Social media marketing can be a particularly effective tactic for small businesses, if well planned and executed as part of a wider content strategy. I would argue that every business needs some level of social media presence.
Social media helps you to tell the story of your brand. It can help to drive traffic to your website, it can support your search engine optimisation (SEO) efforts, it can integrate with your paid advertising and it helps to build trust in your brand.
However, you need to get it right! You need to choose the right platforms and work hard to build your community and engagement in the right places, and in the right way. Despite the temptation to be on every platform simply as a means to appear present - or because you are suffering from a serious case of FOMO (fear of missing out) - think carefully before setting up too many platforms.
But how do you choose the right platforms?
I can imagine the scenario. First, you were thinking you'd be choosing between Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter, and then your neighbour told you that if you were selling products you ought to be on Pinterest. Then you thought perhaps you ought to be creating video content for YouTube to increase your chances of your audience finding your content, and your teenage kids tell you that they don't use it and instead they spend all their time consuming video via TikTok.
Before you know it, someone has mentioned Snapchat and Reddit and your old mate from uni invites you to join an audio platform called 'Clubhouse', and your head is really in a spin!
Don't worry you really don't have to be in all these places, all the time. In fact, unless you have an army of people monitoring your social presence, that is nigh on impossible. So, here are some key things to consider before choosing your social platforms.
What is your core offer? Is your business offering B2B (business to business) or B2C (business to consumer) services? Some platforms are more suited to building relationships with other decision makers from a business networking perspective (e.g. LinkedIn) and others, to showcase creativity and beautiful products (e.g. Instagram). Whilst this is not exclusive, and Instagram can be a great platform for some B2B organisations, it should be a primary consideration when selecting platforms.
Who are you targeting? Understanding your target audience is a crucial first step to choosing the right platforms. Consider your user personas (or customer profiles). How old are they? Are they male or female? What are their interests? What is their socio-economic position? Then consider the demographic make up of the social media platform you are considering. For example, if you are hoping to speak directly to C-suite executive males over 50, you may struggle to reach them on Instagram. Only 23% of people ages 50-64 use Instagram, reducing to 8% in the over 65 bracket (source (2021): Khoros). So this alone might encourage you to prioritise another platform where you may have a higher chance of reaching your ideal target customer.
What message do you want to convey and in what tone? Think about the personality you want to convey for your business, product or brand. And then think about the personality of your typical customers and the frame of mind they might be in when making purchasing decisions around your business. It is important to understand the way in which you want your brand to be perceived online - and how you can ensure that your audience does actually take away that perception. We do this through the images that we create, the tone of voice that we use and the content that we share. As a simple analogy, think about clothing brands. Though they may both be targeting consumers; a company selling high end, formal shirts would position its brand and its content very differently to one selling loungewear and hoodies. They may both hope to reach male executives over the age of 30, but they would be hoping to reach them when in an entirely different state of mind. The take away is, that the content that you create should be appropriate for the tone of the platform on which it sits.
What resources do you have available? This is always one of my first questions to my clients when advising them on setting up new platforms: Who will manage the platforms? Do you have someone in-house who can manage your social media marketing? Or do you have budget to outsource this role? Most social media platforms require an update at least once a day, whether that be sharing a curated article or offering up a piece of created content (a written article, an image, a branded post or some video content, for example). With high volume, content heavy, platforms like twitter, you would ideally be posting at least five times per day to cut through the noise. This means scheduling content and having a well organised content plan to manage updates. Add to this the need for regular Stories content, engaging with influencers, responding to trending topics and monitoring hashtags, and you can quickly see how managing one platform can become resource-intensive. Imagine then if you had set up five.
How much branded content do you produce? Do you write blogs, or thought leadership articles? Do you create video content, take photographs regularly of your business activities, staff or products? Do you create branded posts which can help to promote awareness of your brand through social media? Some platforms are almost entirely reliant on imagery (Instagram) or video (YouTube / TikTok) so if the content is not readily available, then steer clear.
What are your competitors up to? Sometimes we can learn a lot from what competitors are doing. Though it may seem counter-intuitive to be on the same platforms as your competitors, not being there can be worse if your target audience is active in that space. Review your competitors' social media presence. Don't just consider how many followers they have (as this can be what we can a 'vanity' metric - influenced by popularity, employee numbers or even unethical tactics). Instead look at how frequently they are posting content and how often their audience is interacting with that content. Look at who the people are that are interacting and whether these are the people you would like to engage with. If so, this may well mean that your business should also consider having an active presence on the platform.
What is your goal? This is absolutely critical. What is it that you want to achieve from having a presence on a particular social media platform? Now in most cases, this will be to drive sales or increase profit by driving conversions. But actually, it's not that simple there is a process you need to follow to nurture your audience through to a conversion. Going too hard with the sales pitch can be extremely off-putting, particularly if the customer receiving that message is unfamiliar with your brand and has not had the time to develop the trust needed to make confident buying decisions. Start with developing brand awareness and aiming to grow your community. Then focus on engagement through interesting content and inviting your audience to participate in conversations around mutual topics. Build awareness and then trust. Only really once you have a truly engaged audience on a social platform can you look to convert them. Also depending on your required conversion (collecting an email address, buying a product, completing a contact form, calling you directly etc), there will be platforms better suited to achieving that goal.
What is your budget? Even if you have resource in-house to create lots of great content and to manage your social media platforms effectively, there will come a point where you need to invest in advertising. Perhaps you are launching a new product and running a campaign to promote the launch? Maybe you have identified an under-performing area of your business and you want to test how some investment in advertising might impact sales? Or maybe you would like to test a new market to gauge interest in your products or services? Advertising, by its very nature of being more targeted, enables you to quickly reach a wider segment of your target audience. These people may not otherwise have encountered your brand just yet. In most cases it is advisable to budget for some ad spend as part of your social media marketing strategy. facebook and Instagram offer lower budget, short-term options for test campaigns, whereas advertising on platforms like LinkedIn can be a much more expensive investment. So advertising investment should be carefully considered - with the target audiences further refined and the goal narrowed down to ensure effectiveness.
All of these decisions should form part of your social media strategy, which feeds into your content marketing strategy and subsequently, your content plan.
A note of caution
Spreading yourself too thinly can cause a particularly negative brand perception. If, on arriving at your neglected twitter page, for example, your prospective customer sees no activity for several months, an outdated biography and no clear calls to action... they are likely to move across to a competitor's profile where they have had a more positive experience.
It is perhaps better to be absent than to be present - but seemingly not interested in creating a positive impression of your brand, and in engaging with your target audiences.
In my next blog I will consider the demographic make up of each of the platforms, their level of reliance on different content types and how the platform itself may influence your decision whether or not to have a presence for your business.
If you have any questions about choosing the right platforms, I'm always happy to help so please feel free to ask away!
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