Understanding Social Media Platforms and How They Can Help You
Social Media be CRAZY! Yes, in this case the slang is true. Sometimes staying on top of social media trends feels like a fulltime job. The worst part is much of it feels like it was created for an 18 year old mind and, unfortunately I am closer to 50 than 18. Where does that leave you? First, you need to understand that posting on every social media account in existence is not necessarily the right approach. Second, you need to understand what each platform is and how it relates to you and your business.
Here I will list a short description of each platform and help you get a better understanding of what it is and why it is here.
FACEBOOK – Let’s start with the kingpin. Currently they are clocking in with 2.27 Billion monthly active users. What is an ACTIVE USER? A user is defined as ACTIVE if they have logged in during the last 30 days. FB is also the best use for most businesses (NOT ALL, BUT MOST!). For business users it is a great place to share photos, updates and news to the business’s followers. Fans or Followers of yourself or your business come to FB to find out what’s going on or to just be nosey…
FB is the best location for business ADS – currently we are seeing a large swing in advertising dollars move from Google PPC to FB. A large reason for that is due to the granular nature you can fine tune your advertising dollars inside of FB. Also, FB is geared towards micro markets. It is very simple for a user in South Summerlin (a suburb of Las Vegas) to target a small group of people that either live, work or drive through the area for their product or service. DATA IS KING and FB has the data. You can use 1000’s of filters to adjust your target market to exactly what you are looking for – your “Perfect Consumer”. FB has done such a good job at giving local businesses the tools to do this that it is becoming increasingly difficult for large spenders (Quicken Loans) to overshadow smaller businesses in their local markets. FB has divided up the market so small that the local guys can still advertise and actually get leads!
TWITTER – Twitter is a fast and easy way to communicate what is on your mind to your customers. However, they are currently losing active users year over year. They are finding it harder to compete for the active user market and it is a more complicated place to advertise. Currently, it is a better fit for celebrities, politicians and news outlets to get short bits of information out quickly to the masses.
Probably not the best place to focus 100% of your energy, but there are many users that still go here first for news. So, if you can write short yet engaging content this may be a way for you to be seen by some of your customers.
LINKEDIN – Currently LinkedIn is the best go to place for B2B communication. It is mainly a place users go to showcase their resumes and search for new jobs or new victims to sell their product to. Not a bad place to market yourself, but you are not going to find the same type of consumer as you do in other social media platforms. It is a great place to show off your industry knowledge and you have the ability to flex your brain power in LinkedIn groups. You never know where you may find your next client.
One thing that LinkedIn is a great place for is referral partners. Most business people have LinkedIn profiles and business people are your best source of referrals!
YOUTUBE – Interesting Fact: viewers retain 95% of a message they watch in a video compared to 10% when reading it in text. By 2019, internet video will account for 80% of all consumer internet traffic. What does this mean for you? Grab your phone and start shooting selfies? Not necessarily, but when given the opportunity try to incorporate more visuals (video and photographs) into your social media presence. YouTube is a great way to store, share, catalog and show off your video content. If you currently send out a reoccurring newsletter to your database think about integrating video of YOU. Remember you are the star of your business development pipeline. Now posting a ton of videos of yourself to YouTube might not make the phone start ringing off the hook, but it is an important part of your social media presence. Content brings people coming back for more. Try to integrate your YouTube channel/videos with everything else you do in the social media world.
INSTAGRAM – In mid 2018 IG became the fastest growing social network when they eclipsed the 1B active user mark. Now before you delete your FB account, understand that depending on your target market IG has a different demographic of users than FB. Also, advertising works very differently in IG. If you are looking for customer engagement then IG is a great place to find that. Now remember, engagement means a customer putting a big smiley face on your picture you posted. IG is not the best place if you are looking to generate leads for your company today. Also, IG has limitations on what you can post and the way users can interact with your posts. IG is fast growing, but it is still much easier for consumers to BUY via a FB ad or content.
OTHERS – Yes there are other social media platforms out there. Just know you only have so many hours in your day and you need to decide where to focus your energy. Remember there are really two reasons to use social media for your business: 1.) to attract a new customer, or 2.) to communicate with your existing ones. Focus on the platforms that best fit what you are looking to do.