You should always maintain a presence where your customers are, so it’s vital to know where they spend the most time. In the digital space, most people spend time using at least one form of social media. Through free and paid efforts, businesses can leverage social media tools to reach new customers and strengthen brand loyalty via active engagement with existing customers.
If you are new to the social media landscape and unsure where to start, we recommend establishing your organic presence on major platforms (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest), then proceed with advertising efforts on the platforms where your target customer base is the most active. So, which social platforms are best for your business type? As you’ll discover, some social media platforms are more suitable for your business than others. We’ll provide more specific insights on this later!
Making the Most of Social Platforms
Staking out your territory on major platforms is a must. Create a business account on each platform using your business name and logo as your profile picture (make this consistent across all platforms) to signify brand legitimacy. Profiles should contain the company’s website, contact information, and bio summary that clearly defines your product or service offering. Link your social profiles using icons on your website, typically located in the footer. This grants website users the ease of finding your social media accounts, resulting in more people following or engaging with your social business profiles.
Setting up analytics is your next step–all platforms offer their own tracking capabilities, such as the Facebook Pixel or the Pinterest Tag. These provide an additional source of information, alongside Google Analytics, to understand how users interact with your organic posts and your ads. Install these platform codes on your website so you can “mature” the tracking pixels over time as they collect data points on user behavior. Eventually, they can be utilized when creating, prospecting, or remarketing audiences with paid ads.
Content Is Key
Now that you have your social business accounts created and tracking installed, it’s time to post! Make a habit of it; whether once a day, once a week, or once a month. However, two or more posts or updates a week is a best practice ensuring search engines can find you and your site appears active. Sites with low to no activity are ignored, so ensure your site remains lively and informative.
Posting is easier than you think. You’re an expert in your field. Show off your knowledge with a paragraph or three, answering frequently asked questions or addressing a common issue or concern pertinent to your field. All this is standard practice for any website or social media account. Content is key, so invest in creating visually stimulating creative elements that grab users’ attention as they scroll through their social media feeds.
With Logical Position’s Paid Social Management services, we also test ad variations such as copy and content type, to see what delivers the best results. Get a head start by testing this organically! Experiment with the angle of your messaging or creatives (for example, static images versus videos) to see what generates the most engagement and traffic to your website. You’ll learn how to effectively speak to your audience and the type of content that encourages users to take action off-platform. If you can drive free traffic to your website, it’s a strong indicator of potential to drive quality traffic from paid ads. For the purposes of this essay, it’s important because it helps you gauge what gets the most attention from potential customers and who they are.
You’re Talking; Who’s Listening?
Analytics tells you who’s reading your posts and, potentially, what motivates them. Logical Position has had a positive experience with Pinterest lately. Currently, we’re beta testing Pinterest as a platform. With clients, we first check to see if they have their Pinterest profile set up. Next, we investigate whether they have any referral traffic from their pins and the level of engagement. That’s good information, because engagement indicates people are searching for products related to what they’re selling. This tells us two things: that there’s an interested demographic out there and we have the ability to target those people more accurately with a paid method.
Which Social Platforms Are Best for Your Business Type?
Clearly, there are hundreds of social media sites to choose from out there. The wisest thing to do though is to follow the money and start with the biggest platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and others. Each comes with its own set of benefits.
- Facebook/Instagram–If you’re not on Facebook and Instagram, you might as well not exist. Facebook remains one of the most popular social media platforms in the world. Compared with other platforms with smaller and more specific audiences, more people use Facebook than any other. That means it offers a broader range of age, gender, and other demographics to test, review, and explore. Even better, Facebook and Instagram offer the ability to place a pixel on your site, which is, in the site’s own words, “A piece of code for your website that lets you measure, optimize and build audiences for your ad campaigns.” Logical Position places the pixel to track the actions of Facebook and Instagram users who have opted in, providing data points that allow us to create custom audiences and target messaging with greater accuracy.
- Pinterest–Interaction on Pinterest is different from that on Facebook or Instagram. Rather than creating posts and following individual users, brands, and others, Pinterest users–called pinners–pick and post what they like for ideas and inspiration. Pinterest’s pixel comes with similar advantages for advertisers trying to reach people farther up the funnel. While the site tends to skew towards women (some 71% of users are female), there’s a growing demographic of males on the site as well. Nonetheless, if a brand has a heavily female demographic, it can do remarkably well on Pinterest. Likewise, artsy-craftsy items and products that aid in self-, home-, or similar improvement–work well there. Pinterest is a great site for prospecting higher up the funnel, though it takes slightly longer for conversions to happen because Pinterest is a place for planners. Still, once they’ve done their research, pinners can be expected to return to a board and make a purchase.
- TikTok–TikTok is one of the fastest-growing platforms out there, but it’s a good idea to decide whether it’s the right place for your products and services, and if you have the time and resources to invest in it. TikTok users tend to be younger, largely under 24 years of age. As an all-video site, it demands the ability to produce and post video content at a rapid rate and to adhere to current trends. Still, if you offer products and services aimed at younger people, it’s a good place to be, and currently has a lower cost than the other platforms.
- LinkedIn–LinkedIn is wonderful for business-to-business transactions, but less so for business-to-consumer ones, making it a place to find collaborators rather than customers. If you sell breast pumps and are looking for new moms, for example, you’ll find plenty dwelling on Facebook and Instagram, but not so many on LinkedIn. Finding your audience depends on analyzing the data generated by your social media platforms.
Stand Out on a Platform
Wrapping it all up, social media platforms are a necessity, not just to ecommerce but to “real-world” business as well. If you haven’t staked out your social media territory yet, do it today! Diversification is key. If you don’t have a presence on these platforms, it’s guaranteed that your competitors will fill the void on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and elsewhere. If you want to find your place on social media, contact Logical Position for a consultation. We’re a multi-service agency with years of experience offering paid social media marketing services. We offer multiple Facebook advertising services and Instagram advertising services that fit your needs and budget!
