Indeed, social media is one of the great social media platforms to keep your customers and users engaged with your business product and services. Also, it is considered to be the most effective and cheapest advertising platform for product launch and promotion.
According to a survey, mobile social media has a huge user base of 3.5 billion people all over the world. Before striking the catalog of top social media applications, we want you to know some interesting facts about the upraise in user reach of the internet and social media marketing in 2020 around the globe.
1) 5.1 billion rise in mobile phone users worldwide.
2) 3.010 billion rise in internet users worldwide.
3) 2.65 billion rise in social media usage worldwide.
Statistically, it is surprising to know more than half of the world population is influenced by social media activities. These metrics have given the golden opportunity for business owners and entrepreneurs to launch and do promotions of their products and services around the globe. As per the behavior and interest, companies started targeting their customers with amazing creatives and content on their posts.
If you are thinking of starting social media for your business and afraid of which one will work for your product and service, then stay back and read below in-depth details on each social media platform.
To choose the right social media for your business, first, you need to understand the concept of when, which and how social media works. One of the main reasons for a failed social media strategy is choosing the wrong platform for the business. Before you start, you should know the following in details:
1) Complete understanding of your business i.e product & service.
2) Your Target Audience
3) Understanding your market.
4) Understanding your customer’s interest & behavior.
5) Location
If you know the answers to these above questions, it’s relatively easy for you to select the right social media for your product or service marketing and promotion. Let’s talk about each social media platform in detail:
1) Facebook
Best for B2C, in some cases B2B (Business-to-Business)
Facebook is the biggest social media platform with a user base of nearly 2.45 billion monthly active users. It provides advertising and promotions opportunities through Facebook Ads. Your business can do well with Facebook ads like brand awareness, product launch, app download, increasing page likes and many more.
Top industries such as fashion, auto, e-commerce, entertainment, real estate, etc., use Facebook to reach their desired audience. We can create and maintain multiple business profile pages under one single account.
The boon to use FBM (Facebook Business Manager):
a) A centralized dashboard that is easily accessible for you to manage your business ads. You can edit and change the ads as per your analytics and schedule your ads according to the audience online status.
b) Unlike Instagram, Facebook has a campaign which helps every business to increase their followers.
c) Facebook has an amazing option to advertise your product and services on Instagram too. Facebook Brand awareness campaign helps to advertise both on Facebook & Instagram.
d) Facebook is considered to be the cheapest form of advertising compared to other platforms like google.
You can easily run a campaign to target 1000 people with just $5 in your pocket as compared to other modes of advertisement, where you spend more to reach the same number of audience.
2) LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a social network geared towards career professionals with nearly 65 million users. If your business involves networking for partners or clients then you should have a strong business profile on LinkedIn.
It is mostly used by businesses to establish authority and leadership in their respective industry. LinkedIn also offers you to advertise your business, like sending personalized ads, boosting content and displaying ads on their platform. It helps the business-like real estate, Interior designer, Recruiters, Finance service, IT Industry, Automobile, Mechanical Industry, etc. and also it helps job seekers.
Benefits of LinkedIn Marketing
a) Improves your online presence
A social network solely dedicated to professionals makes LinkedIn a supreme platform to increase your online business awareness. This helps your business to build an authorized image by restricting useless content.
b) New Job opportunities
LinkedIn is considered as one of the best platforms to find professional people suitable for your industry. You can simply post a vacancy on your company page or find people with related keywords in the search bar or you can advertise.
3)Instagram
From a handful of users, it soon became the number one photography app gathering 100,000 users in one week, increasing to 1 million in two months and now has 1 billion monthly active users.
Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms, and with such a massive user base of age group between 18-40 primarily, every business should consider using the platform to increase their social presence.
It offers you ample opportunities from gathering insights to selling products, Instagram rolls out tools such as filters, hashtags, stories, etc., to help you grow on the platform.
