How to Cater to Different Social Media Platforms
Social media has become a part of everyone’s life in one way or another. Whether you have personal profiles to stay connected with friends or if you run your business’s account, there’s no escaping. But as new platforms pop up, audiences and users migrate. Each platform has a different interface, type of content that can be uploaded, interactivity levels, and more. To best utilize each social media platform for your business, you need to understand the audiences of each and how each platform works. Read below to learn how to cater to different social media platforms.
Facebook is perhaps the most well-known social media platform, as evidenced by the fact that it has over 2.8 billion active accounts. Of course, these numbers are slightly deceiving due to many accounts being duplicates or businesses, but still – the raw numbers are quite astounding.
Recently, an older age group (40+) has migrated to Facebook, despite its main userbase still consisting of individuals aged 25-34. Facebook is thus a good place to place advertisements for the older crowd, but it’s also a great location to create large informed posts.
You can upload multiple photos, albums, videos, long-form videos, polls, and more. You can set up a marketplace and group. The amount of interactivity from comments and shares can drive a lot of interest in your brand, but you have to stay on top of it since it can quickly get out of hand!
Instagram has nearly 1.5 billion active accounts, but again, there are a number of duplicates, business accounts, fan pages, meme accounts, and more. You should only be targeting personal accounts with advertisements and only be looking to potentially collaborate or partner with other business accounts. As a photo and video platform, Instagram has an aesthetic about it, so you should make sure your visuals are on point and that you’re replying to people who engage with you.
Depending on the type of business you run, it may be worthwhile to offer promotions or deals that are exclusive to Instagram. Many restaurants offer small discounts or features when stories are reposted or hold contests to see who would win some free merchandise or gift cards.
Polls and questions can also be used in stories, but because stories only last 24 hours, there’s no guarantee that they’ll be seen by everyone. Due to the ever-changing algorithm, though, even some posts might not be seen, so you need to do adequate keyword research and make sure you’re posting at crucial times of the day when your followers are most active.
YouTube
YouTube is the most commonly used video-sharing platform, incorporating everything from short, personal videos to entire television shows and movies. It also includes a younger demographic, aged 15-25, and a large number of overall internet users (almost 75%).
What does this mean? That you can reach an extremely high number of people via YouTube, but you need to have a business that functions well with video content. For example, if you run a music store, you can pass on knowledge with how-to videos, show off new products, and conduct interviews with musicians.
Because YouTube doesn’t have a great interface for live communication, it works best as a funnel platform. You can direct customers to your YouTube or convert them from your channel to your website and other platforms.
TikTok
As the newest social media platform, TikTok quickly caught on with the younger crowd of 18 to 24-year-olds. However, advertising on it has been quite problematic for a lot of companies – built-in ad features are yet to come, so you’ll have to rely on organic growth and attraction.
Like YouTube, it’s a video platform but focuses on shorter pieces of content. You’ll have to create videos that are eye-catching and can hold attention for a small amount of time. And, as mentioned above, you’ll best be served by using TikTok to direct users to your business’s website or to other platforms.
LinkedIn is different from the rest of the social media platforms on this list because it’s generally deemed as the most professional and the most business-oriented. It’s a platform where job ads are posted, users update their work experience and network with others in their fields, search for new careers, share updates and articles on relevant information, provide details for conferences, and more.
So how do you use LinkedIn to your advantage? If you’re a growing company, you want to be appealing, so a good review system, descriptive listings, and a large network can all make you more appealing. You would be better suited to share industry-specific posts and write informed articles on LinkedIn than on any other platform.
Bear in mind that the largest age group on LinkedIn is over 45, so post accordingly.
What makes Twitter an alluring platform for many people is the quick digestibility – there’s a very short character limit for tweets (280 characters), which means posts need to be short, sweet, and attention-grabbing. Lengthy tweets get broken up and become a bit of a hassle to read.
You can use Twitter to your advantage by providing quick updates, fast replies to customers, and small shout-outs. It’s also a great place to run deals and promotions and to keep updating your followers on new products. Essentially, the character limit is perfect for short call-to-actions!
Using Social Media to Your Advantage
It’s difficult to learn how to cater to different social media platforms from scratch. If you haven’t explored each platform, you might not know where to start. It’s best to conduct adequate research and see how your competitors use the apps and websites so you can see what works and what doesn’t.
If you’d like to schedule a consultation to learn more about how social media advertising can help your business, don’t hesitate to contact Promotion LA. We’ll be happy to talk with you and help you understand the importance and impact of social media on your business.
