https://nasacademy.com/blog/article/pick-the-right-social-media-platforms-to-promote-your-brand
The best way to start bringing awareness to your brand is by being present on social media platforms. Most importantly: being present on the right social media platforms.
But there’s an endless list of them out there to choose from, and new ones are coming about every couple of years. So, how do you pick which social spaces are right for you?
Here’s a five-step formula to help you get started, and finally get the word out about your brand.
When it comes to deciding which social media platforms you use to promote your brand, you have to know your goals first.
Figure out exactly what your brand is trying to accomplish, and how you want your social platforms to help you achieve that. Determining these goals will immediately help narrow down your list, as you can identify which platforms have what you need to help you get there.
Think back to when you started your brand, and ask yourself some similar questions:
What is my mission?
What do I want social media to help me accomplish? (Do I want to increase engagement, website clicks, or drive traffic to my YouTube channel?)
What content am I passionate about creating? (What story do I want to tell? What are my strengths in content creation? What resources do I have right now, and what is sustainable for me to create in the long run?)
What am I trying to give people?
Ask yourself as many mission-specific questions as you can to really nail down your goals and objectives on social media. This is going to ensure that you pick the right platform to start building a presence.
Many social media platforms have similar functions, which may make it even more difficult for you to decide between them.
This is where knowing your target audience becomes essential.
For example, you can share videos on Instagram Reels. It’s an extremely effective way to get your content seen, but if the people you want to reach are middle-aged men, you’re probably not going to have much luck.
The single most important part of building a brand or marketing strategy is knowing where your target audience is online, what they look for, and how they use the internet.
So, after you’ve established your mission, the next important question you have to ask is who exactly do you want to reach. Who is your target audience?
Then, you have to go and find them. Here’s a simple breakdown of where to find your audience on the most popular social media platforms in 2021:
Demographics and Statistics:
What it’s used for:
Facebook is a great platform for sharing events, news, and more detailed information about your brand. While it’s still the most widely used platform, it doesn’t rack up a ton of engagement compared to others, such as Instagram.
Facebook is pretty much a must-have for any kind of business, because of their business page features. It allows followers to read menus, get store hours, find locations, learn about events, and more.
Overall, Facebook is very versatile in the type of content you can create – and it’s perfect for curating content (sharing other people’s content with your audience).
Demographics and Statistics:
What it’s used for:
YouTube is made for creating and consuming video content. The video length of YouTube content can vary from minutes to hours. Generally speaking, as long as the value is high, the video length doesn’t matter to your loyal fans. And when people come to YouTube, studies have shown they check out an average of nine different YouTube channels in a single visit. In other words, viewers don’t come to check it out, and then leave as quickly as they do on other social media platforms – they come to watch. They are mainly searching for longer-form, entertaining, and informative content.
Since 2020, searches for “beginner how-to” videos have grown by 9 billion, indicating that many people use this platform to develop hobbies or learn new skills, in addition to general entertainment.
Users are now watching more gaming videos, at-home fitness videos, and at-home office videos since the pandemic. And 70% of users claim to have bought from brands appearing in YouTube videos. As for creators, the number of YouTube creators who earn USD$ 10,000+ on the platform, has grown by 50% in the past year.
Demographics and Statistics:
What it’s used for:
Instagram is a visual platform where images, and videos of various lengths can be shared. It’s a great platform for engagement and connecting with your audience through visual aesthetics – and it thrives amongst younger audiences.
Instagram’s engagement rate is very high, at 1.6% per post, when compared to other platforms like Facebook which has an engagement rate of only 0.09%. Instagram is more hyper-focused on the quality and aesthetics of content you will see whenever you open the app (compared to Facebook, which tends to be more informative) and it provides an opportunity to reach more niche markets.
On Instagram, you really get to showcase your style and work through creating and sharing original content. It allows you to build up a visual element and aesthetic to your brand in an effective way, that you can’t get as easily on other platforms.
Demographics and Statistics:
What it’s used for:
People mostly use Twitter to share or receive live updates, snippets of news, public opinions, and general information. Quick facts and links are often shared through short, text-based tweets, and it is usually the go-to place for starting political discussions or creating trending topics.
It’s more difficult to build strong connections with audiences on Twitter compared to other platforms, as it’s a short-form, quick style of communication. But it can often be used as a bridge between getting people’s attention, and drawing them back to another source, where the audience can connect deeper with you.
Demographics and Statistics:
What it’s used for:
TikTok is primarily used to create and consume short video clips about quick tips or general entertainment. Users can create videos with trending soundtracks to gain followers, making it a great place for musicians and dancers because of the strong focus on audio. But really, every niche can thrive on this platform. It’s an ideal place to get the word out there about your content, and get eyes on your brand. It’s the place to create a trend or introduce a new hashtag if you want to get noticed or produce well-performing ads – especially if you’re trying to reach younger audiences. It allows you to create your own content by building off of existing content in a creative way, but it also allows you to take creative control and create completely original content as well.
