How To Choose The Right Social Media For Your Business

The social media world can be quite daunting, especially for businesses. With so many platforms to choose from, how do you know which one suits your needs – and is it really necessary to have a presence on every single one? 

When speaking to clients who are looking to get on board with social media, I never suggest signing up for every single social media channel – at least not to start. For most businesses, it’s smart to begin with the tried-and-true ones: Facebook and Twitter. But that decision depends on your particular brand.

In order to choose the right social media outlets, there are a few things to consider:

Know Your Demographic – If your business sells orthotics to seniors, Instagram may not be the right place for you. But for a brand new vintage clothing store, the medium is perfect.  The key is to use social media to reach the intended audience and connect with them; there’s no sense in wasting time or money to be placed in front of a demographic that doesn’t care.

What Are Your Needs? – If you have a lot of info to share regularly, Facebook and Twitter are standard. You want to put a face behind your business and connect via video? YouTube was always the gold standard, but now you can also achieve this via Instagram video, Facebook Live and Snapchat. If you are strictly looking to make business contacts and nothing more, LinkedIn is still found useful by many professionals. Your needs are specific – your social media should cater to them.

Don’t Get Overwhelmed – Having an account on every social media platform available is a lot of work, especially with new ones cropping up regularly. Just think of all the managing that entails, not to mention to content creation – you’ll need to have a lot to say daily, and it all must be within your brand voice. One of the main reasons we at The MediaHaus are hired as social media managers is because most business owners simply don’t have the time needed to constantly curate content and manage each account. And we all know that a lot of time is required to run the business itself, never mind the online side of it.

So do some research. Talk to people like us who manage social media accounts for a living. Find out which outlets will work best for you and your brand, brainstorm a strategy and get started.

Create your online presence – you can always add to it as your business (and social media) evolves.