In part one we covered 8 reasons why you should be on social media. In this article, we’ve put together a short summary of the main platforms and how you can use them for your small business.
Facebook is the biggest and is a non selling environment – it’s all about personality, casual endorsement, being a proactive and responsive company. Promote your team, products and events. Engage with your followers and reach a new audience with Facebook Ads.
Twitter is strongest with millennials (18-29 yrs). It’s a great place to follow industry influencers and get a feel for what’s trending. Share clever comments, links for interesting articles or pages from your own website.
LinkedIn is the virtual networking event with a slightly older audience(61% are 30-64 yrs). It’s great for B2B businesses who want establish their company as a thought leader by sharing longer form content with commentary.
Photos and videos are shared in Instagram and they provide your viewers with a more personal connection with your brand. 90% of users are under 35 yrs. Post images that showcase your products and align with your brand positioning. Using hashtags will index your posts and make them more searchable or discoverable.
Video sharing sites
Video is a very powerful tool for marketing. These sites are great for storytelling, product demos and sharing useful information in a creative way.
- YouTube – The most popular video hosting site, YouTube is free to use and is also the second largest search engine behind Google.
- Vimeo – Not as big as YouTube but has more specialised appeal so it can be a great place to reach your niche audience with great quality videos.
- Vine – For short creative videos up to 6 seconds long. Vine is a popular place for comedy, music performance and journalists.
Pinterest is a place to discover, collect and curate other people’s images. Every pin has a link to the source of the image so you can use your irresistible images to drive traffic back to your website.
There’s even more social channels such as Snapchat and Google+ which means there really is a social channel suitable for all types of small businesses.
In the final article of our three part series, we’ll cover the ‘how’ – tips for getting started on social media.