Selecting Social Media Platforms

When thinking about creating a social media strategy for your business, a few popular platforms may come to mind right away: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube or Pinterest, depending on your industry. New platforms and features are developing each day with the potential to reach a larger or relatively niche customer base.

A few things have changed since the early days of social media. Many platforms used to focus on one function, such as messaging or image sharing. Now, most digital media platforms have developed to include multiple functionalities such as live streaming, augmented reality, shopping, social audio, and more.

How to choose the best matched digital platforms for your business

With the wide range of social media platforms, it can be a bit much to wonder whether all of them or some of them are worth your time. To avoid spending too much time and resources learning the roles of every new platform, develop a social media marketing strategy to help guide your decisions, and only join the networks that support your goals.

Here are three tips to help build criteria to help you evaluate any new social media platform to see if they match your social media marketing strategy 

Know your audience

The first question you should ask before joining a new social media platform is: where is your audience?

It makes more sense to go where your audience is already hanging out than to join a new platform and attract your audience to it.

How your audience is using that platform. 

Which types of accounts do they follow? Are they passive consumers or content creators? Knowing how your audience is using the platforms helps tailor your messages you are trying to get through 

Content 

What type of content are they looking for? Content needs to be relevant to your consumers. Brand awareness is key but engagement is vital. Customers like learning, fun informative content rather than pushing sales on their screens

Whether you’re building a community or evaluating new platforms for your business to join, there are many types of social platforms you can use. Some are pretty mandatory for any business, while others only make sense if they align with your specific niches or use cases.

Whatever your business goals a, it’s a safe bet you’ll find a way to use digital media to benefit your business.