By now, we all know how important social media is for businesses, their marketing, and their sales strategy. However, it seems like new social media channels are popping up every month. Even though it’s quite tempting to be active on all social media platforms, choosing the right one for your business is the best way to achieve a high level of success.
By narrowing down your choice and focusing on the right social media channels, you’ll avoid getting overwhelmed and lost in the responsibilities that each of these channels demands.
Before taking on more than what you can handle, choose what best works for your customers, team members, and resources and get the best return on your time investment.
In this post, we offer some guidance on how to choose the right social media channels for your business that will help you nurture authentic relationships and build trust.
Identify Your Core Target Audience
The first thing you need to do is identify who your audience is and which social media networks they tend to use. You should get as specific as possible since it will make your decision a lot easier. For instance, if your customers spend most of their active time on LinkedIn, there’s no point in creating an Instagram channel to reach out to your target customer.
Asking yourself questions like – who is your typical customer, how old are they, what’s their education and income levels, and what type of content they mostly interact with can help you define your audience in as much detail as possible and help you pinpoint where exactly they spend most of their time online.
For instance, if your company offers products and services intended for the younger generations, you should perhaps consider setting up a TikTok account.
TikTok is a relatively new channel highly suitable for companies that have a very young target group and may want to try something new and keep up with trends. By using TikTok you can get great exposure for your business. If you are just starting and are somewhat lost when using this platform, you might consider hiring a specialized agency to help you get the necessary TikTok booster to get more views and organic followers and get your brand the exposure it deserves.
Discover What Channels the Competition Uses
Taking into account what social media channels your competitors use is just as important when analyzing your target audience. In fact, it can help you get valuable insights and guide your future decisions.
Analyze what type of content they post, how regularly, check how many likes and shares their posts get, and see how well their followers engage with the content. You can use social listening tools to see which brands in your industry enjoy the most extensive reach, the largest impact on social media in terms of social shares.
Ultimately, this will also provide you with certain clues as to what type of content you should use that will complement your business goals, brand identity and reach out to your ideal customers.
Analyze Which Channels Are Bringing in the Most Traffic
If you are an established brand, your traffic report can be an excellent resource in your efforts to determine which social media channels are responding well to your products or services.
For instance, the Google Analytics Social & Network Referrals Search report gives a quick overview of which channels drive the most traffic to your website.
If you were planning on opening a Facebook account, but LinkedIn generated a lot more traffic and conversion, you might want to think about starting a new presence there or increasing your publishing frequency.
So, we advise you to ask yourself which social media channels bring the most traffic to your site, which channels are responsible for the most conversions, and what is the traffic pattern for each social media channel.
Determine What You Want to Achieve
Another crucial step when choosing the best social media channels for your enterprise is knowing what you are trying to achieve with your social media strategy. This not only helps you determine which channels to join or avoid but also gives you a clue of how to shape the type of content that your target audience wants to see. From here, you’ll have an easier time determining the KPIs to start tracking from the start.
Some of the goals you want to achieve may include increasing your brand awareness online or offline, providing great customer service, increasing traffic to your website, and increasing the number of leaders and conversions.
Final Thoughts
The above-listed tips will help you gather all of your answers and match them with the channel(s) so you can reach your target audience and achieve your business goals. All social media channels don’t reach the same people or yield the same results. Knowing how to align platform benefits with business goals is key and this will ultimately make your decision-making process easier.
