Tips to Choose the Right Social Media Platform for Marketing

Social media is taking the world by storm.  Be it interaction on a day to day level, between friends and acquaintances or marketing strategies on a global platform, Social Media is an integral part of our every day existence.  Whether it is Twitter or Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn or Pinterest, social networking has made the world a closer and more interactive place to live in.  Enterprise social networks assist employees to work as a team over departments and across organisations.  In the business world, social networking offers more recognition of the business and hence a viable route to project ones business and enhance marketing techniques to a greater extent. 

How exactly does one decide on the right social media platform for marketing?  This needs to be tackled at the very outset.  Going overboard and using every social media platform available on the web is not the answer to this question.  By doing so, one will risk spreading the brand too wide and this will in fact be detrimental to the business.

Selecting the right platforms for marketing will need to actually take goals into account, learn more about your customers and assess social media activities.

-    Take goals into account – Whether it is long term or short term goals, it is goals that form the very basis of any marketing techniques.  What exactly are you trying to portray through social media networks?  What exactly does one want to encourage and draw attention to?  Are you in need of direct connection with clients and buyers or are you trying to lead them to a marketing shaft?  Is there an urgent need to increase traffic to the website in the long run so as to contribute to a long lasting relationship with customers and clients?  All these need to be taken into account while selecting an ideal social media platform for marketing.  To understand this further, if you want to reach out to a target market for a particular product, a video on YouTube would be advisable over just showcasing the product on Twitter.  Twitter will spread to awareness while YouTube will draw immediate attention to the actual product, showcasing its positive aspects in a clearer light.

-     Assess the target group – Is the target group professional?  If so, then LinkedIn would be an ideal social networking proposition for marketing.  If you are targeting a more consumer related audience for your consumer product, then Facebook will be considered to be a better option where your product can be liked, shared and advertised further.  This facility of sharing on a global platform will increase the reach of your marketing venture.  Continually updating the blog will also add to its effectiveness.  If your target audience is more of the visual kind and if your product is, for example, travel related, then Pinterest, where more focus is on photos and pictures would work as a prime advantage.

-   Weigh advantages and disadvantages of each social media platform – Every social media platform has its own set of merits and demerits which work in a positive or negative way where marketing is concerned.  Once you decide on a particular social media platform to project your business and products, one will need to continually assess performance.  It is not that once you decide on one platform one is stuck with it.  If that particular platform is not giving the desired results or if the reach is not upto mark, one can always switch to another platform where better benefits can be achieved.  Continually tracking performance, assessment of potential customers and achievement of desired goals need to be kept track of in order to succeed.  For successful marketing, one does not need to restrict oneself to just one social media platform.  One can even resort to two or three platforms depending on the type of business and demographic audience.

Finally, the decision to select the best of the platforms is the key to success.  It is the one way to jump start any business enterprise.  Continuous update, liasoning with customers, follow up on feedback and all this at a reasonable cost is what makes social media marketing stand out from among more traditional methods of marketing.