Having a presence in the social media became more and more crucial
during the last decade, it can even decide either your business is heading the
right path of success and fame, or simply wasting your time on the virtual
world.
Whether you are a brand new
product searching for recognition in the market, an experienced social media marketer, a “classic” marketer looking to sail into social media oceans and -eventually-
treasures, or simply a business owner looking for influence on social
media, it’s useful for everyone to know the most popular social media sites
around, and to understand which audiences are targeted and how these social
platform work and affect people on daily basis.
Knowing all that will let you maximize your brand reach on social media, make a name in the virtual market, engage with the right costumers and attain your social media goals; fame and successful business.
Facing the multitude of social media platforms, you may find yourself wondering
about each platform history, mechanics and tricks. Of course, it is not only
about the reputation or the size of the social media site, it’s also whether
the social media platform is a right fit for your business, your “likely”
future costumers and you.
Is your target audience using already that social media site? Does it fit your brand image and your goals? How
many people can reach the platform? Does is cost to have a page on the site? How many social media sites can you
manage at once?
As you can see above, several questions can jump into your head dealing
with your virtual presence, to make things easier for you, bellow you can find
information about the top social media sites worldwide. Some of them are
already familiar to you like Facebook or Youtube, others you might hear for the
first time. Thus it is worth reading more about all these social media platforms
that might have a specific leverage for your brand.
Without further do, here are the most prominent social media sites:
Facebook
We can’t talk about social media sites without mentioning the best of
them all; Facebook. Facebook is the biggest social media site on the internet with more than two
billion people using it each month. Imagine the third of the world’s population
uses this site monthly!
Speaking with numbers, there are more than five million advertisers dynamically promoting their business on Facebook and more than 65 million businesses that
use Facebook Pages, without talking
about millions of pages and groups that share experiences regarding different
domains and help starting businesses, there are even pages and groups dedicated
to exchange likes and rating for your business page, all that makes it a pretty
safe bet if you want to have a sure presence on social media.
It’s simple to get started on Facebook because firstly you have a Facebook page, right? So you are familiar
with the basics of the platform, also all content format works great on
Facebook; images, GIFs, text, videos, and recently they added Stories and live videos.
Keep in mind that the Facebook algorithm gives the priority to content that ignites conversations
and interactions between people, especially those from family and friends or
within Facebook groups, also priority is given to advertised posts, so you may
struggle at the beginning to reach people, but you can exploit that if you are
ready to spare some money and let Facebook advertise for you!
Youtube
YouTube is an American video-sharing platform - now operates as one of Google's subsidiaries - where users have access to billion hour of videos,
concerning all domains every day. It has more than 2 billion users every month and the large
video-watching audience that you can imagine.
This platform can be ideal for advertising your business, it would allow
you to explain in your manner and create a real bond with your target audience;
especially if your product is visually rich and doesn’t spark any controversies
at all (this platform has a strict code of rules).
To get started, you have to create a YouTube channel for your brand where you can post videos for your subscribers (and
other Youtube users) to view, they can like the video (or dislike it) and
comment on it, which gives a real feedback for you.
Moreover being the second biggest social media site, YouTube is also
often known as the second largest search engine after Google.
As we mentioned with Facebook, you can also advertise on YouTube to increase your reach on the platform, which would drastically make
your content popular among Youtube users and boost your business. Another bonus
from Youtube is that you can earn money by making videos; you can read about
how to make money on Youtube here!
Messenger
Messenger used to be a
messaging App within Facebook; it allowed people to chat with their Facebook
accounts without logging to the actual platform, as concerns rose about wasting
time on Facebook. And since 2011, Facebook has made Messenger into an
autonomous app by itself and significantly expanded on its features, it became
like WhatsApp of some sort.
Businesses can advertise, create their own and chat bots, send
newsletters, and more on Messenger. These new features have given businesses countless
new ways to reach and connect with their audience.
WhatsApp
Here is another great phone Application; WhatsApp is a messaging app used by people in the whole world. At first,
WhatsApp was only used to communicate with family and friends. Gradually –Like all
other social media platforms- people started expending their business and
communicating virtual trade and advertising via WhatsApp.
WhatsApp has been following these changes and built out its own business
platform to allow businesses to acquire a proper business profile, to offer
customer support, and to share updates with customers via stories about their
purchases. For small businesses, they developed WhatsApp Business app while for medium and large businesses, there is the WhatsApp Business API.
Instagram
Instagram –the new star of social media- is a photo and video sharing App.
It lets you share with your followers a wide range of content such as photos, short
videos, live videos, and Stories. It has also lately started IGTV (Instagram TV) for longer videos.
As a brand or a business company, you can have
for free an Instagram business profile, which gives you rich analytics of your profile
and your posts: How many times people interacted with your posts, from where
your followers are, which hours of the day are the most profitable for posting,
and so on. Also you have the ability to schedule Instagram
posts using third-party tools. Here you can find more information about how to become an Instagram Influencer!
Twitter
Donald Trump favorite one for sure! Twitter is another social media site for communicating
with family and friends, news, sports, politics, entertainment and more. But what
makes the difference with Twitter is having a strong importance on real-time
information, things that are happening at this time; also it gives users the
freedom of expressing their state using short tweets as celebrities do, thus why
the American escapes the classic news platform to reach directly the outer
world.
But this platform could be used effectively as a
customer service channel, especially for the US, Japan and Korea. So with the
short tweets, the wide and diverse audience, and the total freedom, you can
create a successful business on this platform.
Pinterest
Pinterest is
like Instagram but not limited for phones; a platform where people go to learn
new things and be motivated, unlike most social media sites mentioned above where
engagement is the primary focus, content on Pinterest from different brands
are useful, which
allows your brand an exclusive opportunity to shape their purchasing choices.
As Pinterest users want usually to be inspired
to try or buy new products, having a presence on Pinterest will help your brand
to stick in people minds.
To sum it up, and regardless of
the size of all these social media sites, the most important thing is to
consider whether your brand’s target viewers are active on those social media
sites or not, and if your product is suitable for the platform. That said, the
general rule is bigger social media sites -like Facebook or Youtube- are more
likely to cover a wide range of topics, choices and interests, which transform
them to a win-win business platforms for most brands.
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