Choosing The Right Social Media Platforms For Your Business
There are a few essentials every modern business needs to have in order when they start: a website, an email, a Google business listing, and social media handles for the appropriate platforms. Even if you don’t intend to invest a significant proportion of time or money into marketing, these are the essentials required to make your business visible to an online market.
For the business owner who wants to make sure they’re taking full advantage of the benefits these platforms offer, they’ll also want to ensure they have google analytics set up to analyze the traffic visiting their website and understand where optimizations can be made, and a Facebook Business Account to allow them to run ads utilising the full functionality of the platform.
Choosing your social media platforms is crucial - not all platforms provide equal benefit to different businesses. The main players are constantly changing - as are their features - but these few have remained in the top downloaded apps for the last decade:
Facebook is the most-downloaded app of the decade, followed closely by its own Messenger App. Although most people have a Facebook account, Facebook’s fastest-growing demographic is the 65+ group. Facebook allows you to share images, videos, articles as well as text without images, which makes it a platform suitable for most businesses regardless of their industry. People expect businesses to have a Facebook account and to be able to reach them there if they have a query making Facebook a required asset for most businesses. One core benefit of Facebook is the ‘share’ function, which makes your brand discoverable to users who may otherwise not have come across your brand before. The latest updates include Facebook stories and live streaming.
Instagram is most popular among the 18-29 age group, followed by the 30-49 age group. The platform has evolved over the years to incorporate features from other popular apps, such as Snapchat. Users can now share temporary stories, permanent feed images and videos (min 3 seconds, max 1 minute), videos on IGTV of up to 15 minutes, carousel posts, and now Reels. Accounts with over 10K followers can access a Swipe Up feature, which allows account holders to place links in their stories so they can send users to their website or other assets. Some of the most popular categories on Instagram are fashion, food, design, travel, fitness, nature, inspiration, health, party, and art. Industries that can encompass one or more of these categories can find themselves well placed on this platform. One core benefit of Instagram is that it makes your brand discoverable through hash-tags.
Snapchat
Snapchat launched in 2011 and quickly became one of the most-downloaded apps. With unique features like temporary posts and creatives lenses and filters, it became enormously popular, particularly among the 13-17 age group. In 2020, Snapchat users are still predominantly younger, mostly between ages 13 and 29. Due to its temporary nature, this platform requires a content-heavy investment making it less viable for many small businesses. Big brands like Coca-Cola, Netflix, TV stations, Influencers and other media companies have found great success in this space by sponsoring lenses. Snapchat accounts are inherently less discoverable, so leveraging other platforms is an essential first step to grow your fan base: mention it in your Instagram bio, share it on your Facebook account, add a link to your website and be sure to update your email subscribers. Engagement can be encouraged by offering discounts to users who share snaps with your product.
TikTok
TikTok is a video-sharing social platform that launched in 2017. In 2020, 41% of users were aged 16-24. Dance challenges, makeup and hair tutorials, lip-synching, and pranks videos flourish on TikTok making it a suitable platform for youthful brands to find an audience. The main account feed mirrors Instagram’s feed-style, which makes it more appealing to brands as it creates a permanent home for content while allowing a brand to become more easily discoverable. It’s still a new and evolving platform but big brands like NFL, Fenty Beauty, Chipotle, Washington Post, Netflix, and Lush have found success there.
YouTube
Google-owned video-sharing platform YouTube launched in 2005 and in 2020 it had 2 billion users logged-in each month. 81% of US users are aged 15-25. Users aged 35+ and 55+ age groups are the fastest-growing YouTube demographics. YouTube often quotes a stat from a study it commissioned a few years ago that says on mobile alone it reaches more 18–34 year-olds than any TV network. The most successful types of content are video game walkthroughs, how-to guides and tutorials (make-up, recipes, and tech guides), product reviews (tech and make up), celebrity gossip, comedy, parodies and pranks (videos featuring animals in particular), unboxing videos, and educational videos. The latest updates include Youtube Live streaming, making album reveal parties popular.
Twitter was launched in 2006 and was first known for its character limitation which meant messages needed to be short and succinct to come across in a single Tweet. In 2020, the majority of Twitter users are aged 18-29 (70% of users are aged 13-29) with an even spread between genders. It’s become a popular platform for news, politics, and customer service. Over 60 million users are US-based, in Australia, there are 4. 5 million users. Using trending hashtags is one way to gain traction with your Twitter marketing strategy.
Pinterest launched in 2005 as an image sharing platform, in 2020 it is used as an image search engine where users can pin images to board as inspirational boards. It has more than 320 million monthly active users and 70% of those users are female. It is the most popular social media platform for planning big life events (like weddings, engagements, baby showers). 52% of millennials say they use Pinterest every month. The most popular searches are health and wellness, parenting, food, beauty, and personal care. There are 300K monthly active users in Australia with the largest demographic aged 18-49.
How to assess if a social media platform is suitable for your business:
Assess whether the demographics of each platform match the demographics of your business’s target consumer. If you’ll be investing time, money, and energy in building a social media presence on a platform, it’s important to make sure your target consumer is active on that platform. Assessing the demographic alignment will help to determine which platforms might be the best home for your business. For example, a brand selling selfie sticks could find a home on Tik Tok, Instagram, and Facebook but might be less welcomed on Twitter and Pinterest.
Assess whether the business’ products align with the type of content popularly consumed on different platforms. A makeup brand could thrive on Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Snapchat TikTok, and Twitter, while an auto repair company might choose to create accounts on Facebook and Twitter only.
If your product doesn’t naturally suit a social media platform but your customers are active there, you can find creative ways to activate your business's affinity interests. For example, a floral relay company’s primary business might be selling bouquets but they could create a blog that shares articles about hair and make-up tips using flowers and share this content on platforms like Pinterest. They could also create boards on Pinterest for floral inspiration for life events like weddings and birthdays.
Although not all businesses suit all social media platforms, there are other ways to create a presence on different platforms - this can be through paid social ad campaigns or through influencer marketing.