There’s so many social media channels out there and so little time – when choosing the medium to communicate with your customers you have to pick wisely.
Consider what fits your brand personality, the type of content you will be publishing and most importantly – the audience you are talking to. There’s no point chasing the newest trends like Snapchat when your target customers are 60+ pensioners or trying to generate content for all available channels out there but do none of them well enough to create true engagement and following.
Read our review of the key social channels to see which one suits you and your brand – stop wasting your money and time on channels that won’t work for you!
Still the biggest player out there – with nearly 1.8 billion active users - its a great medium for connecting and targeting customers from all around the globe. It’s a great start to share updates and photos, exchange messages with customers and set up your online shop, address and opening hours. People don’t follow brands that just slam them with advertising – you need to make sure you post engaging and relevant content regularly and that you have a unique personality creating positive sentiments.
Tip: It’s getting more and more difficult to grow audiences organically so you really need to assign a budget for promotion of posts. With organic posts only about 10% of your followers will see your update - due to Facebook algorithm.
Don’t buy followers – those are dead numbers that will never like your posts or updates.
With 500 million users, this Facebook-owned platform gets checked daily by 59% of its users. The majority of users (70%) are women between 18-35 years and it’s a platform primarily operated and used via mobile only. You can see profiles on a computer, but you can’t post or take photos. Another thing to take under consideration is the type of content – it’s very visual and artistic.
If your photos or videos quality is lacking or the type of industry you’re in doesn’t really call out for beautiful snaps – you might want to give this channel a miss. Fashion, photography, food, beauty and fitness are dominating this medium but there’s space for other industries that are producing amazing content and using relevant hashtags.
Tip: No clickable links in the content make it difficult for brands to lead followers to their websites or online shops. The current algorithm is similar to Facebook – your posts don’t just reach your followers in chronological order anymore, but are a non-disclosed results of a formula based on many factors including post’s popularity and your engagement with the users.
With 215 million of active users but only 140 characters to play with, Twitter can be a tricky channel to manage. You need to be witty, concise and relevant – tweets have an extremely short shelf life and have to be managed consistently and regularly (and with the appropriate use of currently trending hashtags). It makes a great customer service tool and is widely used to contact brands to resolve issues or answer questions in real time. It’s also a popular channel for sharing hot news and important updates, as well as direct conversations with your customers – that definitely adds personality to your brand. Note it takes some serious amount of time to manage, therefore to succeed you need to be world news savvy, have a fair bit of time and some serious wit.
Tip: Twitter seems to be used less and less popular choice of medium for brands, especially in Australia.
Primarly a female domain (70 million users with 80% female, predominantly 25-45 years), Pinterest is a platform that allows users to share inspirational images and re-post them on their own profile. Majority of images are fashion, beauty, home décor, DIY, food and art. Regular postings, relevant industry and visually enticing images are a must in order to succeed in this space.
Tip: With the Pinterest buy button you are now able to post your products online and create a friction-free shopping experience.
Snapchat
Goldmine for businesses targeting millenials with 60% of users under 24 years old. Your content has to be cool, a bit niche, not heavily branded or full of marketing messages. New lines, behind the scenes, quirkly videos are the way to go – all only accessible via mobile devices.
Tip: Due to its nature Snapchat makes it a bit more difficult to target people who are not already following you and as the content disappears (after 10 sec or 24h with stories) there’s less need for a refine outcome.
Youtube
With estimated over 1 billion unique visitors every month Youtube is the most popular media channel for video content. Creative, professional and regular content is a must – due to highly competitive nature of this space, you really need to stand out.
Tip: Youtube is owned by Google and it’s also a second world’s largest search engine after Google – having SEO optimized content is crucial to allow people find your services and products.
Ideal for B2B – it’s the best medium to reach business professionals. More and more small to medium businesses are realising the potential of this network (230 million users), especially with specific job functions targeting and the power of closed groups. If you want to be an industry leader in a professional sphere – presence here is a must. Content is king, like everywhere – write and share engaging copy to increase your reach and engagement.
Tip: While it’s great to show a bit of personality, this is a serious and informative medium and so should be the content – don’t clutter it with memes or you will loose your credibility.
Written by: Natalie Potter (brand strategist / director)
Email Natalie at