Raise your hand if you have a love-hate relationship with social media.
I do not. I love social media to a completely unnecessary extent.
BUT, I know that this is a frustrating area for a lot of business owners, beginner bloggers and people who want to have an online presence in general.
Last week, I was working on a Social Media Strategy for a client and I started thinking in depth about not only how to use each platform but also why each one was important for the business at hand. I was doing some research and noticed that there was surprising little to no detailed information on how the specific purposes and benefits of each platform differ from each of the others.
So, I wanted to take a few minutes to do a bit of a breakdown for you guys. Social media is vital to any business in today’s technology driven world. You have to be active on social media, but even more importantly, you also have to be knowledgeable on how to gain the maximum benefit from each source. Otherwise, you’ll just end up wasting a lot of time on top of seeing few results.
(Note: ‘Purpose’ section is written in terms of a business perspective.)
Purpose:
– To make the world more open and connected via online presence
Key Points:
– Tool for showcasing a company’s specific culture and vision
– Posts are to roughly 1-20 sentences long, pending relevancy of content
– Users spend a lot of time on Facebook
– Generally used for fun –> light hearted posts with visual attract the most attention
– Becoming more and more difficult to reach your audience without paying for advertising
– Limited search functions
Benefits:
– Users can connect with your brand in a more personal manner compared to other platforms
– Allows for creation of customized tabs to link other platforms (such as Twitter or a blog) to your business page
Purpose:
– To network online with current and potential customers as well as other related professionals via real-time communication
– Monitor conversations happening within a brand’s relevant industry in real-time
Key Points:
– 140 characters to get your point across
– Tweet shelf-life is only 3 minutes
– Lacks profile depth
Benefits:
– Outlet to share deals and discounts or announce sales and new products
– Find key leads about what your target market needs and wants –> find people who are having issues you can solve
– Provides users with immediate access to their favorite brands and businesses
– Ease of communication and fast responses –> can improve customer service efforts
– Monitor conversations happening within a brand’s relevant industry in real-time
– Easy access to observe content other industry brands and influences are using to interact with their audience
Purpose:
– Social network for professionals
– Gives employers access to candidate’s resumes and skill sets –> recruiting top-level employees
Key Points:
– Users create an in-depth professional profile (information is standardized by education, profile headlines, profile experience and company)
– Branded as “the place to find and be found”
Benefits:
– Build connections with credible, like-minded individuals who may benefit your business
– Showcase expertise by including your work and education history, skills/projects, and references/endorsements
– LinkedIn Groups as a method to grow a business’s network while building rapport through offering advice or helpful content
– Can use like a blog as well –> great for building relevant content to the brand to increase business
Purpose:
– To visually reinforce the brand’s personality
Key Points:
– A fun and quirky way for users to share their lives with friends through a series of pictures
– “We’re building Instagram to allow you to experience moments in your friends’ lives through pictures as they happen. We imagine a world more connected through photos.”
Benefits:
– Encourages high levels of interaction by visual stimulation
– There is not an algorithm that selectively showcases posts as with other platforms –> every post appears in the feeds of all of your followers
– Quick access to any post by scrolling through history
Google+
Purpose:
– Important for reputation management
– Can increase SEO by sharing posts on Google+ and getting involved on the platform in general
Key Points:
– Improved results in Google search, increasing your visibility –> helps customers find your business faster
Benefits:
– Increased visibility with +1 button –> the more +1s a link has, the more attention it gets in search results
– Google+ Circles create more personal relationships with consumers –> businesses can live video chat sessions with their audience through Hangouts
– Google+ Communities allow you to interact with other similar individuals –> increase your credibility and expertise
Purpose:
– An online corkboard allowing users to collect and organize things that inspire them via ‘Pins’ –> allows for emphasizing the unique characteristics of your brand and showcasing your mission
KeyPoints:
– Share great (original) images with important text on them
– Use a design resource like Gimp or Photoshop to create a visual graphic that highlights important content intriguing users to click on the link if your brand lacks visual content
– Commenting and chatting is not as common as on other platforms
Benefits:
– Excellent tool to drive sales –> Most people are visual, even more-so when looking to purchase a product or service
– Drives traffic to your site (make sure you are detailed in the description and include a link back to your site)
– Resource to show a company’s unique personality –> create boards that relate to your brand and that show the various aspects of your business thus building a better connection with your followers
– Group boards are an alternative way to connect and become relevant within the community
YouTube
Purpose:
– Create a company culture with products, employees, advertisements, etc.
Key Points:
– Upload videos to your channel so you can show your company culture.
– Can have a single video, a series, or multiple series depending on what type of actions you want to showcase (i.e. A video series about a particular product line, video series of company happenings, etc.)
– 2nd most-used search engine following google
– Used as a search engine by younger generation
Benefits:
– Potential to include a huge audience for businesses on a tight budget with the “tag” keywords feature
Yelp!
Purpose:
– Aims to connect people with great local businesses
– Yelp Business Accounts allow businesses to share information with the Yelp Community
Key Points:
– Engage customers in the conversation and always respond to your reviews
– Don’t ask for reviews. It makes customers less likely to trust you
– Advertising lets customers/clients see your ads on a local level
– Gain more customers by creating a call to action
Benefits:
– Communicate with your customers, both privately and publicly
– Track the User Views on your business page
– Add photos, a detailed business description, up-to-date information, history, and specialties
– Recommend other businesses
– Add promotions directly to your pages.
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(Image via Kathleen Donovan)
