to cut ties. All that does is throw money at a post that’s doing well on its own, without pausing to consider the ROI.
There’s a reason these companies will encourage you to do that, which we’ll get into in the next section. For now, we would just encourage you to hold onto your money and consider your real purpose.
Stop Chasing Bad Metrics
Companies that encourage you to blindly spend money on well-performing posts are doing so because they want you to increase your Likes, Shares, and Comments. Engagement, they say, leads to dollars.
But is that really the case? In our experience, these are bad metrics that inexperienced marketers use to gain new clients. The only metrics that should matter to you are dollars, sales, and revenue.
Everything else is just noise. Look at which posts moved the needle in these areas and ignore the rest.
Any Market Is a Good Market With the Right Strategy
Determining the best social media platform for marketing is about knowing what you want to get out of your social media activity. Then, go for the gusto!
Don’t listen to the companies that preach meaningless metrics. Listen to those who can help you pull click-throughs, signups, and sales.
Drive Social Media has many years of experience helping clients pull three times their investment on those social activities. Contact them today to see which strategies can work best for you.
