What social media channel is right for my business?

Ethical digital marketing agency Creative Blend share why all businesses should have a social media presence, and how to decide which platform is best for you.

Social media is a funny one. Businesses today recognise the need for it to be part of their marketing strategy; they feel they have to be on social media. But, more often than not, they are unsure and overwhelmed by the options... 'how often should I post?' 'What channels should be on?' 'Do I even need to be on social media?' The answer is YES. Whether you’re a freelancer, a small organisation or a big one, with social media you’ll gain:

•    Possibilities to connect with your audience and engage with them

•    A platform to raise awareness about what you do and what makes you different

•    A customer service platform where customers can contact you, ask questions, show praise or complain

•    Assistance in generating and warming up leads

•    A source of traffic to your website

Ok. I’m clear social media can help my business. Got it. Now what?

It’s time to define your target audience. It might sound basic, but actually, before you choose the social media channel that is right for your business you need to know who is your target audience; where they live, their age, hobbies, what industry they work in, what magazines they read, what events they attend… the more information you have, the better. This will help you build a strong community, develop trust amongst your audience and give you more credibility in your communications.

Also, depending on your audience, you’d want to focus on the different social media platforms. We’re going to focus on the most popular ones:

Facebook

Facebook is great for B2C businesses, especially if your target audience is between 25-55 years old. It offers plenty of options to customise your business page, customers can review your services, learn about your story, engage with your updates, share your content, sign up to your newsletter or enquire about your services. It offers many different targeting options when it comes to paid advertising, so you can show your ads on Facebook to people that live in specific locations or that have visited a specific page on your website. It also offers plenty of analytics and stats to help you understand what works for your fans and what doesn’t. Oh! And remember that Facebook now owns Instagram, so you can do cross-promotional campaigns across both channels. Win-win!

Instagram

Instagram’s appeal lies in how visual and simple the platform is. It allows you to easily upload and share images with some text. It allows you to follow topics, users, organisations. Instagram works great for B2C but you can also use it for B2B communications as long as your audience is between the 18-40 age bracket. As it’s highly visual, it works great for industries like travel, photography, food and beverage, health & wellness, beauty, arts and design amongst others.

Twitter

Great for engaging with 18-29 years target audience, Twitter allows you to connect with personal individuals and organisations at both B2C and B2B. Due to its fast-paced nature, Twitter lends itself to quick, short, regular communications, making it great for real-time customer service. Twitter works great when connecting with investors, politics, finance, education professionals and academics, travel, hospitality, health and wellness, tech, fashion, retail and sports, to name a few. It has a comprehensive analytics dashboard and it offers different paid advertising options too depending on your goals.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn has established itself as the social platform for B2B amongst people aged 25-45. Like on Facebook, you need to be on it as an individual, build a profile and create a page for your business if you want to be noticed. This allows you to share updates about what you do and what you consider relevant to your business, connect with like-minded professionals and join groups to learn and discuss topics that are relevant to your professional activity.

These are not the only social media channels available out there - there’s plenty more like Pinterest, YouTube, Snapchat, Vimeo, Tumblr or Reddit, but it’s almost counterproductive to try to be engaged and have a strong community in all of them, hence why prioritising always helps. If you don’t have time to engage in real-time with your audiences, schedule posts or, if you need some assistance in getting on top of your social media strategy, we can certainly help!

Creative Blend is an ethical digital marketing agency, offering support across website design, social media, content, email marketing and more while giving back to local charities. They’re committed to changing the common approach to marketing and defining what can benefit both businesses and people in the process.

Thank you to Creative Blend for writing this blog.

If you want to contribute to the Chamber blog, contact us on hannah@brightonchamber.co.uk