Updated March 2019
So… you’re going mad trying to decide which social media platforms your business should be on.
We get it. The pressure to choose the best social media platforms and ‘nail’ your social media strategy as a new or developing business is huge.
As a new business owner or anyone new to social it can seem as if there’s a platform for every day of the year! In fact, we have to admit that we didn’t know about half of the ones mentioned here.
But representing your brand well on 1 or 2 platforms is always better than a half-hearted attempt at 7.
Here we take the guesswork out of deciding which of the top 5 platforms you should consider.
A no-brainer. Every business should be on Facebook.
There are a small number of large corporates with established international brand identities who choose not to dabble in Facebook, but if you’re getting your business on its feet or establishing your brand, you can’t afford to do the same.
It is easy to create a Business account yourself if you already have a Facebook account. We found this straight-forward tutorial here.
In terms of creating content, we always suggest to our clients to start here and adapt their content for the tone of other platforms.
Types of content:
- Curated content (Valuable shares from elsewhere)
- Short posts
- Long posts
- Links to your own blogposts
- Video
If you want to get the conversation going about your brand and track who is talking about your company, Twitter is a must.
But you can skip it if you are not massive (yet) or don’t have the resources to respond to every mention on Twitter. Once you are growing or know you have someone responding to client questions, compliments and complaints you can hop on.
Hashtags are very important on Twitter to get your messages seen. Hashtagify is a wonderful resource to find the most popular trending hashtags in your field.
Types of content:
- Retweets relevant to your customer
- Links to your blog posts
- Short posts and updates
Youtube
Youtube is the second-most popular social media platform in 2019. If you have a business, a product or a program- you have content for Youtube.
As a content strategy, you can use short videos to supplement your blog and social media posts, repurposing the content you already prepared.
You may be tired of hearing and saying the same thing over and over but remember you audience probably hasn’t.
Types of Content:
- Instructional videos
- Product Launches
- Company conference footage
- Company videos
- Staff and branch updates
Technically, your business doesn’t need a LinkedIn account, but as a business owner, you do.
A fully updated personal profile showing you as the face of the company, creates trust and the networking opportunities are invaluable (more about this in a next article).
If you are a WAHM* and booming cloth nappy seamstress, you may not need to be on here unless you grow quite a bit bigger.
Types of Content:
- Updates about your business
- Updates about your team
- Links to blog posts
- Only shares that are absolutely related to your business and values
Instagram is image-rich and relies on high-quality images and is the most popular platform for 18 – 29 year olds so if your target market are millennials, then you could add a presence here at an early stage. But don’t just have an account “for the sake of it”.
If you haven’t, create an account on Instagram for yourself and play around a bit to see what type of content you need.
Types of Content:
- Fun updates about your team
- Links to blog posts
- Office tours
- Product demonstration
- Stories
- Live video updates and competition
- Anything beautiful relating to your business and or personal life (if you are the face of the business).
The other platforms like Snapchat, Pinterest and Tumblr all have a place in a well-planned social media strategy, but if you have limited resources (time/money/people), keep these on the backburner for now.
There you go.
In summary: Start with Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter and go from there.
You could also look at your closest competition and see which platforms they play in, but the real question to ask is always:
“Where are my customers?”
If you’re still not sure, contact us on go@gocontentlab.co.za to see how we can help you.
WAHM* – Work at Home Mom