If you own or run a business, you know you need to be on social media, but with so many channels to choose from, which ones do you use? It’s tempting to use as many as you can; but doing that will merely serve to spread yourself too thin. Here are 4 of the best platforms you can use to market your business.
The ‘Daddy’. It’s the biggest social media channel in the world and it dominates the UK too, with over 40 million active users. Just about every demographic you can think of is on there, although as a group, teenagers have migrated to other channels to an extent as older demographics have joined. A case of children not wanting to be seen with their parents perhaps! Facebook is a brilliant place for business marketing; not only because of the huge audiences but it is simple to use too. There are a ton of great features you can utilise to connect with your customers – status updates, pictures, videos, live videos and articles. Meanwhile, Facebook ads are a superb way to sell directly sell to your customers, particularly useful if you are a B2C business. Advertisers can also access excellent data and insights to target their audience, while customers can interact with businesses via Facebook Messenger.
In terms of size, number two in the UK market with around 30 million users. Instagram is all about engaging visual content; it is a photo and video-sharing channel where users upload content and share with their network. The platform attracts a teenage and young adult demographic and has more female users than males. It offers some very useful features for marketers. Shoppable Tags allow users to click on products and go through directly to purchase. Instagram Stories are great for short story-telling videos and real-time interaction is made possible via Instagram Live. If you have a product or service that can be showcased visually, either as a photo or short video, and are looking at an under 35 audience, you should look to use Instagram.
YouTube
The main channel used for video uploading and viewing; YouTube has over 20 million UK users. Users can upload music videos, TV shows, live streams, concerts and much more. Users can also like or dislike videos, make comments and subscribe to other user channels. If you produce regular video content, YouTube is an ideal marketing environment. You don’t need a Hollywood budget; as long as the content is original and engaging, a well filmed video on your phone camera will suffice. Again, this channel has great features for marketers – YouTube Live is an easy way to reach audiences in real time with streaming events, while YouTube Cards allow you to link you content to other videos and playlists. As YouTube are owned by Google, posting videos is also an excellent way of boosting the SEO value of your product or service. The key to growing your brand on this platform is by getting all-important views and likes. Achieving that will allow you to post more and deeper content to connect even more strongly with your audience. Post engaging content on a regular basis is a must, and it’s also a great idea to buy cheap youtube views as well to build your brand.
LinkedIn is a social media channel where professionals connect, share material and look for career opportunities. While other platforms tend to be great for B2C businesses, LinkedIn is very much a B2B platform as well as B2C. With 20 million UK users, it’s not only a unique site, but it’s a big one too. As well as being a terrific place to keep abreast of industry developments and interact with business-minded professionals, it is an excellent place to grow your business through advertising and posting. It is simple to set up a company page, then you can concentrate on your marketing strategy. LinkedIn has great demographic insights so you can learn who uses the platform, and how you can reach them, and you can also see what your competitor set is up to. You can schedule your posts in advance, use rich media for greater impact and posts can also be optimised to target people who will be interested and engaged with your content. LinkedIn Analytics will show you which posts people engaged with the most and what worked best – and what flopped! Recent figures show that over 50% of all social traffic to B2B sites comes from LinkedIn – if used correctly, it is a very powerful tool.
Final Thoughts
There’s an art to social media marketing. There are many channels, but you don’t need to be on all of them. Your early aim should be to master two or three of them, with time you’ll be able to analyse what works best to connect with your audience. Building a successful presence will take time, but with patience, if you get the best out of your social media platforms your business will do very well.
