Whether you’re new to social media or a seasoned professional, Identifying which platforms are the best fit for your business and making sure you use them effectively to stay ahead of the competition is key to ensuring your time is well spent.
To help break it down, Smash Social have put together a summary of the key social media platforms, so you can check you’re on the right track.
Twitter
13 million Twitter users in the UK.
500 million tweets sent per day.
Most users are aged between 18-29.
59% male to 41% female adults.
81% of millennials check Twitter at least once a day.
Why Use Twitter for Business?
Twitter is great tool for marketing. It’s free to post, so make sure you share interesting content your customers will genuinely find useful. You can also use paid advertising to target specific groups within your chosen location and demographic which makes it a very cost effective option for SMEs.
Twitter is also perfect for responding to customer feedback, using it as a customer service page, you can respond to queries and take any serious complaints offline as quickly as possible.
Over 1.5 billion daily active users.
44% of users are female.
82% are aged 18-29.
Users spend an average of 20 minutes per on day on the site.
Why use Facebook for Business?
Like Twitter, Facebook is useful for responding to customer queries, running competitions and alerting your customers to any important news, (for example, if your website is down). It’s important to remember the majority of your audience will be using Facebook outside of office hours, so you may want to reflect this in the type of content you share and think about how and when your customers will be online.
Organic growth is difficult to achieve on Facebook so it’s worth allocating some budget for advertising and experimenting with different messages to see what works best.
15 million Instagram business profiles.
1 million monthly active advertisers.
68% of users are female.
Why Use Instagram for Business?
Instagram is a creative, visually engaging platform, heavily skewed towards a young, female demographic. In this case, a picture really is worth a thousand words so if you work in fashion, beauty, lifestyle or food it’s essential to keep your feed current with daily posts to keep your followers updated.
Instagram is also a great tool for encouraging engagement and getting your customers to exchange images, comments and feedback. You can use it to host competitions and start conversations or even consider the chance to go viral by exploring options around a company mascot, the office puppy or cute baby photos – make sure you keep it relevant and consider what will genuinely appeal to your target audience.
106 million monthly active users.
Currently available in 24 languages.
The average user spends 17 minutes per month on LinkedIn.
57% of users are male.
Why Use LinkedIn for Business?
As well as being a popular recruitment platform, LinkedIn is also the most important platform for B2B marketing and 62% of business owners use it to stay connected.
Linkedin is used by 81% of B2B businesses for product launches compared to 71% using Twitter and 54% using Facebook. With that in mind, you could try experimenting with LinkedIn ads to boost lead generation and referral traffic, particularly if your business is B2B focused.
If you want to start with the basics, make sure your company page is up to date and all your employees are sharing posts to boost your follower numbers and ensure potential customers can find you easily.
150 million monthly active users.
81% of users are female.
67% of pinners are under 40 years old.
87% of pinners have purchased a product because of Pinterest
93% use the site to help them plan future purchases.
Why Use Pinterest for Business?
Pinterest has the best referral rate of all the platforms for shopping which makes it popular with retailers who can take advantage of the Buyable Pins function to turn their pages into online shops.
It’s also a useful tool for driving traffic to your website by including links on your pinned posts. Like Instagram, Pinterest relies heavily on beautiful, creative images to tell the brand story so before you get started, consider how much content you will be able to create and how much time you can dedicate to curating your pages.
Snapchat
300 million monthly active users.
1 million Snaps created every day.
45% of users are aged between 18-24.
70% of Snapchat users are female.
More than 400 million Snapchat stories are created every day.
Why Use Snapchat for Business?
Snapchat is all about real-time marketing, so if your brand is fast moving and you run lots of live events, this is the place to be. Use it to showcase product launches or share special content that will appeal to your demographic. For example, if you’re a fashion brand you could use Snapchat to unveil your latest collection or give users an exclusive preview.
Snapchat is best suited to B2C brands who can tap into the fun, irreverent feel so if you need to target those hard to reach millennials then it could be a good fit.
YouTube
1 billion unique monthly users.
55% of YouTube users are male.
300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.
The average mobile viewing session lasts more than 40 minutes.
The most popular YouTube brand channel in October 2017 was Lego with over 5.5 billion video views
Why Use YouTube for Business?
YouTube works best for brands that have access to lots of engaging video content. It’s perfect if you sell products online and need a platform to post explainer videos or production demonstrations so your customers can try before they buy.
Still unsure about the best platforms to reach your customers on? Smash Social has a dedicated team to help you plan and manage your social media marketing. Get in touch for more details.
Blog originally published here.
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