What Social Media Network(s) Should Your Business Be Using?

“What social media networks should I be on?” is a question we hear all the time from our clients.

The easy answer? “I don’t know. Where does your target market spend their time online?”

More often than not – and no blame or judgement involved here – business owners will simply choose the network they think is the best without asking their customers or doing any sort of research.

Blindly choosing a social media platform is a sure fire way to: a) feel like you’re talking to a brick wall, b) quickly going to exhaust you, and c) turn you off to social media altogether.

Instead of choosing networks at random or starting an account on the platform your friend or family member suggested, try these methods in order to find out where your target audience wants to connect with you online.

Go to the source

If you’re an existing business, simply take a moment to ask your customers where they spend their time online. Ask as many people as you can…and while you’re at it, also ask what they’d like to hear about from a company like yours.

If you’re a brand new business, ask people who you are targeting as customers the same questions.

Do your research

Social media marketing research is great because it you’ll quickly see which networks make the most sense for your business…and it won’t take much time to find the best ones.

Make some searches

You quickly see who’s talking about your industry, products, and services by making a few quick searches within each social network. Be sure to also search for hashtags.

Check out your competition

Your competition will also clue you into the best networks for your target market. Simply go to their website and click on their social media links. (No social media links? Move on…you don’t want to take queues from them anyway.)

Take special note of not only where they are spending time, but what kind of content is getting engagement from their audience.

Look at the data

In addition, there are plenty of hard and fast metrics out there that will give you an idea of what type of audience you’ll find on each network.

Start by thinking of your ideal demographic.

Let’s say I’m trying to target women who are between 30 – 50 years old, college educated, and making over $50,000 per year. According to the infographic below, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest would all be good choices. Since that gives me quite a few options, I might try to narrow down my demographic even further or focusing my time based on what I heard from my existing customers when I went straight to the source originally.

Be realistic

Last, but not least, be realistic about what you can do when it comes to social media.

If, realistically, you know that your type of business isn’t going to be a good fit for Instagram because there isn’t really an opportunity for images that would engage with customers…skip it.

If you aren’t going to be able to post at least once a day, perhaps Twitter isn’t going to be the best fit, so…skip it.

Be realistic in choosing social media platforms that not only fit your target audience’s needs, but also your business needs.