Currently, there are 3.8 billion social media active users all across the world. Hence, social media provides businesses with thousands of opportunities to scale and grow.

Yet, not every social media network is a good fit for every company because they have a particular audience with their own quirks of interacting with brands and content. That’s why it is crucial to make the right choice. And here we are to help you with it.

Choosing the right social media network

Below you’ll find 5 steps to find a perfect match with a social media platform that suits your business, considering some important details and nuances that can impact your marketing efforts.

Step 1: Know your core audience

When it comes to building a successful business and effective marketing strategy, the very first thing to do is to define the core audience and create a buying persona. Here are a few questions so that you can imagine who is your target audience:

• Who is your typical customer?
• Who buys more often women or men?
• How old are they?
• What is their education level/income/hobby?

Step 2: Define and set main goals

As soon as you determine your audience, it’s high time for the business goals to be settled. For example, the most popular goals include:

• Boost brand recognition;
• Build friendly relationships with prospects;
• Develop trust with the brand;
• Increase customer LTV;
• Learn better needs and wants of the customers;
• Reach out to new audiences/demographics;
• Provide better customer support in a more convenient way for the clients, and so on.

As you see, there are many benefits to using social media. However, it’s highly important to have specific objectives settled before you move forward.

Step 3: Examine the type of content you typically create

Photographs, videos, whitepapers, testimonials, user-generated content, podcasts, eBooks, live streams, webinars, blog posts are some of the content types that can be created to support your business. It varies a lot depending on your niche, industry, audience, and other factors.

So, when deciding on the social media platform, determine what exactly type of content you’re going to create. It’s obvious that if you create textual content like whitepapers, then Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, and other channels that are about the pictures won’t be the right choice for you.

However, keep in mind that whatever the type of content you create, it must be of the highest quality. Thus, it’s crucial to choose the right tools for its creation. When it comes to visuals there are a range of services that are useful in allowing you to edit and create images and videos. Most platforms also include flyer templates, social media posts and cover templates, and many more.

Step 4: Go where your customers are

The main point of using social media is to put you in contact with your best audience. That’s why it’s essential to go to the platform where your customers are the most active. Consider such crucial nuances about your customers as demographics, interests, preferences, and don’t forget about your business specifics and goals. It’s a great idea to analyse which networks are most preferred and used by your audience to reach them out there.

Step 5: Put it all together

Once you’ve completed the previous steps, it’s time to go through and compare social media networks to reveal which one meets your business needs best of all. To help you decide, we compiled the rundown of the channels and what they’re good for and mostly used for:

• Facebook is by far the largest platform, with over 2.74 billion active users that is good for lead generation, building brand and relationships with customers, and demonstrating a human side of the company. Thanks to its highly customised advertising platform you can target very specific audiences.
• Instagram relies on images, GIFS, or videos. Hence, this network is excellent for visual-based businesses, including retail, art, food, beauty, and so on.
• YouTube is a video-sharing platform and 2nd-largest search engine that is good for service industry organizations, which can provide “How To” videos.
• TikTok is a platform with short-form videos and, thus, it suits mostly visual-based companies as well as some service industries.
• Twitter is the go-to platform that is best for building brand awareness. It suits businesses that are going to reach out to followers with breaking news, important messages, announcements, and other in-the-moment information.
• LinkedIn is the best choice for B2B businesses and if lead generation is your goal. Also, it can be used for editorial content for establishing your company as a trusted leader in the industry, building expertise/authority for the brand, and engaging leads, recruiting employees.