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Which Social Media Platforms Should You Use for Local Content Marketing?

Joel Conner • Jul 11, 2020

Choosing the Right Social Media Platform for Content Marketing

All marketing experts agree that having a strong presence in social media is extremely important if a business wishes to stay visible and relevant to their customers in today’s Internet-fueled world. As a matter of fact, 92% of marketing agencies agree that social media platforms can increase your business’ exposure, meaning that a business that doesn’t have a social media presence is losing out on tons of incredible opportunities.

However, even getting your social media presence up and running is a difficult task. Selecting the right social media platform may be a confusing affair as well, with new social networks popping up every fortnight. The best way to begin is by launching your company’s presence on the most famous platforms, after which it should be fairly easy to narrow down the platform that will give your business the right kind of exposure to the right type of audience, thus fulfilling your marketing goals with ease.

Narrowing Down Your Options

There are numerous social networking platforms available today, which can help people connect with others who have similar hobbies, comparable demographics, interests, and so on. However, a majority of them are mostly junk and will not fetch your business any meaningful exposure. Your time is best spent by focusing your efforts on the platforms that garner the most amount of traffic. As of today, the social media platforms with the most amount of monthly active users are Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook.

Set Your Goals

Social media offers numerous benefits to anyone looking to market their business. However, you must establish clear-cut goals before starting your journey. Not only will they help you narrow down the platform best for your business, but they will also help you target the right audience and create meaningful content. The most widely recognized benefits of having a social media presence include:

You can learn more about the habits, wants, and needs of your customers and audience and use this information to increase your website traffic, thus boosting sales in the process.
Market your services or products to new demographics and audiences who may be potentially interested in them, thus raising brand awareness among the general public.
Significantly improve your company’s customer service standards by offering a new platform where customers can approach you with their concerns, questions, and complaints. This will allow you to identify new prospects and profitable leads.

Determine Which Platforms Your Audience Likes

The whole point of having an active social media presence is to help you reach out to your target audience, which is why it’s important not to select a platform that’s unlikely to be used by your audience. Therefore, you need to understand the platforms preferred by people in your target audience and develop your profile on these social media networks.

The most popular method for finding out where to find your target audience online is with a simple customer survey. All you need to do is ask which social media platforms they utilize, where they obtain most of their information, and the influencers they’re prepared to listen to. You can also make use of tools offered by social media platforms to understand more how to market to your audience. For instance, Facebook allows you to input customer profiles, which can help you estimate the total number of people who match those characteristics. Information sources like Pew Research can also be used for researching the audience demographics of various social media platforms, which can help you refine your marketing strategy.

Conduct A Comprehensive Examination of Your Content

Some forms of content work better than others on certain social networking platforms. It’s important to examine the content you usually create and release them on platforms that have been proven to be receptive to such content. For instance, Instagram users prefer picture-based content whereas LinkedIn may be ideal for your needs if your content consists of long-form text. Create your content after considering numerous important factors, including your brand, your industry, and target demographics. Here’s a list of content types that you can focus on:

Photographs
Videos
Whitepapers
Ebooks
Livestreams and webinars
User-generated content
Testimonials
Podcasts
Blog posts

Ensure Your Content, Target Audience, Goals, and Platform Are In Perfect Sync

After determining your business’s social media goals and target audience, and selecting the content type that appeals the most to them, it’s time to compare different social networking platforms in order to decide which one works best for your requirements. Here’s a brief intro to some of the most popular platforms available today:

Facebook – With over two billion monthly active users, out of which 61% are American citizens between 25 – 54, it’s a great place to implement lead generation strategies since its ad platform allows you to fine-tune your strategy immensely to target specific groups. It can also help you build relationships with customers and turn your leads into active followers.
Twitter – This platform is ideal for businesses looking to provide important messages, announcements, breaking news, and other information to their followers in a short period. Most users tend to be aged below 50. Easily digestible text-based content like quotations, listicles, and articles are the best content types for this platform.
LinkedIn – Primarily used by B2B businesses, it’s a great platform to generate leads and publish editorial content, which can establish your company’s position in the market as a reputed leader, build brand awareness, and gain leads with high chances of conversion.
Pinterest – This is a graphics- and picture-focused platform used for sharing stunning photographs and images related to travel, wedding, fashion, art, food, and décor. Businesses can post stunning and beautiful photographs on this platform to boost brand awareness and authority.

Conclusion

Any business that seeks to gain positive exposure online and remain relevant to the changing times cannot do with an active social media presence. Apart from helping you connect with prospects all over the world, it can also help you gain important insights about your customers, generate impressive website traffic, find new leads, build brand awareness, and give you pointers to improve your company’s customer service. Set your social media marketing goals, discover the platforms used by your target customer audience, come up with content best suited to the platform’s design – take these steps and you’ll develop a successful reputation for your brand online in no time!

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