Selecting Your Social Media Platforms Wisely

How to choose the best social media platforms for your business to achieve your goals

As a business, your online presence matters a lot. It is the main communication channel with your audience, the place where they can learn about you and your latest launches, and more.

Choosing your social media platforms takes time and research, and in this post, we’ll tell you everything you need to know about it.

Keep on reading to discover which social media platform will benefit your business the most, what to consider before you start posting, and how to see if you’re close to achieving your goals.

Learn About Each Platform

To choose the best social media platforms for your business you must spend time learning about each network, how they work, and what content gets more feedback and interaction from an audience.

You need to have a clear view of what your target audience is, how it behaves, and the social platforms they use to later join those networks and start posting content they’ll be eager to see. For example, if you’re looking to target Gen Z, TikTok, and Instagram are great social media platforms for businesses with that public.

Apart from considering your dream clients, you need to understand the type of content typically posted on each platform. Instagram is all about visually appealing images, TikTok is about short-form videos, Facebook is a mix between images and videos with brief captions, and so on.

The combination of choosing great social media channels your target audience uses with the type of content expected to be posted on each platform can help you maximize your results.

Market Research

If you’re unsure of which platform to choose, check out what your competitors are doing. Analyze the social media accounts they have, the type of content they post, how they interact with their audience as well as how frequently they post.

This will give you an idea of what people in your industry/niche are doing, as well as the results they might be obtaining.

Take notes on these critical factors across several competitor’s accounts over some time of your choice, whether it is a week, a month, etc. Gather all your information, including numbers, and create a quality report to discuss with your team (or yourself if you’re a one-person business).

Here are the most important things to look for and include in a social media market research report:

• What social media platforms your competitors are using; how do they present themselves on each?

• The content posted and interaction with their audience. Are they posting only photos, videos, or a combination of both? Do they make use of all features each platform offers? Are they actively engaging with their audience or avoiding responding to comments?

• Goals. According to what you’re seeing on their profile, what are the goals of your competitors? Think about if the content they’re posting suggests they want to get more website visits, more sales, more direct messages, etc.

• Paid advertisement and collaborations. Are they paying for ads or collaborating with influencers to increase their exposure?

Commitment & Availability

You don’t need to be a pro videographer or editor to join social media platforms or spend money on a skilled team to do it for you. But, considering your level of commitment and availability can help you create a tailored social media strategy for you and your business.

For example, if you’re looking to join TikTok or Instagram, posting consistently is key. And if you don’t organize your schedule properly, you won’t achieve your goals as you were expecting.

Examine your schedule or financial availability and determine whether you’ll be the one in charge of finding content ideas, filming, editing, and posting, or if someone else will do it for you. Plus, determine which days you’ll be doing each task to prevent burnout and always have something to post.

Bear in mind that creating content and interacting with your audience takes time, so make sure to create a proper schedule to post frequently. If you’re going to open various social media platforms, try to create different content for each, that way your audience will be more excited to follow you on all platforms to access unique content.

You can still recycle content and post the same on various platforms from time to time, but if you can come up with different ideas for each, that will result in a much better engagement and following.

Trial & Error

Trial and error is a big part of choosing social media platforms, and it is the part where you’ll put into practice everything you sketched out and see how the public reacts to it.

Things take time on social media, so don’t get discouraged if you don’t see the results you were expecting after the first week. Keep on posting and make use of the analytics features most social media platforms have. They will show how many people saw your post, how many people interacted with it, and how, as well as other key metrics about demographics.

Begin posting on social media and do weekly or monthly check-ups to analyze these factors and adjust things as you go. If you notice your videos get more views and positive responses from your audience, try implementing them more.

Don’t be afraid to get creative or innovate with your post, if you end up not liking something you posted, you can either permanently delete it or achieve it.

Choosing Social Media Platforms

In this post, we talked about how to choose your social media platforms wisely to obtain the results you’re looking for.

To sum up, learn about the platforms, how people use them, and the type of content accepted in each. Examine what competitors are doing to have an idea of what works for your industry/niche and what doesn’t. After this, determine how much time and resources you have to create content, and interact with your audience. Finally, start posting and adjusting things as you go.