Which Social Media Channels Should I Use for My Small Business?
I get this question a lot. Like a lot a lot. Between Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, YouTube, LinkedIn, Google+, Reddit and more, there is a plethora of different social media channels to amplify your brand message and reach your target audience. But, which ones should you be using? Small business owners are time crunched enough and most likely, you really don't have enough time or budget to utilize every single social media network. Nor should you. You want to use the one(s) that are best for your business.
Here's some questions to ask to get started:
What are my goals for utilizing social media?
How much time do I have to commit to social media?
What is my budget?
Which social media networks do my target audience use?
So, you probably guessed it. The last question is the hardest. How are you supposed to know where your target audience is? Industries and businesses vary between social networks, so here's some tasks to get you started:
Research: Utilize the search functions on a few social media channels. You can search by relevant keywords to see what people are posting about, what businesses are active and the frequency of your keywords. This will tell you if it's a good place for you to be or not.
Snoop: See what your competitors are doing. Where are they most active on social?
Engage: Setup a personal account on some new networks. See how you like it. Does it make sense to you personally? Do you feel comfortable on them to use for business?
Ready to get started?
If you are new to social or have a renewed focus on it, I typically tell my clients to do the top 2. Do two and do them well. Don't get bogged down by trying to take on 6 different social media networks that won't get updated and will in turn reflect badly on your brand. So, what are those two channels?
That would most definitely be Facebook and Twitter regardless of your industry. People expect you to have a presence on these two channels. It legitimizes your business to just have a presence and also you can start building your audience with these. These two are also in my opinion the easiest to get the hang of if you're not a social media expert yourself. And, there are TONS of info online to research that will help get you started in no time at all.
What's Next?
Ok, so you've got Facebook and Twitter down pat. You're comfortable engaging, building your audience, and everything is going good. Depending on your industry type, I would typically recommend LinkedIn and Instagram...though Pinterest is a contender depending on your brand. I call these ones my second tier social media networks. Great for engagement and reach, but don't do them until you are ready. They are their own animal and need to be tended to differently then your Facebook and Twitter profiles. I'll get into that later.
Until next time...
This was Part 1 in my "Social Media Smarts" blog series. The next blog will focus more in depth on some of these channels including pros/cons, audience sizes, resources and how to use them. Stay tuned and if you have questions you'd like answered, shoot me over an email to holly@littlebirdboston.com.
