1st October 2022 | News
Social Media & Your Business
With today’s modern viewer living life predominantly through their phone and social media, businesses are starting to utilise these two factors within their marketing strategies. However, there is still some tentativeness towards using the various platforms offered in social media.
Social media is a tool that can be extremely useful in raising awareness of your brand thereby reaching new audiences, and in sparking engagement and interaction. Plus, it’s free – surely that’s a bonus? And although social media still sounds like a relatively recent concept, it has been around for over a decade and the teenagers that originally filled its ranks are now working, getting married, and having children. In fact, the majority of your clientele will have a profile on one of the various platforms. As such it is now important to consider social media as more than a sideline option. But knowing where to start and deciding which platform would be the best to use can be daunting.
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…You Need To Consider Your Business And Your Target Audience.
To decide which form of social media you should utilise, you need to consider your business and your target audience. Each platform promotes engagement and interaction, but each also provides a slightly different experience that caters for a specific audience. It is possible, and likely, that you discover several different platforms are worth utilising, however, this does mean more work. You can post the same status to each one, however, it is better and recommended to differentiate them so that they have the same message but cater to the different audiences. We all have a platform we prefer and we are all different, social media is the same and needs to be treated as thus.
The top 5 platforms used are:
Facebook is personal and more private for the individual user. Useful for creating events and attracting awareness through posts, likes, and shares, you can spark engagement and conversation with no constraints. It is a great platform for sharing stories and experiences.
Twitter is open. Share ideas & make conversation. Great for networking & gaining traffic. But with only 140 characters you need to be brief.
This is the platform most associated with business and is great for networking. Individuals use it primarily to gain business contacts and illustrate their professional side, while businesses can use it to potentially expand clientele and advertise any available jobs. Where other platforms are about an individual’s opinions and life at home, LinkedIn is about you in the world of business.
An online noticeboard, this platform provides a collection of ideas and interests sparking interaction with individuals all over. Through this you can show the evolution of your company, the story of your brand, the services you provide, inspirational quotes, the list of what you can illustrate goes on and on. If you provide a service which takes a customer on a journey, why not show this so that others can understand and decide whether they want to do the same. Use it to gather ideas and research. Be inspired and inspire.
Photos. The heart of Instagram is the immediate sharing of photographs. Is your business one that focuses on the visual? Perhaps a restaurant that wants to share the delicious food that looks sublime, or a photographer who wants to share their talent. If you fancy yourself as an amateur photographer and want to share pictures of what you are doing within your business, this might be a platform to consider. A picture is a worth a thousand words after all.
Whilst there are no industry specific platforms, some lend themselves more naturally to some business, and others to others. However, they are all a great way to attract attention, pushing traffic to your website. Whether it be through posting a picture or status about a service or product you offer, or a competition you are running, or even illustrating your role within the community, social media is becoming a useful tool that shouldn’t be ignored.
Whether it be opening a social media channel and getting you started, or monitoring and posting on the platform for you, we at The Idea Works are happy to help.