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Of all the online resources that businesses have available to them, social media platforms are the most important. They allow businesses access to the people they want to sell their products or services to. So, they’re ideal platforms for promoting brands and products. And they’re one of the cheapest forms of online advertising and marketing in existence. To get your approach right, you need to choose which social media platforms are best for your company. And then you need to use them in the right way. But before you do that, you need to ensure that you know about the different platforms and what they have to offer.
Understanding everything that these platforms has to offer will allow you to choose which to use. Of course, your business should use as many or as few social media platforms as is suitable for what you want to achieve. The kinds of audience and engagement opportunities that are found on each of these platforms varies compared to all the rest. Matching your company’s aims to what’s on offer from the platforms you use is essential. So, if you want to learn more about them, here’s how each social media platform can help your business.
Facebook is, without a doubt, the king of social media. This is where the largest number of users can be found, and that’s why businesses have gravitated towards it in recent years. In the past, it wasn’t possible for businesses to create profiles. But once that changed, businesses jumped at the chance to appeal to users and market their products on the platform.
It’s very easy to use a profile and maintain it, so not much energy has to be exerted. It allows you to keep fans and customers up to date on what the business is doing. And it’s where many businesses choose to make big announcements on new products or services. Facebook advertising is also very highly regarded for its targeting capabilities, so you might want to try it out if you haven’t before.
The other major platform that is useful for businesses is Twitter. By now, most businesses are already using Twitter, but not all of them. No matter how big or small a company is, it can benefit from having a strong Twitter presence. It doesn’t have quite as many users as Facebook, but its reach is still huge, and interaction with followers is easier too.
Of course, if you want to succeed on Twitter, your posts will have to get to the point. Things have to be short and snappy if you want to get your message across. The 140-character limit means that you have to work at being succinct and informative at the same time. It’s not easy, but it has to be done.
Instagram is all about images and visuals. This makes it the kind of social media platform that will be very useful for some businesses and not useful at all for others. There are more than 400 million people using Instagram though, so there are plenty of chances for you to reach out to people.
It’s all about building a following, and that can be difficult when you’re just starting out. You can buy Instagram likes if you want to boost the appearance of your business’s initial popularity on the site. This is useful because when other people see that your business’s profile is popular, more people will follow you. You’ll have to make sure your images are of a high quality if you want that popularity to last though.
Tumblr
There are several different types of post that you can use on Tumblr. This makes it one of the most unique platforms out there for businesses. It’s not a platform that will be useful for every business though. The audience tends to be very young on Tumblr. So, if you’re targeting anyone over the age of 25, you won’t gain much by using this platform.
There are also lots of different subcommunities. So, if you run a business that operates in a niche, you can probably find a small community of Tumblr users that might be interested in what you do. You can post text, videos or images easily, so there are a lot of possibilities to take advantage of. If you’re targeting young people, it’s a platform you should definitely use.
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For businesses that have great images to share, Instagram is not the only social media platform. If you have the ability to create striking images that get shared, Pinterest is another option. However, if you don’t think you have the photos to make it work, there is not much to be gained from this social media platform. It’s very good for businesses involved in fashion, food, travel and design.
Pinterest is used much more heavily by women than men. So, if your business is trying to target a female audience, it could be a very good idea to use Pinterest. But that will only be the case if the images you take and post on the website are up to scratch. If they’re not, you’ll quickly fail. You have to post daily if you want to gain a following too.
Companies and entrepreneurs looking to make contacts in the business world have to use LinkedIn. It’s a site that can also be very good for recruiters to meet job-seekers. So, businesses shouldn’t go to LinkedIn if they think they’re going to get the chance to appeal to new customers. That’s not what the website is all about, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be useful.
If you are going to share information on LinkedIn, make sure that it’s professional and presented in a professional way. This is not the kind of social media platform where sharing funny content or memes is going to go down well. It’s more about building a professional image of your business, so don’t forget that.
Google+
You can make your page on Google+ very successful and popular if you use it properly. It’s just a case of understanding how it should be used. Many people still don’t fully understand it and don’t want to make the effort to use it better. Features like Hangouts and the +1 function can be very useful for businesses though.
For B2B companies, it can be particularly useful because it offers a great way to network with other business owners. It’s a slightly more formal social media platform than most of the others on this list. That makes it good for business owners that think that Facebook is too casual and unsuited to them. It can also be very good for sharing content, such as blog posts. So, if that’s a big part of your audience engagement plans, you should use Google+
YouTube
YouTube is, of course, the most popular site on the internet that’s dedicated to video. This means that it offers something quite different to all the other platforms mentioned above. It works as a social media platform because comments can be posted and people can subscribe to your channel. And the videos you produce and post can help to engage customers and promote your brand.
It’s best used by businesses that want to offer something useful as an added extra for customers. For example, many businesses create ‘how to’ videos that relate to the products or services the business focuses on. Keep them short and snappy, and also make sure that you post videos on your channel with regularity. If you don’t do that, your subscribers will all lose interest. Competition for viewers is fierce on YouTube, so you need to remain focused.
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