The advantages of using Instagram for business: Instagram has become one of the strongest social media platforms for business. One of the best ways to promote is influencers, where one can get help in boosting their company product and services. Unlike Facebook, one can’t campaign to increase followers but the statistics say that it provides more product sales compared to Facebook.
a) Insights access
Just like google analytics, Instagram too provides little in the way of analytics and performance statistics like age wise, location and duration in which our ad performed well, accordingly you can change your ads. Also, it helps you to understand the creative content to what type of people are showing interest along with their engagement.
b) Access to Contact Button
Instagram has not only updated its photo-sharing ability but also allows you to add a contact button on your business profile where you can have a direct calls or messages to the customers.
c) Add location to your store/company
Apart from adding the contact button, you can also add a website link or location of your business. Adding any of the above features will help your customer to reach you out easily.
d) Facebook & Instagram Connectivity
When you connect your Instagram profile to your Facebook page, the information about your business industry will be displayed on Instagram too. You can always modify your profile details.
e) Add your website link on your Insta stories
You can now add your website link to insta stories and one can visit the same on doing the “swipe-up” on the post. This will help you to boost your website traffic.
4)TikTok
In 2019, TikTok outperformed Instagram by hitting a 1.5 billion downloads milestone and is all about fun & creativity. As per the Global Web, Index age group of 16-24 are the primary users of TikTok.
Businesses who have the target audience between 18 – 30 age, TikTok will be the best platform to advertise their product and services and get effective ROI.
TikTok benefits for your business:
a) Launch a hashtag challenge
A way to promote your business on TikTok is by launching a hashtag challenge. It will encourage users to create or recreate content and add your brand hashtag to it, which makes one engaged with your post and brand.
b) Collab with Influencers
Like Insta, Tiktok also has the influencers who help to promote your product and services. One has to make sure that influencers have your targeted followers which can again boost your business. There are few online tools that will help you to find the right influencers for your business.
c) Brand Takeovers.
TikTok allows you to take over the platform for a day. You can create images, GIFs and videos with attached links to landing pages or hashtag challenges. It also offers precise targeting so you can make sure your ads are displayed to those who are interested.
5) Pinterest
Pinterest is the only social media platform, where it allows google to crawl and index all the images shared on their board. It is a “visual discovery tool” that was originally created for people to share and discover new interests by pinning(posting) images or videos to their board or other’s board & browsing what other users have pinned. It has 322 million monthly active users around the globe. Pinterest pins are 10x times more spreadable than a tweet. Creating a business account on Pinterest gives you access to a marketing feature to boost your brand presence on one of the fastest-growing and engaging social media platforms.
Why you should use Pinterest for business:
a) Converts more browsers into buyers
The number of steps from discovery to conversion is less on Pinterest as compared to other social media websites. This means that Pinterest helps increase conversion rates faster than other social media sources.
b) More Inbound links
A special feature of Pinterest is that every pin includes a link to the original source of the image. According to a survey, 95% of images on Pinterest were either pinned or re-pinned from the web. Any link directing your audience to your website instead of asking them to follow is always beneficial. With Pinterest growing its user base, this could provide you with valuable inbound links.
c) High User Engagement
Unlike other social media sites, where it’s mostly about followers, Pinterest users seem more content simplified. Scrolling tons of images is easier and far more enjoyable than scanning tons of tweets.
d) Integrate with your Facebook profile
Now Pinterest allows you to pin your content to your Facebook profile. This feature makes your image visible to more eyes from different social channels. You can also add a “Pin It” button to your website or blog, which makes it’s easy for the site visitor to see your pinned products.
e) What’s trending now
Pinterest makes it easy for you to discover what’s trending on social media. This information gives you an opportunity to understand the trend & plan your own offers and products.
6) WhatsApp
Being the third most downloaded app on Android in the world, it is evident WhatsApp is a great platform for marketers. According to a survey, 58% of users access WhatsApp several times a day. Moreover, this application is available in 50+ distinct languages, which allows you to reach your audience more specifically.
Why use WhatsApp for business?
a) It is a free application
b) Let’s you send multimedia.
c) It can be used as a direct survey tool for feedback.
d) Let’s you send an alert on new events, offers and many more.
e) It allows a real-time conversation with the user.
f) Increases engagement with the brand
You can create a company group for discussing new works, task updates, work deadlines etc. A message can be conveyed starting from the director to a new joinee via the app. You can connect personally with your customers and know what exactly they want from your business. When you reply to your customer queries, they will be excited that you are really concerned about them.
Each and every platform is growing daily and you need to select a suitable platform for a successful digital marketing strategy for your business.
It will be great to add your views and ideas on the post, do let us know your vision on how effective can social media be for building your brand and business?