Getting Started
Social media has become an obvious tool in most marketing plans that want to be visible in today’s digital noise. Social media gives you the opportunity to reach your target audience in a fast and cost-effective way compared to traditional media such as TV, radio, and the newspaper. In other words, this means you are missing out on great opportunities if your company is not included in social media.
Getting started is not always the easiest thing, which can be even more difficult is knowing which platform (s) you can use for your particular company and its product or service. There are as many people to choose from so a good start is to narrow down their options to find the platform that meets your marketing goals.
Contents
Start by setting your goals
Before proceeding, it is important to set specific goals and have a clear purpose before why you should be included in social media, by answering this it also helps you to determine what type of content you should create, what platform you intend to distribute it in and which target audience you intend to reach. Here are some of the top things to consider when choosing social media platforms to use for your company.
Match your goals with the right platform
Have in mind that different platforms fits best with a certain type of content. Some platforms are best suited to video, image, text, live streams, podcasts, etc. Begin by understanding what content each social media platform focuses on. And then consider which content type you are based at.
Now that you know what type of content to create and which you want to reach, it is important to match your goals with the right platform, below is a brief overview of the major platforms.
Choosing the right platform
Today, there are social media platforms for just about everything, there are platforms that are for people with the same interests, hobbies, or certain subjects. There are also platforms that offer only one format and allow users to decide what type of content is shared, e.g. blogging tools, video platforms and image platforms.
Being visible on all platforms with your company is in principle impossible to catch up with, therefore it can be a smart start to take one or some of the platforms that have the most traffic and monthly active users. At the time of writing, it is Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat and Twitter.
Target audience
One of the most important factors to consider when choosing a social media platform is where your target audience is. This is extremely important since ultimately, you use social media to reach and communicate with your target audience. Look at each social media platform and see if your target audience is using this. This will make it easier to exclude platforms that are completely irrelevant to your company, and the platforms which may be suitable for your company.
