We’ve reached a time in this day and age where social media marketing has become one of the main driving forces behind the rapid growth and exposure for business and people around the world. Digital marketing cannot be ignored as it proves to be a powerful tool for effective marketing to help gain recognition, boost demand and sales for products as well as connecting brands and consumers directly through real-time engagement. So, while the need for marketing is still essential, where that marketing is most effective has changed a lot. ENTER SOCIAL PLATFORMS.

These days according to marketwatch, an American adult spends more than 11 hours per day watching, reading, listening to or simply interacting with media through their smartphone. Since the 1990’s social media has been on the come up with more and more platforms and apps being introduced to us all serving the same purpose but beneficial in different ways. This can be overwhelming and hard to navigate but if you know your target audience and niche, there’s a platform for everyone.  

Social media marketing is big business and understanding how its evolving can be extremely valuable for businesses and individuals alike. It’s important to know your audience when choosing the right channel in digital marketing to take. So here are a few helpful tips to get you on the social wagon.

First Identify your audience. Who are they? Are they male or female? How old are they? What are their interests? Where do they live? Are they single or married?  These are just some standard questions that when answered will help build out a profile of who your target audience is. 

Secondly identify your goals. Once you’ve scoped out your target audience it’s time to define your goal for them. As a business, your primary goal would likely be to drive sales by attracting customers – yet there are other elements to consider doing this like the creative goal. When it comes to creating your social media marketing goals, brainstorm a list of both typical and unusual was social media could for for your brand. 

Once you’ve identified your audience and defined your goals it’s time to find your audience. To do this, you’re going to determine which platform your audience uses by looking at the demographics of the users on each platform. You’ll want to consider how active your audience is on that platform. Here’s a brief overview of each platform.

Facebook reports over 1.3 billion users but with all those users its important to remember how these individuals use this platform. Facebook users typically use this to build relationships and keep in contact with old friends. This makes Facebook a good platform for building loyalty with your customers. As you asses Facebook as a potential platform, consider your business goals. 

Twitter Popularly used for news and quick communication. This is an excellent platform to build awareness for your brand. Twitter is a great platform to build awareness for your brand. It utilizes hashtags, which organizes conversations around a word or phrase. Twitter can offer insight into what topics are trending and is often used by news outlets to find stories. 

Pinterest used for “scrapbooking” by “pinning” photos to a virtual bulletin board. This platform is mostly dominated by females some of the most common pins are recipes, style ideas, striking photographs and DIY crafts. Since pinterest is a visual-based platform you’ll need strong graphics to engage users. 

YouTube boasts 1 billion users but its reach extends far past that. This is a platform that you don’t need to sign up to be a user to view content. As a result of that, YouTube has become one of the biggest search engine platforms. Many of these are “how to videos”. Service industry businesses who an offer this type of content work well on this platform.

Last but certainly not least we have Instagram. This is one of the fastest growing platforms and has now surpassed Facebook in popularity.  Mostly popular among a younger audience, like Pinterest, Instagram relies on photos for conversation. As a result, this platform works really well for visual based businesses, like art, food, retail, beauty and most recently people are using Instagram as a digital portfolio. 

When choosing the right platforms for you or your business the main thing to consider is your audience and goals which will help determine the direction of your content. Contact Sack Lunch Agency to learn more