Choosing the right social media platform for your business

Posted: 20th May 2015

Rebecca Wade from Purple Dog helps you choose the right social media platform for your business

Social media can definitely assist you in making your business a success. However, there are now a large number of social media platforms out there to consider and trying to have a presence on them all might leave you spreading yourself a little too thinly to actually be effective on any of them.

We advise you to think about which social media platforms are right for you. The first question to answer is where is your audience most likely to be and which platforms then best match your service or product.

Social media networks are a bit like parties, there are lots of different ones out there to choose from, and whilst you might be nervous about showing up, finding the one you are going to be most comfortable at can make a big difference to your business.

To help you figure out which social media platform is right for your business over the course of the next week we will be taking each of the main different social media networks and explaining them for you.  Hopefully, by the end of our series you will be able to make a more informed choice about which social media network is right for your business.

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Today, we will start with the biggest network out there – Facebook.

Facebook – the biggest party on the planet

With currently 936 million daily active users on average Facebook is the biggest social media network out there.  In fact 71% of adult internet users are on Facebook.  So as a business it has a massive potential audience including a growing older audience than most networks.

So it can be a great social media platform to get started with for business if social media is all new to you.  If people like your business chances are they will look to follow you on Facebook.

As a business on Facebook you should focus on relationship building with your customers

Being on Facebook  as a business should be about relationship building with your customers, building more brand awareness and customer retention.  It’s not a platform for selling; it’s should be treated as a community hub.  The conversation should be quite casual and have an emphasis on fun.  It’s a very versatile platform; you can post text updates, share image, events and videos.

Facebook-is-like-a-huge-garden-party

It has got more difficult to get a good reach as a business for free on facebook as the network try to ensure that the platform does not become an overly promotional place.  Some businesses have been put off by this and started investigating other platforms.  To be successful you need to focus on engaging with your customers to make a impact.  Ideally you will need to have time to post once a day, and image and video posts tend to get users interacting more.

If you are looking to reach new customers whilst it’s not about selling on your page it is great for highly targeted advertising at a low cost.

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