Social media is one of a great way for digital marketers in any niche to reach new targeted audiences. But as the increase of social networks continues to grow rapidly, it is very difficult to select the right social media platforms for your business.

Though your first thought would be to use all of the social media platforms, some platforms are providing better results for marketers than others. And depending on your business’s niche target audience, you have to make sure that you’re also using the same social media platforms as they are.

Statistically, it has been seen that 81% of the United States population has at least one social media accounts, and over half of the population has two or more social media accounts. So, it doesn’t matter which social media platforms you decide to invest in for your business, you have a high chance of reaching target audiences that you could not able to reach in any other way!

Moreover, nowadays customer isn’t just using social media, but they’re actually using social media platforms precisely to make buying decisions who have a genuine reason for purchasing!

For example, almost 70% of business-to-consumer marketers have developed their potential customers through Facebook. However, 93% of Pinterest profile users use the platform to plan or make buying, and over 90% of Instagram profile users have used social media platforms like Instagram to purchase some products online.

And if that wasn’t enough, 71% of potential customers who have had a great experience with a brand on social media platforms are likely to provide a recommendation to their friends and family- which helps to grow your consumer base even more further!

Facebook is the biggest social media platform, with more than two billion active people using it on every month basis.

Almost a third of the world’s population! In which, around 65 million businesses using their Facebook Pages and more than six million advertisers are enthusiastically promoting their business through Facebook business pages, which makes it a quiet safe but if you want to have an online presence on social media platforms.

Practically, Facebook is frequently the first social media site to come to mind when we discuss social media, and for great reason. And why not, it’s one of the most widely-used social media platforms in the world, and it was one of the first to deliver advertising options to businesses and recreate a brand.

Getting a Facebook business page is a must need for any business or brand, and you should keep updating yours on a regular basis. Today’s customers expect all business accounts to have a presence on the platform, and many of clients also expect those businesses to give quick responses to their questions and details.

While Facebook Messenger is a part of Facebook, but you need to download the Facebook Messenger app separately from Facebook if you want to use it. It includes a few bonus features outside of the ones that are mentioned above for Facebook! Thus, Facebook Messenger is in 2nd position on our list of social media platforms for business.

Facebook has a special feature in creating advertising campaigns that are specifically made for Facebook Messenger. When somebody clicks on an ad, they will be redirected to start a Facebook Message with your Facebook business page, and if they do that, then your Facebook business page can follow up with targeted audiences in messages from that point onwards.

If your business niche is more focused on generating lead as opposed to ecommerce businesses or more immediate online transformations, then Facebook Messenger may be a great option for your business growth!

YouTube is the most popular video-sharing platform where people are watching a billion hour of videos each and every day.

To get started with, you may create a YouTube channel for your own brand or vlog your videos where you can upload videos for your subscribers to view, like, comment, and share with their friends and families.

This is the second biggest social media site, YouTube (that is owned by Google) is also known as the second largest search engine after Goggle.

So if you want to increase your reach on social media platforms, then you can also promote your product or services on YouTube.

Instagram comes very close behind Facebook and is at no. fourth on our list of social media networking sites for business. Instagram is actually owned by the same person who owns Facebook, and it has about 500 million daily active users.

CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg, saw so much potential in the social media platform and the benefits of Instagram that he bought it out just after 18 months since it launched for $1 billion dollars, and the social media platform has continued to grow since then.

Because Instagram is owned by Facebook, it has the same access to the extensive user base and advertising platforms just like Facebook and Facebook Messenger app does.

So Instagram contains all kind of the same paid benefits just like Facebook, but Instagram also has its own set of organic growth usefulness.
So, when we use the term “organic,” we mean tasks you can perform or the results which can be achieve without straight paying for them in advertising currencies.

If your business model falls within a creative industry of any kind or its potential customers more so to females, then Pinterest is your best social media platform you want to be on.

Specifically, Pinterest has 291 million monthly active users. Among of those users, 81% are women, out of them 93% of active pinners said they use Pinterest to plan for buying and 87% said they’ve bought some items because of Pinterest.

Creative industries like Food recipes, lifestyle how-to articles, wedding inspiration, and outfit ideas are among of the top searches on Pinterest. So if you’re business model deals within any of those industries, then you need to be developing Pinterest accounts as one of your social media networking sites for business.

Twitter is one of the oldest social media networking platforms, and it has 336 million monthly active Twitter users. You can post any photos and videos related to your business along with writing character-limited copy, but Twitter is actually most known for its up-to-date feed of real-time updates.

Twitter is also good for engaging new potential consumers through its use of trending hashtags. Just similar to Instagram site, you can search trendy hashtag and find other posts from potential clients and businesses alike that they have used that hashtag.

Snapchat is an app that allows users to send Snapchats (an image or a video) either by sending them directly to another user or to share them on their Snapchat Story.

A Snapchat can be sent directly to another user who can only be viewed once, but a Snapchat on a Story (for example your business’ Story) is visible to the users for up to 24 hours after you published it.

If your target audience is largely involved of a younger demographic, then Snapchat may be one of the most effective social media networking sites for your business!

There are more than 350 million monthly active users, and over 203 million daily active users on Snapchat, and 71% of those users are under 34 years’ age groups. Exactly, almost half of its users are age groups between 18-24.

If your business follows a B2B structure or targets audiences based on job titles, then LinkedIn will be the most powerful social media networking platform for you!

LinkedIn has over 303 million monthly active users, in which most all of them are in the working professional or close to it.

