Choosing the Right Social Media Platforms for Your Business

For businesses, social media is a tool to that can be used to reach existing and potential customers by sharing relevant and appealing content organically or taking advantage of paid ad opportunities to extend your reach. However, when trying to select the right social media platform for your business, there’s not just one to consider – there are over 15 (Chen, 2022)! And each social media platform offers different capabilities, can reach different sizes and types of audiences, and provides different opportunities to connect and engage with consumers. To make the best choice for your business, there are several elements you should consider, including aspects about your business and the various social media platforms you’re exploring.

Identify goals

To determine which social media platforms your business should be using, it’s important to first identify your business’s social media goals (Chen, 2022). Some social media platforms are better suited to help your business reach certain goals than other platforms might be. While that doesn’t mean you can’t get similar results and reach the same goals, it might just take more effort on another platform. Some of the most popular social media goals include raising brand awareness, generating leads, and increasing engagement (Chen, 2022).

As you explore each of the social media platforms to find the right fit for your business, you should keep your social media goals in mind. These goals also should be closely aligned with your overall business goals and help you work toward those (Chen, 2022).

Determine target audience

Once you’ve established your business’s social media goals, the next step would be to identify your primary target audience (Chen, 2022). Define who they are and what they’re interested in. You’ll also want to determine where members of your target audience are in terms of social media – what platforms are they already using. Statistics and data from reputable sources can help you figure out which platforms are most popular for your target audience, but you also can look to your business’s website to see where your traffic referrals are coming from (Chen, 2022).

If your business has more than one target audience, that’s important to note as you begin looking more closely at each platform. One platform might not be able to help you reach all members of your target audiences, but you might be able to build a presence on multiple platforms and tailor your strategy to meet those segments of your audience where they are.

Consider the content

It’s also important to consider the type of content you’re able to produce and share (Chen, 2022). While TikTok is a popular platform right now, especially among Gen Z and Millennials, if you don’t have someone at your business who can dedicate the time and resources to creating original TikTok videos, it might not make sense for you to be on TikTok.

Alternatively, if you have a lot of relevant photo resources at your disposal, Instagram might be a good fit since the platform heavily relies on visual content.

If your business has a mix of visual and text-based content to share, Facebook and Twitter might be better suited outlets. It’s important to make sure that you’re familiar with the content potential and limitations for each platform that you’re considering for your business so you can make an educated decision.

Selecting the “right” platform

After you’ve identified your social media goals, target audience, and the type of content you’re able or interested in creating, it’s important to compare those to each of the major social media platforms that are available and determine which one best aligns with your business (Council, 2019).

The “right” social media platform is different for each business. And for some businesses there might be more than one right platform to help them reach different goals and audiences. For any business, the right platform is the one that most closely aligns with their goals, audience, and content creation capabilities (Council, 2019).

As an example, let’s say you run a small, funky small-batch ice cream business. Your primary social media goal is to increase brand awareness and your target audience consists of men and women in their 20s and 30s. You have a young employee who loves to create behind-the-scenes videos and take photos of customers’ creative ice cream orders. Based on this information, TikTok or Instagram could both be beneficial social media options for your business.

Determining if the platform works

To ensure your chosen platform is working for your business, it’s important that you identify key performance indicators, or KPIs, and monitor those along with other web metrics (WVU Reed College of Media, 2022). Those KPIs should be closely aligned with your goals so they can quickly and easily reflect the progress you’re making toward your goal.

If your business is not meeting its KPI goals on social media, it might indicate that your campaign is not successfully reaching or resonating with your target audience (or any audience for that matter) (WVU Reed College of Media, 2022).

Testing your platform

When selecting social media platforms for your business, it’s important to also consider who is going to manage and maintain activity on those platforms, ensuring that that person has adequate time and resources needed to create content that is relevant to your business and will connect with your audiences (Chen, 2022).

Before joining a platform, look up similar businesses or competitors on the platform and see how their content is performing (Council, 2019). If those businesses are seeing limited engagement and reach, and they are publishing content similar to what your business would be sharing, then your business might also struggle to get your content in front of the right people.

Another way to test out a social media platform, if you can, is to create an account that’s unrelated to your business and explore the platform before joining as your business. You can become familiar with the platform and see how other similar businesses are using the social media tool to generate ideas and identify lessons learned.

Additionally, if you’ve created an account for your business but you’re struggling to build an audience, spur engagement with your social media posts, or keep up with content creation, it might be best to just close that social media account, rather than sharing content that’s outdated or simply not posting to that platform at all.

 References

Chen, J. (2022, May 24). Choosing the right social media channels for your business. Sprout Social. https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-channels/

Council, F. C. (2019, July 31). 13 Top Tips For Choosing The Right Social Media Platform For Your Business. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescommunicationscouncil/2019/07/31/13-top-tips-for-choosing-the-right-social-media-platform-for-your-business/?sh=4b3df99a78eb

WVU Reed College of Media. (2022, August). Social Media Analytics and Advertising Channels. WVU eCampus - Blackboard Inc. https://ecampus.wvu.edu/webapps/blackboard/execute/displayLearningUnit?course_id=_185952_1