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What Social Media Platform Is Best for Me…and Why?
Every day, billions of people are making and sharing connections on social media. That means if you want your business to get found and really engage with your existing and potential customers, your website cannot be your only online presence.
But, we’re not going to lie. Managing social media for a business is not all fun and games. It takes a significant amount of time and work to be done well (and if it’s not done well, then it’s just a waste of time and work). So, you need to be choosy about which platforms you’re going to use to engage your customers.
To find the best platforms for you and your business, here’s a quick guide to the pros and cons of the most popular platforms:
Facebook is one of the most popular social media platforms with more than 1 billion daily active users. Plus, the average Facebook visit is 20 minutes! That gives users a lot of time to browse, post, like and share…and they could be liking and sharing your content.
The pros:
- You can create posts ahead of time and schedule posting to ensure fresh content on your page even during your busy times
- Posts easily incorporate images and videos with text for visual appeal
- Easy integration of like/share buttons on other online channels
The cons:
- The News Feed algorithm is getting picky, so reach without paid boosting may be limited. (Still, paid ads are affordable, so boosting posts is not cost-prohibitive.)
Facebook management can easily be outsourced to help you maintain fresh content and live engagement, even when you can’t do it yourself. And you can still hop online any time you do have a spare minute to keep your thumb on the pulse of your social media presence.
Twitter began as a micro-blogging site, but shortened links and increasingly expanded capabilities allow for more image-driven tweets. Twitter’s fast-paced format gives you multiple opportunities daily to plug your brand and join conversations relevant to your industry.
The pros:
- You can create tweets ahead of time and schedule posting to ensure a steady feed of tweets throughout the day and week
- Hashtags allow you to easily join on-going conversations or start new trending convos of your own
- Truncated links allow you to give users easy access to full-length content, even with the 140-character limit
The cons:
- Getting your tweets “out there” requires building a large following, which can be a challenge for some industries and local businesses
The text-heavy nature of Twitter makes this an ideal social media platform for businesses that do not provide products or services that are not visually appealing, like, say HVAC and accounting.
For the first years of Pinterest’s existence, the platform was almost exclusively for women. That’s not the case anymore, allowing you to reach a mixed-gender target audience that shares a love of all things visual.
The pros:
- You can create posts ahead of time and schedule posting to ensure a steadily growing collection of boards and pins on each board
- Images can link to pages and posts to navigate users to your website or blog
The cons:
- Your boards and pins need to do more than plug your products and services, and finding or creating images to create more pins/boards can take a significant time investment
Pinterest may be an excellent social media platform for businesses that can showcase their products and services with images, like before and after photos of med spa treatments, landscaping installations, furniture restorations, etc.
Instagram and Snapchat
Of course, anyone who has Instagram and/or Snapchat would never confuse the two or consider them interchangeable. However, as far as social media for a business goes, they have two things in common:
- Your images must be authentically yours
- Your images must be in the moment
In other words: no stock photos, no lag time.
If you have a dedicated in-house staff person who has an eye for great photo opps, a quick camera-clicking finger and the time and resources to upload images, you can make this work. These platforms are not conducive to outsourced social media management.
If you do not already have social media and brand management services, contact SonicSEO.com. We can help you understand how we can boost your SEO performance and build brand awareness and loyalty using social media platforms that work for you.