How to choose the best social media platforms to accelerate your Online Business?

​Marketing experts say that sharing about your small business on the social media platform is an effective way of increasing its visibility and getting new customers.

Moreover, promoting your small business on these platforms is cost-effective too.

Does every social media channel suit your business?

The answer is no, a social media platform might be amazing for one business but is not giving the desired results for another one.

With so many options out there, it is difficult to pick the right platform which matches your business style and provides you the optimum reach.

Also, promoting your business in all the platforms, without giving a thought, will do more harm than good.

After all, you are a small business and you don’t have time to choose every platform and spend your resources in marketing it in all of these platforms.
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In this post, I’m gonna discuss the ways of choosing the right platforms for your small business, helping you in increasing the search ranking, driving more traffic and getting more customers.

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What is your goal of choosing the Social Media?

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The social media platform must fulfill the goals of your small business.

If that platform cannot support your business objectives then it is better to avoid it.

When your goal is brand awareness:

If you are considering increasing your brand awareness then a social media platform with large viewers and the following could be the right choice.

Facebook is the most used social media platform in the world with the monthly user base of 2.45 billion.

You can find from the information given below that Facebook has the largest fan following in India.

Data Source: www.statista.com

So you have an added advantage if your business is based in India.

Business to business perspective:

When your business is dealing with other businesses (B2B) then LinkedIn is Numero uno in getting more leads and has faster conversion rates than any other social media platform.

It offers you the opportunity to join different groups related to your industry and participate in the discussion to engage your audience.

By sharing the meaningful content, you can always attract the audience from your industry.

"People will connect naturally to your brand  when you share content that has relevance in their lives."

• While participating in the discussion, use the conversational tone like "we" and "our" when speaking about your company.
• Don't just broadcast rather talk to your users on the real-time basis to solve their queries.
• Don’t just talk about industry-related content. Discuss and share about broader areas of interest which are related to your industry.

When you are selling to the end customers (B2C):

If your business objective is to sell your products or services directly to the end customers then Facebook is again the champion in this category by wide margin with 69% of the marketers prefer Facebook followed by Instagram (16%) and YouTube (5%).

Facebook offers endless opportunities to support your marketing efforts.

You can promote your product or services through videos, images, blog posts, linking another website, creating polls and many more.

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Know what your target audience is using

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It is good to know which channel your target audience is using.

For example, it is may not carry much weightage to your small business if you open your account on Pinterest and targeting only men as Pinterest is highly skewed towards women users.

Women use Pinterest to get ideas about fashion and clothing.

Similarly, if you are targeting the older audiences then promoting your brand on Instagram or Snapchat could be a waste of effort as these are preferred by the younger audience . Instead, you should use Facebook to target these audiences.
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In the U.S. among 65+ people, Facebook is the most popular social media platform.

Always back up your decisions with the demographic data like gender, age, income, and location rather than swaying away by the current trend.

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Know the right channel for your Industry

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Your business promotion relies mostly on pictures when you are in the fashion industry, food industry, or tour and travel business Then marketing it on Instagram, Pinterest or Snapchat could be the best option.

You must produce high-quality videos and pictures to be a successful marketer on these platforms.
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• Another way to know which social media is more effective in serving your industry is to look at your competitor’s engagement in these platforms.
• Search your competitor's name on the different social media platforms and analyse the performance of its content in terms of audience engagement and traffic.

Getting more likes, shares and comments indicates the popularity of the content among the audience.
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• Look their time and the frequency of posting the content in the social media platform as ​the right time to post varies from platform to platform.

You need to post on a particular time or day to get the maximum eye-balls rather than posting every time.

• Understand the format of content your competitor is posting. Is it visual, blog-post, announcement or industry news?

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What type of content you want to produce?

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May be you are more comfortable in clicking pictures, sharing videos and making short announcements about your business rather than writing a long blog-post. 

​Not every channel will produce the same result with the one content type.

• For instance, sharing visual content on Instagram or Pinterest may give you more responses than doing the same on LinkedIn.
• If you want to share industry news or an editorial content then LinkedIn or slide-share is the good option
• ​YouTube is good for sharing videos

The right matching of the content type with the social media platform will help in more audience engagement and conversions.
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Look which platform is driving more traffic and then stick to it avoid using the fewer traffic platforms.

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How many channels you should use?

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As a small business owner, your resources like time, money and manpower are limited. 

Marketing your small business on too many channels will not only consume your resources but also spread your efforts and making them weak.

Whereas, marketing on fewer channels may limit your reach.

Therefore, making the right balance is quite important for your marketing success.

The right use of the automation tools will push and channelize your marketing efforts and gradually you can add more channels.

After finding the top-performing social media channels, you can start experimenting with the new channels.

Let me know your strategy of choosing the best social media platform for marketing your small business in the comment section.