Let’s talk social media–connecting with customers, driving traffic, and increasing sales. Social media networks are growing every day, and creating more opportunities to reach people than ever before. To be successful on social media, you must have a social media strategy. First, it is important to find the social media outlets that are right for your company. Then, you must make a commitment to posting to these outlets. Social media are most beneficial when you are consistently posting relevant content.
With the large number of social media platforms available, it can be hard to determine which ones will be the most beneficial for your business. Let’s take a look at the most popular social media platforms and decide which ones your business should commit to.
Facebook
What is it? Facebook is the largest and most popular social media network in the world. According to Zephoria, as of May 8, 2017, there are 1.94 billion monthly active Facebook users. That being said, no matter what type of business you have, it is essential for you to be on Facebook.
The Benefits: Facebook can help you grow your brand by creating a follower base, through which you can increase your brand visibility, allowing you to communicate and engage with your followers, drive traffic to your website, and generate leads. Whether your business model is B2B or B2C, Facebook is beneficial for both.
Types of Posts: Anything and everything! Facebook is extremely versatile; you can post pictures, videos, updates, articles, and much more. It is a great way not only to show your company’s personality but also to promote your services or products and interact with your Facebook community.
Google Plus
What is it? Google Plus is a social network from Google. This is very similar to Facebook, as you can share a variety of posts and connect with other Google Plus users. On the platform, their following method is called “circles.” Users who are interested in your content will add you to their circles.
The Benefits: In our opinion, Google Plus doesn’t have the best interface and isn’t as engaging as some of the other social platforms; nevertheless, Google loves Google, so it is important that you post on your Google Plus page along with your other platforms so as to increase the likelihood that your content will show up in their search results.
Types of Posts: Just like Facebook, you can post a ton of different things. We suggest posting more about your website, services, or blog articles to share links back to your website.
Twitter
What is it? Twitter is a platform for online news and social networking where users interact using messages (tweets) restricted to 140 characters or fewer.
The Benefits: Twitter is a great way to show your business’ personality and directly engage with your followers.
Types of Posts: Posts need to be simple and to the point because of the 140-character limit. We recommend sticking to company updates, photos, and article links that point to article content that’s not hosted on Twitter itself.
LinkedIn
What is it? LinkedIn is a business and employment social network. It is a way to connect the world’s business professionals and companies. Think of it as Facebook for the professional business world.
The Benefits: LinkedIn is a platform for showing who you are as a professional business. It also allows your employees to represent the business with their own personal profiles. It can be a good source for lead generation, can create a higher level of credibility, and can serve as a way to make business connections for sales or finding talent.
Types of Posts: The goal of LinkedIn is to have their users grow professionally, so posting items based upon career subjects or your business accomplishments would be the most beneficial.
Instagram
What is it? Instagram is social network app that relies on visual posts. When you post a picture or a video, it gets added to your profile feed, which acts as a visual board to represent you or your brand.
Benefits? Instagram is a great tool to visually show your brand’s personality or company updates. You can connect with your customers, learn what they like or dislike, and reach a new audience by adding popular and relevant hashtags to your photos.
Types of Posts? Instagram posts need to be either a picture or a video. You need to post visually appealing photos and have a consistent theme for your brand. You cannot include hyperlinks in your posts, so linking to a specific page of your website or an article can be difficult.
Pinterest
What is it? Like Instagram, Pinterest is a visual social network. It allows you to “pin” pictures that lead to a website page. Users create category boards filled with pins they like and want to save. Pinterest also creates a feed for the user based upon their likes, re-pins, and searches.
The Benefits: Pinterest is very popular in the beauty, health, food, travel, DIY, fashion, and design industries. It is a way to visually show a user an idea and direct them to your website to show them more about the pinned image.
Types of Posts? Your posts need to have a visually appealing picture that directs the user to your website, which will provide more information about that pinned picture. Before-and-after photos, photos of your finished work, tutorials, or articles work extremely well on Pinterest.
Snapchat
What is it? Snapchat is one of the newer platforms and has a younger audience (18–30 year olds). As a business targeting is young consumers, you would create “stories” and post them to your profile. “Stories” are a compilation of photos and videos you take during your day that remain active for 24 hours.
Benefits? It is a great way to show a more personal side of your business and day-to-day activities.
Types of Posts? You can also create fun, targeted geofilters to encourage engagement, shares, and brand awareness. Geofilters are popular for high profile events. Geofilters are photo overlays that people can put over their photos when they are located in a geographic area you determine.
YouTube
What is it? YouTube is an online video sharing network that is owned by Google. It’s actually the second-largest search engine under Google.com, processing more than 3 billion searches a month.
Benefits? If you are planning on creating content in the form of videos, YouTube would be a very good public platform to post on because of the popularity and search engine friendliness of the videos.
Types of Posts? Encourage fans to give your videos a “thumbs up,” share it with others, and follow you on other social platforms. Both B2C and B2B organizations benefit for posting consistent content.
Social Media Consulting, Content Strategy, and Implementation
Creating a content calendar and strategy will greatly help the success of your social media efforts. We suggest planning each month to guarantee consistency. If you are still feeling overwhelmed, let us help!
To maximize the impact of your social media program, we will create a content strategy filled with engaging content to grow your brand and business on platforms that work for your company.
We regularly consult with our clients about their social media goals, help them define those goals, create an implementation plan, and monitor or listen to the sentiment of online conversations. Contact us today.
About Ocreative
Ocreative is an award-winning, fully integrated marketing agency whose work features some of the best forward-thinking organizations and B2B companies. Since the integrated marketing agency began in 2003, they’ve carved out a specialization for themselves with nonprofits and business-to-business companies. Their portfolio expertly includes marketing and strategy, design, web and digital and multimedia.
