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Which Social Media Platforms are Right for Your Business?
Venturing into a business means knowing how and when to reach your customers. Knowing where to find them and push sales of your products or services. Social media platforms eliminate any archaic methods of marketing bringing you to a whole new level of capturing a huge audience who might be interested in what you have to offer.
Social media brings an acute sense of success to your business in the today’s world. One thing you need to know is which social media platforms works best for your business? By analyzing the social media platforms that are available for your business, you will be saving a lot of time and money.
Here are some of the most popular social media platforms for businesses with both their pros and cons to help you allay the challenges you might face.
For the last 13 years, Facebook was launched and it still remains to be one of the largest platforms that has a wide range of online users. From the statistics by Facebook, 802 million Facebook users log in daily and 1.8 billion user accounts logs in on a monthly basis. 53% of the Facebook users range from the ages of 25-54 which assists in getting to know who to target.
A Facebook business page provides the customers with important information from the business, their contact information and it also acts as a strong advertising platform.
Facebook is social platforms that encourage people to use it several times in a day. It encourages interaction with its share and like features and thus, a business is able to collect information on every post they make.
Pros.
- Talking to your customers directly. By reading your customers comments, you can be able to communicate directly to each person.
- Customer support is made simple.
- Facebook will increase your website’s traffic.
Cons.
- Some of your posts may not reach all your targeted customers.
- Constant page monitoring is required because any of your followers have the power to write anything on your Facebook wall.
With over 300 million users, LinkedIn builds connections with professionals, posts jobs and find right candidates for jobs.
For a business to have that successful touch on LinkedIn, adding as many details as possible and add connections. LinkedIn allows you to ask or answer any questions anyone might have in your field. This questions and answers help you to meet people interested in your industry.
Pros.
- It is easy to understand LinkedIn.
- Pulse is a blog introduced by LinkedIn that allows you to post blogs and content for the people in your industry.
- Easy to setup a business page.
- A trusted platform for hiring people.
Cons.
- The number of LinkedIn users fall under other various social media platforms.
- It requires a lot of time.
- LinkedIn has a multi-tier membership. A member pays to gain access to more advanced features of LinkedIn.
Instagram is a visual social media platform that only displays photos and videos. Instagram feature to filter posts about art, food lifestyle and fashion and other similar subjects. This platform is reached by many using their mobile devices, it is not possible to post videos and photos from their web version.
Instagram helps a business to achieve visual creativeness and sell it to their audience. Instagram might not be the best platform for some businesses. An Instagram account needs to be handled by someone who has a keen eye for details and photography to only post high-quality posts that a user can share to their followers.
Pros.
- Instagram has the largest growth in the engagement rate.
- Its mobile-based app makes Instagram popular among the millennial whose buying power is great.
- The commonly used hashtags filters find posts related to searches.
Cons.
- Advertising is expensive.
- A user cannot post images and videos using the Instagram website.
- The caption doesn’t support URL and links.
Twitter provides a business with a platform to share short messages, images, links, polls, and videos. The short texts with a maximum of 140 characters, is a great way to interact with your followers, market your brand and products in a few words.
There are about 320 million active twitter users in the world. The tweets reach many and it is a fast and effective way to offer customer support. Interacting with your customers is easy and all you need to do is mention a user’s username in your post. In Twitter maintaining online status is important and works in your favor because the active followers seek out to you and express their concerns and share your posts.
Twitter spreads your posts quickly and if your content is interesting, you stand to gain a huge popularity on twitter. Retweeting and sharing the content you post is simple and this is why it is extremely quick. Another great way to make your content go viral is using the hashtags. Hashtags help boosts the content and if your followers retweet and share your content you will be in a position to go viral.
An important and simple thing you need to know on Twitter is sharing and retweeting interesting content from other people. By doing this your followers will be able to engage with you in all angles not only from your business perspective.
Pros.
- Twitter allows a business to get the message to the audience any time of the day and time.
- Twitter targets the people who are interested in r business ventures, products, and services.
- Creates credibility of your business and brings many clients and customers.
- A cost-effective marketing strategy.
Cons.
- Direct messaging in twitter requires you to send one message at a time.
- There is a good number of spammers on twitter.
- Content is limited to 140 characters.
- Some tweets may go unseen (buried tweets).
Pinterest is yet another platform that flourishes in business marketing. Pinterest allows its users to save their content on pinboards. A study was done by Venture Beat, the majority of Pinterest users are female, amounting to more than 100 million active users (71% of all the active users are female).
For a business that focuses widely on women, Pinterest can be a cornerstone that helps boost sales and capture potential clients by pinning your content. Pinterest has a website and a mobile-based App that helps in the management of a business account.
Pros.
- Pinterest’s “Pin It” button makes it easy for users to share content.
- All the pinboards are open making it possible for the followers to view images and content on any board.
- Images are always hyperlinked to lead you back to the source website.
- There’s no pressure since users do not have to leave comments. Just following boards and repining images is enough.
Cons.
- The majority of Pinterest users are female, thus attracting only a specific type of audience.
- It is not possible to create a post without an image.
- Whenever a user searches for specific posts, time of posts is not the major ranking.
Marta Gomez
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