We all know the importance of the digital world to our businesses today but what is social media good for and how do you decide what social media channels will work best for your business?
As of January 2022, the number of social media users worldwide was 4.62 billion. That’s more than half of the entire population of earth.
Globally, we spend an average of 2 hours and 27 minutes on social media per day.
Social media is great for increasing awareness of your business and products as well as building a brand. The imagery you use and the tone of your messaging will all play a part in this as will the conversations you have as part of your social media activity.
Remember for social media to be effective you need to be consistent in message, look and feel and regularity of posting. This doesn't mean you have to post every day or on all platforms, you won't have time for this as hopefully you will be focussed on building your product and supplying your customers! Be realistic about how much time you can devote to posting and replying to comments when you set up your social media plan.
As part of building your buying persona's you will have identified what your buyer is likely to see as a reliable source of information. Check out our previous blog on what buying persona's are and why they are important here. Whichever platforms you decide to use make sure the connections you make are relevant. There is no point having a large amount of connections that are not relevant.
When deciding the platforms to use take a look at the following things.
Which platforms do your competitors use
How often do they post
What type of people are engaging with them
What hashtags do they use
Your content needs to be adding value to your customers so remember what their challenges were in the buying persona so you can ensure your content is assisting them with resolving these challenges.
Monitor your social media activity to see what is working best. Try posting at different times of day, different content type, video's, blogs, top tip posts, lists, polls (these will vary depending on the platform.) Look at the analytics for these and see what works best.
Here is some information on demographics of the different social media platforms
Number of monthly active users: 810 million
Largest age group: 25-34
Gender: 48% female, 52% male
63% of LinkedIn users access the network weekly, and 22% daily
This is the most commonly used for B2B platform and Forbes ranks it as the best platform for generating leads, and it accounts for 46% of the social media traffic that generates on company websites for B2B firms. You cannot currently link direct to sales within the platform. Its best use is to create conversations, build brand/company awareness. It's good to post from your company page and your personal page to build the profile of both as an expert in your area. These posts need to be a mix of product information but also sharing research and articles in your specialist area.
Number of daily active users: 211 million (up from 187 million)
Largest age group: 18-29
Gender: 38.4% female, 61.6% male
Time spent per day: 31 minutes
Has a 280 character limit so its important to think about what you want to get across in your messaging. It needs to be snappy and to the point. Don't forget you can use the re tweet function to increase your usage of the platform but make sure its relevant to your target audience. Twitter chat can be useful to engage with potential customers. Keep to the same day and time of the day for these to gain momentum.
Number of monthly active users: 2 billion
Largest age group: 25-34 , with 18-24 close behind at
Gender: 48.4% female, 51.8% male
Time spent per day: 29 minutes
This is a imagery based platform not text heavy good for building the personality of your business. 76% of all under 30's have an Instagram account, because of this statistic they tend to be lower income earners. Younger users are migrating to tick tok so if you plan to use this platform effectively you need to consider use of reels. Hash tags are another important feature to increase reach on this platform.
Number of monthly active users: 2.91 billion
Largest age group: 25-34 also popular with the 45 and above
Gender: 43% female, 57% male
Time spent per day: 33 minutes
Senior Facebook users have generally demonstrated a tendency towards using the platform primarily to network and participate in conversations; in contrast with the youngest users, many of whom are more interested in identity-forming activities like posting selfies. Key topics for older social users are health and community.
Facebook has e commerce solutions so you can sell direct from the platform
You Tube
Number of monthly active users: 2+ billion
Largest age group: 15-35 (highest reach)
Gender: 46% female, 54% male (no data on other genders)
Time spent per session: ~30 minute
Its's easy not to think of this as a social media platform but is great for creating videos and how to pieces. It's also great to host your videos here that can then be embedded into websites and other forms of social media. Make the videos of different lengths that can be used on different platforms. Remember some platforms like Instagram and Twitter are very fast moving so the videos need to be short and to the point. Websites and long posts on LinkedIn will allow you to have longer videos.
Finally whichever platform you are using remember to include a call to action. What do you want the person to do as a result of seeing your material. Contact you? Provide the preferred method of contact so they don't need to search, comment on, make an appointment, make a purchase. Make these clear and easy for the person to do.
We hope this has given you some guidance on which platforms work best. If you have any further questions on social media or want our help on planning or running your social media please get in touch.