Because LinkedIn is considered to be a social media platform for B2B customers, users often include more precise information about their employers, job positions, websites, work email IDs and more than they usually do on other social media platforms that they are utilizing more for personal use.

LinkedIn’s advertising platform is not yet as advanced as Facebook’s in respect of its creating campaign functions, but it does provide you with lot more job positions and opportunity to target than Facebook. This can be important for your business if the bottom line is dependent upon targeting specific companies or job titles.

TikTok is a new social media platform that was launched in the year 2018. It’s a video sharing app that provides its users to create their own 15 second micro-video clip and share them on different social networking sites. Now it has increased to 1.2 billion users worldwide with 500 million monthly active users those who are creating and sharing their own micro-video clips. With these increasing figures, it has now exceeded most actively social networking sites like Twitter, LinkedIn and Snapchat – these platforms which are obviously older.

However, although it has so much possible capturing the attention of Gen Z, it still needs to go a long way when it comes to running advertising. The only step for digital marketers to use this video-sharing platform for advertising is through social media influencers. And since it is still not that saturated social media websites as compared to other social media giants like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, or any other platforms, a lot of brands now are using it to reach Gen Z – a marketplace that seems quite hard to reach upto.

Tumblr is a social networking and micro-blogging website for sharing text, images, links, audios and videos many others. You can share a wide range of contents on Tumblr from starting from cat photos to art to fashion and many more.

On the landing page, a Tumblr blog will look like any other social networking websites. So, you come across online might be using Tumblr as social networking sites!

If you want to reflect it for your product or service marketing, it has provided a written some starter guidelines on Tumblr website itself.

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is the act of creating content to promote your business and products on various social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Your unique content should be tailored to the specific platform it’s being shared on to help you boost conversions and increase brand awareness.

Benefits of Social Media Marketing

There are a variety of reasons why your company should use social media marketing, but we’ve created a list of four of the most beneficial reasons to consider.

Let’s then dive in.

1.Increase your Brand Awareness

Recently in 2018, there are more than 3.2 billion people on social media globally. Due to the complete amount of people on social media

platforms, you can see why confirming your business is sharing content related to your services as well as providing details about your business via a platform or two has the possibility to help you increase brand awareness.

In fact, social media platforms have been recognized to boost brand awareness by driving more engagement. Social media engagement includes things like likes, comments, shares, and re-posts. Social media also helps you to increase brand awareness by directing traffic straight to your website. You can also do this by adding direct links to your website in your profile, bio, and posts.

2.Creating Lead Generation and Boost Conversions

Promoting and sharing your services on social media platforms is an easiest way to increase lead generation, boost conversions, and increase sales rating because you’re advertising to traffics that have chosen to engage your social media handles by following your account.

3.Nurture Relationships with Customers

By communicating and interacting with your social media followers, you’ll be capable to create long-lasting relationships between them and also for your business. You can do this by networking with them on your daily posts, replying to their questions and comments, and giving them any help they may need. You can also engage your followers by asking questions about your products/services, their difficult points, or developing giveaways to help you creating trust and show them how much you worth their contribution and effort.

4.Learn From Your Competitors

Social media platforms are a great pathway to keep eyes on your competitors — whether taking reference to their social media tactics, the services/products they’re promoting, the campaigns they’re executing, or their level of communication with followers.

Following are guidelines on how to do Social Media Marketing–

1.Define your goals.

What do you want to get out of your social media page’s participation? Why are you doing these activities? Are you trying to create direct sales? Are you trying to provide a form of customer service facilities? Are you going to build relationships with audiences and want to boost loyalty? Your answers to these questions highly affect the kind of content you publish and the social media activities you participate in on the social media platforms.

2.Get to know your audience.

Do you know where does your target audience spends time online? What kind of content or conversations do the listener’s members get most vocal about? What kind of facts and figures do they are looking from you? What are their dislikes? Always remember that you’re not just publishing marketing messages on the social media pages. You must find out what your audiences are searching at and what their needs are all about, so you can deliver the kind of content they get useful and interesting. However, you also need to be present as a person, so they truly want to cooperate with you.

3.Generate amazing content.

Once you identify from which content your audience spends time and what kind of content audiences are getting engaged, make sure you provide the time to give them more of that kind of engaging content. Don’t give up. You must feed them continuously with amazing content, which also brings out in the form of conversations, in order to construct a loyal following of audience whose who can trust you as a medium that can meet their requirements and beliefs.

4.Integrate your marketing skills.

All of your attempts at social media marketing should reduce to each other. Apply cross-promote your efforts which will include both online and offline promotions, and you have to make sure that both of your social media and traditional marketing activates work together effortlessly.

5.Start creating a schedule

You have to start allocating specific times during your day to devote yourself to social media marketing. For example, you have to spend at least five minutes on social media sites before you start checking your e-mail each day and another five minutes before you leave work each day. When you start creating a schedule, it’s easier to hold to it and you have to make sure that don’t skip your social media marketing events each day.

6.Go through to adopt an 80-20 rule.

You can always spend at least 80 percent of your time on social media activities that are not self-promotional and you can utilize more than 20 percent of your time on self-promotional activities.

7.Priority is to focus on quality, not quantity.

Nowadays, you can easily get grabbed up in the numbers, but don’t get obsessed with followers and subscribers. It’s better to have 1,000 highly engaging prospective, with loyal followers than having 10,000 followers who signed up to follow you but then never recognizes you again.