Choosing Between Social Media Platforms
In a world full of choices, choosing which social media platform to use is an important choice for any company or organization. Just a hint: You SHOULD be using social media for marketing purposes not matter the size of business that you own/manage.
Between Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Google+ and a number of smaller social media platforms, it can get confusing trying to choose which one will be best for your company or organization. I realize that not everyone has the time and resources to devote to regular social media interaction, so it’s important to think about your audience and target market and the way that each one of these platforms works.
As a general rule, the one social media platform that you can’t afford to miss out on is Facebook. Facebook has by far the largest number of users worldwide, now with nearly 1 Billion users. It’s reach is incredible! The great thing about Facebook is that everyone from teenagers to grandmothers are on Facebook. It’s created an online social life for many, even those that aren’t overly outgoing in person.
For a business or organization, having a Facebook page is nearly essential. Gathering up “Likes” from people is what many call “permission based marketing.” These people have invited your company into their Facebook stream, giving you the opportunity to tell people about your business, your specials and more. The thing to keep in mind here is that no one wants to see constant marketing on their Facebook stream. It gets irritating. Keep it fun. Post some promotions, post links to your content and then post some fun stuff like pictures of your events or whatever else your target market may find interesting or funny.
A word of caution here. Make sure that you sign up for a Facebook business PAGE and not just a personal account with the name of your business. Doing this wrong won’t help you at all. The difference with the two accounts; A personal account means that people have to request you as a friend or vice-versa. Your customers are NOT going to request you to be their friend and they won’t accept your friend requests. It’s just weird. You want Facebook “likes” which come through having a business page.
Twitter can be powerful. It has less users than Facebook, but can still bring traffic to your website. It’s great for a quick update (under 140 characters) and you can amass a large number of followers easily. How engaged those followers are though, is different than Facebook. They’re slightly less engaged and may not see your Tweets if they are an average user. Also, Twitter followers tend to attract followers from around the globe, so if you are a local auto mechanic, having a ton followers from around the world isn’t going to help you much. Regardless, it’s still a powerful marketing tool. The thing about Twitter is that the community will tolerate a lot more tweets than your Facebook page will. For example, imagine the people who login to Facebook at the end of the day to check out what’s happened in the lives of their friends and family. If you have posted 8 times in a day on Facebook about your promos or with pictures you are eating into their Facebook feed. If all they see is your company, they’re going to be annoyed. I know I am when this happens. Facebook is more personal. I don’t mind some advertising. For example, today Starbucks is giving away a free Refresher beverage between 1 and 3pm. I WANT to know this and am glad they told me on Facebook, but they didn’t post about it 8 times in a day letting me know. Twitter on the other hand is much less concerned about volume. You can post every hour if you want. Some people post more than that (which I find irritating) but it’s up to you.
Think of this more of a personal resume and networking tool. You need to use it, but it’s less focused on your business than it is on you. You can do a good job of combining the two in your descriptions of what you do. People will look here to see what qualifications you have, so most definitely use it. You can also meet a lot of people on Linkedin (although I have met more through Twitter personally.)
Google+
I put this one at the bottom because it’s my least favourite, although VERY powerful from an SEO standpoint. Google+ profiles rank very well in Google, so you will want to have one. I find it far more confusing than the other 3 and so I tend to use it less. It doesn’t have the same audience appeal as Twitter or Facebook at this time, but it will in the future, so you certainly cannot afford to ignore it. I see Google+ as a Twitter/Facebook hybrid. It can do what Facebook can do, it can do what Twitter can do and blends the two together. They were pretty late to the game with it, so they had time to take a look at Facebook and Twitter and choose the best of both worlds.
Linking Social Media Accounts
I would recommend that unless you want to maintain all your social media accounts individually, that you link your accounts together with various tools so that when you post on one, it posts to a few. For mobile users, I HIGHLY recommend Tweetdeck as a great way to share information on Facebook and Twitter at the same time. Another great tool is Seesmic. You can use either of these tools online or on your mobile device and choose where messages will go. Some messages I choose to just Tweet about, while others I want to land on both Twitter and Facebook. These tools allow you to do that from one interface.
Hopefully I have shed some light on the topic of social media and which platform you should me using for marketing purposes. If you have more questions, just head over to my contact page or chat with me at the bottom of the site.