When you’re scoping out which social media platforms to use for promoting your brand, make sure to look into what your competitors are using.
Research the brands that are doing similar things to you, or find people that are in the same field, creating content that you want to be creating. See how it’s working out for them.
What platforms are they focusing on? What type of content thrives best on which of those platforms? And how are people reacting to it?
As you do your competitor research, consider what it is that’s making them stand out in their industry on that specific platform. See what kind of content they are creating and how they are distributing it. You may even discover different marketing strategies that you might be interested in trying out.
To start, try taking a competitive analysis approach to find your competitors and see what platforms are working for them:
Start by finding keywords that are searched for in your industry. Search for these keywords on Google and across different social media platforms. Essentially, you want to act as if you’re a member of your audience, and see what profiles or brands come up (keeping in mind paid advertisements over organic results). Look through different accounts to see their followers and engagement numbers to determine who your main competitors are.
You can go even deeper by searching the other profiles that your own audience members are following. An easy way to do this is by using Facebook Audience Insights.
You can do the same thing on Twitter analytics, and look at their “top followers” to see who they are following.
Now that you know who your competitors are and how they are using their platforms to promote their content, take some time to check in with yourself and your findings.
Reflect on everything you’ve discovered, and decide which platforms you feel would be the most beneficial for reaching your target audience.
Similarly to finding your niche as a content creator, you need to ask yourself if the expectations and demands of the platform are realistic for you. Always make sure that you have both the resources and the interest in pursuing any given platform. If you want to stand out, you have to give it 110% – regardless of the social media platform you choose.
It’s tempting to open an account on every social media platform.
You want to get as many eyes on your brand as possible, and having a large presence online is a great tool for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). But taking on too much, too soon can actually hinder your marketing performance and reach.
Taking on a handful of new social media platforms at the same time is a risky approach, especially if you’re an up-and-coming creator.
It most often leads to burnout and poor quality content.
You simply cannot focus on everything at once, when trying to create the type of content that will gain traction online.
With the plethora of creators and brands already out there, you need to have a sharp focus, a consistent schedule and find an effective strategy. Each platform you choose will require a different approach – and if you choose too many, it’s going to be too much work.
This is not to say you can never expand to other social platforms, but when you’re just getting started, only pick one or two platforms. Then, as you grow, and perhaps even expand your team, you can expand to other platforms as well.
Targeting your efforts on building one, solid platform is most likely the best approach for attaining brand loyalty across the internet.
The final and most important step when choosing your social media platforms, is to regularly experiment and assess your progress.
As with anything in life, getting feedback is key for progress. Make sure to do regular reflections on how far you’ve come, and where you’re going. Get in the habit of asking yourself: what is working and what isn’t? And how can you fix it for next time?
To do this, conduct a monthly review of your analytics, audience responses, and overall success on your chosen social media platform. It doesn’t have to be a huge process, you can perform an effective social media audit in just 30 minutes.
Here’s some tips to get you started:
At the end of every week, keep track of how your posts performed. Keep a record of your engagement rates and other important insights, either using Google Analytics or the analytics resource built into the platform itself. Put all of this information in an organized spreadsheet so it’s easy to find later on.
By documenting on a weekly basis, you can easily assess your progress at the end of the month without taking too much time out of your day to gather old information.
At the end of each month, take all of your weekly documentations and do a large assessment of how your month went overall. Take some time to compare it against your goals, and how you performed in past months. Really look deeply at your mission and social media objectives that you organized at the beginning, and identify whether or not you are on track to achieve those objectives. If you’re not, then that means you need to reassess your focus and strategies.
After you have all of your numbers, don’t forget to do some honest reflection and check in with yourself. If you aren’t where you want to be, figure out what could be holding you back.
A simple but effective reflection exercise is to write out a “pros and cons”-style list. What worked and what didn’t?
And although it’s important to consider the numbers and analytics in this assessment, it’s also important to take into account how it worked or didn’t work for you as an individual brand.
Was this platform enjoyable for you to use? Does the content you’re creating and sharing feel authentic? Do you feel like you’re building a connection with your audience? Were your goals realistic and attainable? Then, you can make any necessary changes to improve.
Experimentation is part of finding what works for you and your brand. You first have to try and create a connection with your audience to be able to see what they respond to. And once you discover what you’re good at creating and what resonates with your audience and mission, then you’ll be able to double down on it and continue moving your brand forward
Whatever direction you choose, be open to the fact that it will most likely change.
Your strategies may change too, or your entire business model might shift as time goes on. But this won’t be a problem when you’re constantly reflecting, assessing, and listening. That way, it doesn’t matter if the algorithm changes on your social media platform, you’ll always be ready to promote your brand online.
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