Which Social Media Platforms Are Best For Marketing?
In this quick guide from iocea digital marketing agency Lincoln, we will discuss how to identify which platforms are most appropriate for your business, so that you can implement a successful social media strategy.
Key social media platforms and users
Using social media to promote your products/services or even just increase awareness of your brand, is a great way to reach potentially large audiences. Shown below are the amount of users on each platform (statistics from Influencer Marketing Hub, 2020).
Think of all of those people that your business could be reaching!
- Facebook: 2.5 billion monthly users
- Twitter: 386 million monthly users
- TikTok: 800 million monthly users
- YouTube: 2 billion monthly users
- Tumblr: 321 million monthly users
- Instagram: 1 billion monthly users
- SnapChat: 229 million daily users
- Pintrest: 355 million monthly
- WhatsApp: 2 billion monthly users
- LinkedIn: 690 million monthly users
Factors to take into account when choosing a social media platform to use
When choosing social media platforms to set up accounts on, you need to consider what is best for your business and for reaching your customers. You should consider the following...- Your business goals
What are you wanting to achieve?
Platforms such as Twitter are great to engage with customers, whereas Instagram and Facebook social media marketing platforms are ideal to post call-to-action adverts. Different platforms help you best achieve different goals.
- Your target audience
Choose a social media platform that your target audience uses the most.
For example, if you are a beauty brand targeting Females aged 25-30, then you may choose to set up an account on Pinterest, which is mainly used by Females aged 18 - 35.
- Your brand image
Is your brand centred around professionalism and perceived by customers as being incredibly 'serious'?
If so, then using TikTok as an advertising platform probably won't align with your brand message. Choose appropriate channels that compliment the image that you want to portray.
There are many advantages to using Instagram! These include the following:
- Great for reach! Using Instagram, you have the potential to reach 849.3M users (Hootsuite.com)
- Great for engagement! Engagement is 23 x higher on Instagram than it is on Facebook (Business of apps)
- Great for targeting young people! 75% of Instagram users are aged 18-24 (Pew Research Center)
Firstly, Facebook is brilliant for targeting mobile users! Research found that in 2019, 94% of Facebook Ad revenue was generated from mobile impressions. Talking of impressions, Facebook generates a high volume of them- 37% to be precise (in 2019).
Not only is Facebook good for impressions, but its story feature is definitely one for your business to utilise. In 2019, 300m people per day viewed Facebook stories. These are a great way to communicate with your audience, by showing them short snippets of text, video and images! P.s. All Facebook statistics were taken from Sprout Social.
You can also run social media Facebook ads, which is a PPC technique.
Pintrest
Pintrest is great for discovering trends and identifying what products/themes are currently popular with the target audience.
It also has a high browser conversion as the site directs users to your businesses website/point of purchase when they click on your 'pin'. This lets users shop quickly and effectively.
For this same reason, Pintrest drives a high amount of referral traffic to your eCommerce site.
LinkedIn provides many advantages for your businesses marketing:
- You can research the individuals that you are targeting/meeting prior to talking with them.
- You can increase your SEO by sharing content that links back to your website.
- You can show your brand personality by sharing content that reflects your values.
- You can build brand awareness/connections by engaging users with interesting, relevant content.
Snapchat
Snapchat is predominantly popular with young people, particularly those aged 13 - 29. This makes it an ideal platform to target this age demographic.
Along with age, Snapchat users are mostly female- 61% of users are female, 38% male and 1% other (Statista, 2018). This makes it a great place to push products/services aimed at females.
Snapchat social media marketing is ideal for targeting mobile users, as the app is placed 2nd worldwide based on overall mobile usage (Sandvine, 2019).
TikTok
Out of TikTok, Twitter and Facebook, TikTok was found to have the highest engagement rate! This was an average of 51.7% (Influencer Marketing Hub).
TikTok is a great new fun, creative and young platform to get onboard with.
Tumblr
According to statistics from Webfx.com...
- Great for targeting online shoppers- 68% of users buy products online
- Great for targeting parents- 36% of visitors are parents
- Great for targeting mobile users- 78% if users access via a mobile
- Great for targeting those in full-time employment- Activity peaks at 4pm every day and on Sundays, suggesting that prime users are at work during weekdays hence less active
Twitter has a potentially high advertising reach- There are 145 monetizable users on the platform, which is the amount of users who can see the adverts.
Twitter is great for brand discovery, as it is the #1 platform for discovery, with 79% of users wanting to find something new.
Twitter eCommerce marketing is ideal for targeting millennials! 80% of Twitter users are aged 20 - 49.
Statistics for Twitter were sourced from Wordstream.com.
YouTube
Wordstream found that marketers who use video see revenue growth 49% faster than those who do not use video! That figure is astonishing.
YouTube is not just great for posting video content, but it is great for advertising. Sprout Social found that 90% of shoppers have discovered a brand through YouTube. Whether that be through a public channel, influencer marketing or display advertising, that is extremely positive!
Iocea: How we can help your business
At iocea social media management Lincoln, we have a team of expert digital marketers, who are here to help your business. Whether that be driving conversions, increasing exposure or encouraging sales revenue, we have a solution for everyone!
We offer Social Media Marketing, Pay-per-click Advertising, Search Engine Optimisation, Affiliate Marketing Services and more. In addition to our marketing services, we also offer professional hosting services, exit-intent technology (Konvert), mobile first eCommerce design and website development to name a few.
To find out further details or for any enquiries or advice, please get in touch with us at iocea.
Thank you.