Social Media Marketing for Newbies: Which Social Media Platform is Best for Business? 

Social media is one of the greatest free gifts for business owners to take advantage of. 

But if you’re just getting started, navigating all the different platforms can be quite overwhelming. 

There’s an endless number of social media platforms available for you to utilize, but which one is best for your business?

The answer lies in your target audience.

Where are your customers on social media?

The biggest benefit of social media is its ability to connect you directly with your target demographic group. But where exactly is your audience lingering: Tik Tok, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter? 

This is dependent on many factors, such as age and gender. Consider the following statistics:

• Over 56% of Facebook’s 2.85 billion users are over 35 years old. The majority of these users are female. 
• Instagram is home to over 1 billion users, with 71% of U.S. adults between ages 18 – 29 using the app. There is a near even distribution among genders.
• LinkedIn has approximately 740 million users, with the majority audience being males that are between 46 and 55 years old.
• Tik Tok is the 7th most used social media platform, with an astounding 689 million users. Given that it just came out 5 years ago, this number is huge. The majority of Tik Tok users are females under age 30. 
• There are 192 million active users on Twitter. 63% of them are between ages 35 – 65, and the majority of them are male.

Fooling with Facebook

Facebook is best-suited for small businesses because of its fine-tuned targeting powers. If you’re looking to reach Gen-Z, Facebook is probably the last place you should look. This market is for middle-aged adults of varying education and income levels, and is popular in both urban and rural areas.

One of the most interesting facts about Facebook is that its users are the most engaged out of all social media platforms. 66% of its users are active every day, telling us that the majority of people who use the Internet to communicate have a Facebook account.

By creating your own brand page, you have the opportunity to livestream and create business events, run ads, communicate with your ideal audience, and more. Facebook’s intuitive Page Insights and Analytics are an added bonus that will let you know whether your page could use some help or if it’s on the right track.

The ins and outs of Instagram

If you’re looking to target anyone at all within the younger generation, Instagram is one of the best ways to do it. Over 100 million users visit the app on a daily basis, and it’s a great way to reach people on their phones. This platform is a must for any restaurant, retail store, cosmetic brand, or gym with products and services that are image-based.

The biggest downside to Instagram, however, is that you can’t just send out a text post–you need a photo or video in order to create a permanent post. The only way to make a text post is by tossing it up on your Instagram “story,” which can only be viewed for 24 hours by people who intentionally click on it.

Learning LinkedIn

All B2B companies should have a LinkedIn company page. This will allow you to gain helpful insight from your ideal audience by running polls and connecting with people in relevant groups. When you create and share relevant content on LinkedIn, your company becomes positioned as an expert in your industry. 

LinkedIn has a variety of helpful tools geared towards helping business owners reach their target demographic and increase conversions. For B2C companies, however, something more “social” like Twitter or Tik Tok might be a better fit.

Taking on Twitter and Tik Tok

These days, Twitter has become a pipeline for news. This makes it a great place for businesses that want to reach journalists. It’s most commonly used by people living in urban areas and is popular among people who are highly educated. 

Twitter is a good place for business owners to advertise products or services that are geared toward young adults, and is well-liked by businesses in the tech industry. 

One of its biggest downfalls, however, is its extremely minimal character limit. While this is good for short updates, it’s not good for promoting long-form, conversion-focused copy–or anything with true substance, really.  

Tik Tok, on the other hand, is an entirely different ball game. This app is strictly for video content, severely limiting the number of businesses that would be a good fit for the platform. If you’re a restaurant or retail owner looking to grow your organic reach and engagement within a young audience, this is absolutely the way to go. 

Check out what your competitors are doing. Chances are, they’re using at least one of the aforementioned platforms. Note how frequently they’re posting and what they’re posting about, then begin crafting a social media content calendar.

Choosing which platform (if not all) to focus your business efforts onto is an important decision. It’s critical to get social media marketing right because when you do, you can create meaningful relationships with your ideal customers. 

At Bizzuka, our expert digital marketing team is no stranger to social media. We’ve nailed down an effective posting pattern and strategy for a wide range of industries–from oil and gas to chiropractic care. Schedule a free strategy session with us today for guidance on how your business should be using social media.