Social media platforms have quickly become an important part of marketing for businesses.
With so many social media platforms available, you’ve likely wondered which one’s the best for business marketing.
Some of the most popular platforms for brand development and marketing include:
- Snapchat
However, there’s no single platform that’s best for all businesses. For example, it’s impossible to say that your business should choose Facebook over any other type of social media platform.
While Facebook has been extremely popular for brand promotion, it’s not necessarily right for every type of brand, and it’s not always right for every type of customer.
Campaign Monitor has made it simple for brands to incorporate social media into their email strategy. It’s as simple as drag, drop, and customize.
Choosing the best social media platform for your business
Your best bet, when it comes to social media marketing, is to choose the platform that’s the best fit for your brand.
This includes evaluating the platforms to see if your customer base is there, whether or not they’re engaging with brands, and if the platform fits the personality of your brand.
For instance, if your brand seeks to appeal mainly to millennial women, Instagram should be one of your top choices. This platform tends to attract more women than men, and more people under the age of 25 than other platforms.
Alternatively, if you’re a B2B brand, you’re going to find more success on LinkedIn, which is a platform that appeals primarily to professionals and brands looking to connect with other professionals.
Ask yourself:
- Am I a B2B or B2C company?
- Who’s my ideal customer/target market?
- What’s my ultimate goal regarding social media marketing? Is it to sell, to connect, or to build brand awareness?
How to measure the success of your social media campaign
Once you decide which platform you’re going to incorporate into your marketing campaign, the next step is to find ways to track your progress.
Thankfully, many tools will help you measure the success of your social media marketing efforts.
ESPs like Campaign Monitor allow you to combine email marketing and social media, with a dashboard that shows you how many social media shares you’ve received, as well as how many people are forwarding your email campaigns.
Source: Campaign Monitor
Other ways to track your success include:
- Monitoring engagement (shares, likes)
- Identifying key influencers
- Monitoring how many backlinks you get.
Scale of social platform opportunities
To enhance the discussion on choosing the best social media platform for marketing, it’s important to keep scale in mind. Larger platforms like Facebook and Instagram offer vast reach, ideal for businesses aiming to connect with a broad audience. However, smaller platforms like LinkedIn or Pinterest can provide more targeted engagement, especially for niche markets. Understanding the scale of each platform helps in aligning your marketing efforts with your business goals, ensuring that you’re not just reaching more people, but the right people.
Does it really matter?
Some people may question whether they should spend the time and money involved in creating a social media marketing campaign. If they’ve already taken the time needed to work on their email marketing campaign, is more really needed?
Yes. In fact, integrating social media marketing with your email marketing campaign is a must these days.
It’s estimated that nearly 3.2 billion people use social media regularly, and many of those people don’t just follow their friends and family—they follow brands.
- Develop your brand and your brand’s voice
- Perform research to see what your ideal customer wants and needs
- Improve your search engine rankings.
Social media is a great way to interact with your customer base. It allows you to address problems quickly, which will not only make your customers happy, but it’ll also help you save money.
Source: Social Media Today
Additionally, customers are more likely to spend money with a company that they can interact with on social media. Social media tends to humanize a brand, and consumers like to support brands that they find relatable.
Customers spend upwards of 40% more with brands that respond to and engage with them on social media.
What now?
Are you committed to adding at least one social media platform into your marketing strategy? Whether you integrate one platform or several, you can be sure that it’ll increase your brand’s exposure and contribute to your overall marketing success.
And, with the integration tools from Campaign Monitor, integration is easier than ever.