If you’re looking to promote your online business, then one of the best venues to pursue is social media marketing. This is so effective that it has helped 78% of marketers outsell the competition. After all, it can help increase brand traffic and grow brand awareness, among many other things.
With the many social media channels out there, you may be wondering which platform is the best to take.
To help you with your decision, we have rounded up the 5 most popular social media options for businesses:
1. Facebook
Launched in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and the rest of his Harvard classmates, Facebook has grown from a university networking service to a social media giant. To date, the platform – which is available in 111 languages – is used by 2.7 billion users. With its worldwide popularity, Facebook’s global reach makes it one of the best platforms for businesses.
With Facebook, you get to market your company without spending a lot of money. By creating a business page, you can share business details, as well as photos and videos. This also allows you to interact with your clients and provide customer support and service. More importantly, Facebook can help generate traffic by raising brand awareness.
If you’re ready to take it to another level, Facebook offers targeted advertising. With this, your ads are shown only to people who are more likely to buy from your store. That way, you get to generate qualified leads – while saving money on ad costs and whatnot.
Pros
- Wide audience base – 2.7 billion people!
- Powerful analytics
- Perfect for customer interaction and service
- Targeted ads
Cons
- Targeted ads can be quite costly
- Needs consistent engagement practices to be effective
2. YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing platform launched in 2005. Created by former PayPal employees, it is now under the helm of the tech giant company Google. With its 2 billion users, it offers a wide reach – coming in second after Facebook.
With YouTube, you can upload videos that users can view, rate, share, and comment on. This makes the platform perfect for small business owners as it’s a great way to generate leads. It’s also perfect for boosting SEO through tags. You can also use YouTube to post customer testimonials, which can help improve the trust rating for your company.
Uploading videos is a way to provide customer support as well, especially if you sell products that need some assembly. Through such videos, you get to minimize the calls and emails asking for technical support.
YouTube also offers video ads with no minimum budget needed!
Pros
- Videos are better in converting customers
- Videos can work well with other marketing strategies
Cons
- Creating videos can be expensive and time-consuming
- It takes some time to rank with videos
3. Instagram
Instagram, also known as Insta or IG, is a photo and video sharing service founded in 2010. Created by Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom, it has about 1 billion users under its belt.
Instagram is perfect for business – especially the smaller ones. For one, it can provide a visual representation of your brand. It can also boost customer engagement with the use of interesting posts and stories.
IG also keeps you abreast of the latest trends, so that you can adjust your inventory according to the hottest-selling items. More importantly, it can help boost sales by posting new releases or discounted offerings through the platform.
As with most platforms, Instagram comes with an ad feature. Here, you can place photos, videos, and story ads. It’s good for business as 75% of IG users take action after seeing an interesting ad.
Pros
- Appealing and ‘visual’ platform
- Optimized for mobile use
- More popular to younger users, which is great if your business is leaned towards this demographic
Cons
- Requires a consistent and aggressive posting schedule
- Some metrics can be misleading
4. LinkedIn
LinkedIn is an employment-oriented platform founded in 2003. It is currently used by 706+ million users across 200 countries.
With this, you can create a profile, connect with other people, and create professional relationships that may be useful in the future. It also promotes interaction through liking/congratulating posts, sharing videos, and posting articles, among many other things.
While LinkedIn is used by many for employment purposes, it also proves to be a good social media platform for small businesses too. It offers a Company Profile where you can post vital business information. It’s also a venue for content, infographics, videos, and presentations. Through LinkedIn connections, you can sift through quality leads as well.
LinkedIn also offers ads that can help you achieve 2x better engagement. With such ads, you get to build brand awareness – and drive more traffic to your official website.
Pros
- The best platform for promoting business-related content
- Ideal for networking
- Allows you to recruit new talents
Cons
- Not designed for eCommerce marketing
- Fewer users compared to Facebook and Instagram
5. Twitter
Twitter is a microblogging networking service launched in the year 2006. Here, users can post a status in 280 characters or less. Created by Biz Stone, Noah Glass, Evan Williams, and Jack Dorsey, Twitter currently has a 321 million-strong cult following.
Twitter comes with several features that prove to be advantageous to businesses. With its hashtag feature, you can make your post more visible to your followers. You can also draw inspiration for your posts from the trending box, which shows the hottest hashtags on Twitter.
Twitter is also a venue for posting photos, GIFs, and polls via Twitter, all of which are great ways to interact with your customers.
You can also use its handle feature to address customer concerns and comments.
Like the aforementioned social media channels, Twitter also offers an ad feature for its users. These are bumped up as Promoted Tweets, Promoted Trends, or Promoted Accounts. Similar to Facebook, this is targeted towards users who are more likely to engage with the ad.
Pros
- Promotes easy interaction with followers
- Twitter ads are 1-3% more successful than Facebook ads
- You can easily target customers with # or @
Cons
- You have to compete with thousands of tweets
- Requires you to tweet several times a day
The Verdict
There is no one best social media platform for businesses, as experts recommend that you handle 3 or 4 of them. This will give you more reach, as some LinkedIn users may not be using Facebook, and vice-versa. As they are all free (except when you get paid ads), social media channels are cost-effective ways that every business owner should try out.
