Which is the right social media platform for you?
Do you want to get better at digitally marketing your business in 2021? Maybe you want to start a social media account or two, maybe you already have several and aren’t sure where you should be focusing your attention, or maybe you’re actually on the wrong one without even realising it? We are here to help!
Before you can work out which is the right platform for you, you need to know one thing. No, it’s not which one you personally prefer. It’s who your target audience is. What’s their demographic, for example their age range, gender and interests. Once you know that, you can work out which social media platform they’re likely to be on.
Read on for a brief description of some of the most popular social media platforms and who mainly uses them:
Facebook has been around for a long time now and is the biggest and probably most versatile platform. You can post images with long captions or short captions, text only, long videos, short videos, links and shared posts. It can be quite hard to build a following, however, almost all businesses have a Facebook page and many people will search for a business on Facebook rather than Google. The age range is mixed, but the majority of regular users are probably middle-aged to older, and often even quite elderly. It’s a good platform too for connecting with people from other countries.
Twitter is used for short posts, with tweets being limited to 280 characters. You can share links and add images. Hashtags help your tweets be seen by more people. A useful aspect of Twitter is various themed ‘hours’ such as #ScotlandHour, where multiple people follow the same hashtag to join in a conversation. Twitter had migrated to being a hangout for the 40+, but it’s starting to see a few younger people joining it again.
A visual platform for sharing images, Instagram is where the millennials hang out. It’s the place of influencers and aesthetics. But it’s also one of the more fun, positive platforms and it’s possible to create around you a supportive community of likeminded people. Business-wise, you’ll find lots of creatives, small but funky businesses and cool brands on Instagram. But don’t be put off thinking you won’t fit in, it’s pretty easy going if you want it to be.
LinkedIn is good if you have a large network of contacts and your target is marketing business to business. It’s good for posting blogs and articles, and locating the right people to talk to. It can be hard to build a following if you don’t already lots of contacts have though.
Pinterest is one of the best platforms for making direct sales of products. It’s also great for things like lifestyle blogs and tips. The users are overwhelmingly women, they usually have disposable income, and they’re often shopping for aspirational products or looking for inspirational ideas. They love motivational quotes and lifestyle hacks. Artists, health fitness experts, interior designers and bloggers can find Pinterest especially effective.
TikTok
TikTok is for short videos and its main demographic is young people between 17 and 28. It’s very lighthearted and probably not the best platform for marketing your business unless you target young people, or possibly are in the entertainment industry.
Of course, this is just a very brief summary of what you can expect on each platform and we are only scratching the surface. And we want to emphasise that we’re speaking generally — plenty of social media users fall outside these summaries. Some older people use TikTok and some younger people use Facebook. And we haven’t mentioned other platforms, such as YouTube. But in general this is a useful guide based on our own experience, and it’s a good place to start.
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Article originally appeared in The Perthshire Magazine. Find the latest issue at: https://www.theperthshiremagazine.com/current-issue