Choosing a social media channel for business is not an easy task. There are so many to choose from: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and so many more. And while you shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket, it is important to focus on growing just one account or profile at a time to ensure the fastest growth possible.
So, let’s cut to the chase and get into what you are here for how to choose a social media channel for your business.
Why should I care about being on social media?
We get so many questions from clients who ask us why it’s important to spend time on social media. It’s almost backward, we are told how social media is a distraction from work and how it wastes our time, yet we think you should spend as much time on it as possible!
But why should you care? Why is social media SO important?
In principle, you need to be where your customers are. Looking at the number of users, for example on Facebook, we can bet your customers will be within the billion or so users! So by using social media, and utilizing these platforms, your business will be placed nicely in front of the eyes and fingers of customers. From there, it’s up to you to create great content and engage with them correctly to convert those wondering eyes into loyal clients!
For businesses with consumer focus (b2c)
If your business focuses on selling to consumers, then there is good news and bad news!
Good news; you have plenty of choices for what might be the best social media for you!
Bad news; you have almost too much choice.
Realistically, we will be looking at a couple of the top social media platforms we recommend for b2c: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest. While there are more niche social media platforms, such as Behance for designers, we are only going to have a look at the most populated platforms.
Here is one question to break down further into which platform you should focus on:
Does your business depend on images or videos?
What we mean by this is if your business depends on demonstrating what you do with images, for example, if you are a photographer or an event planner, then your answer should be yes!
If you said yes, then we recommend Instagram or Pinterest. These are both very visually dependent, meaning if you have great-looking content to share, it will shine on them. We recommend Instagram as it has such a huge volume of users as well as a great system for finding either similar businesses or potential clients. Pinterest however is great for longevity of content, but its algorithm and general usability make it a hard sell compared to Instagram.
If your business however doesn’t depend on images or videos, for example, digital marketers or virtual assistants, we recommend Facebook or Twitter. And there is one good reason for it that we never see mentioned: community.
Facebook and Twitter are made with community and communication in mind, meaning it is easy to find networks of people with similar interests to each other. As a result, if you are a business that serves customers with particular interests, you should invest your time finding groups of people that share those interests!
On Facebook, this is done with Facebook groups which are a gold mine for potential customers. On Twitter, it’s done through hashtags and general interactions.
For businesses with a business focus (b2b)
If you are a b2b business, realistically we only recommend two social media to focus on: LinkedIn and Instagram.
LinkedIn should be no surprise: it’s made with business in mind. It is the best way to find other business owners or companies that would be your perfect customers. LinkedIn also has its tools that allow for super easy lead scouting, and finding clients is a breeze.
Instagram is slightly different, but we recently tried it out as a b2b selling tool and it worked reasonably well. The secret is to find and organically engage with potential clients first before even attempting to talk business. Following them, liking and commenting on their posts, and learning more about them will help you then approach them with a sales message or pitch.
While you can use Facebook for b2b sales, we haven’t seen it perform too well in general. And as we are advising you on one social media to focus on, we recommend putting Facebook on the side until your LinkedIn and Instagram are growing nicely!
Conclusion: choosing social media channel for business
In conclusion, we don’t recommend you put all your eggs in one basket and use just one social media. However, it is important to focus your efforts on channels that are most likely to produce results, and we hope this article helped you narrow down what you will focus on!
What do you think? Which social media network do you use for your business? Let us know in the comments below!