How to know which social media platform is ideal for your marketing strategy

Social media is renowned as an important digital marketing tool that helps businesses attract new customers and make profitable sales. It has also become a viable alternative to the biggest internet marketing platform, Google.

Though Google remains the ultimate lead generation tool for web businesses, social media is gradually closing the gap; and in fact, many businesses now invest solely in a social media platform and marketing strategy in order to actualize their commercial goals and objectives.

As an entrepreneur, you must be wondering which social media platform is good for your business since they have all been proven to be effective drivers of online traffic and are also easily accessible. A viable option for you, when faced with this dilemma, is to make use of all popular social media platforms at once. It will take probably just some minutes to sign up on each social media website, and you can proceed immediately to creating content for the purpose of marketing your product or services.

Registering on all social media websites may, however, not be smart and can produce a less than satisfactory effect on the outcome of a digital marketing strategy. Another strategy you can apply is to focus solely on one social media platform and maximize it to the fullest.

The main challenge with this approach is choosing the right social media channel for the marketing of your product or service. If you fail to choose the perfect social media platform, then your digital marketing effort is bound to produce a futile result.

There are a couple of ways to know how to use social media for webstores and other businesses. You must, however, understand that the methods that are applied differ from business to business.

Ultimate social media marketing rule – Know where your target audience are

This should be your priority when trying to engage in social media marketing. Like an archer aiming at a target, you must first locate your audience on social media before proceeding to execute your digital marketing strategy.

Your business belongs to a niche or field that has an incredible number of followers or enthusiasts across various social media channels. These followers are often more concentrated on a particular social media platform, which makes that website the ideal marketing tool for you. Finding this target audience is critical to the success of your marketing plan as it allows you to concentrate on creating engaging content that will help convert this audience.

Locating your business’ target audience on social media can be quite tricky if you’re not familiar with the internet terrain. But one simple way to go about this is to look through the social media channels of competing businesses that are in your niche.

Most times, such businesses will have multiple social media platforms, but one of these often stands out as its primary digital marketing target. When you succeed in identifying the social media website, you can go on to register an account on the platform so that you’ll be able to implement an effective content marketing strategy.

Assess the brand features

Each social media platform has a principal feature that makes it the ideal digital marketing channel for certain types of businesses. Facebook, for example, is the home for comprehensive and well-structured ads that are mostly in the form of paid content. If you intend to create promotional content for your business, then the social media website with over 2 billion users should definitely be your preferred digital marketing channel.

If your business, however, requires visual consumption to be highly appreciated like the travel and hospitality industry, then your options for social media marketing are restricted to two social media websites: Instagram and Pinterest.

These two platforms are perfectly tailored to fit businesses that make use of crisp images as well as videos to attract visitors and convert them into paying customers.

While Instagram is often the go-to platform for businesses that deal in the travel and recreation industry, Pinterest has grown quite popular for restaurants and other food-related businesses as well as the ever-growing DIY field.

Bloggers who deal in highly visual niches also regard these two platforms as the most rewarding social media websites for the generation of web traffic.

Twitter, on the other hand, is regarded as the perfect marketing tool for businesses that principally deal in content creation like news websites, blogs, and other forms of publishing.

Assess the conversion rate

When it comes to choosing a social media platform for your digital marketing strategy, traffic is just one metric that is gauged to determine the preferred option. Though it is important for the success of a social media marketing campaign, it cannot alone be used to assess the viability of a social media platform as a marketing channel.

The conversion rate of a social media website, on the other hand, is a more reliable metric that can be used to score the performance of the website. When you use both metrics together, you’re guaranteed to get a clearer picture of each website’s effectiveness.

With this thorough assessment, picking a social media platform for your digital marketing goal should be a piece of cake.

You should, however, understand that the conversion of social media traffic is within your control. So even if your preferred social media channel has a lot of traffic but little conversion potential, that can easily be fixed by engaging in basic content marketing practices like the use of clickbait titles as well as link placements.

Gradual weeding of social media websites

If you’re still unsure about the social media platform that is ideal for your business, you can as well sign up for accounts on all the social media websites. Your goal, however, isn’t to manage the social media accounts on a permanent basis; instead, it is to assess the impact of your digital marketing strategy on each individual platform.

By using this approach, you’re able to identify the least effective social media websites for your business and discontinue their use, leaving you with a social media channel that is perfect for your marketing goals.

Social media has become a part and parcel of digital marketing, and if you want your business to flourish, you must find a way to incorporate this marketing channel that is home to nearly 4 billion users.