Finding Your Social Media Match: A Guide for Businesses
As a leading digital marketing company in Leicestershire, at HAiHAi, we understand the power of social media in today’s digital landscape.
We’ve helped numerous businesses across the East Midlands and beyond to put together effective social media strategies, and in this blog, we'll share our expertise on selecting the right social media platforms for your business.
1. Know Your Audience
It goes without saying that everyone is different. What one person might like, another won’t. And what one person might think will be helpful for their business, another can see as a waste of time.
At HAiHAi, we always start by understanding our customer’s target demographics, and we’ve knuckled it down to 4 different types of audience members, each spending more time on their preferred social media platform.
Here's a quick breakdown of platform preferences we've observed:
Gen Z: Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat and TikTok
Millennials: Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn
Gen X: Facebook and Twitter
Baby Boomers: Facebook and YouTube
Depending on what your preferred audience is can depend on which platform you want to spend more time on as a business. If you’re looking to reach out to a younger demographic for your products or services, then you’re more likely to find them on sites such as TikTok and Snapchat, and not so much on Facebook and LinkedIn.
For our clients, we've noticed a strong presence across all age groups on Facebook, making it a versatile platform for local businesses.
2. Align with Your Business Goals
So now you know what your target demographic is and what social media platform you’re more likely to find them on.
What next?
Next comes ensuring that you know what target you’re aiming for. This can be done by working alongside your customers to identify their social media objectives.
Good examples of company objectives can include:
Boosting brand awareness
Engaging with the local customers
Driving traffic to your website
Generating leads for B2B companies in the region
Providing customer service to your customers
Knowing what target you’re aiming for makes the whole process a lot easier, as you can ensure that the goals match the most suitable platforms. For example, if your customer is looking to gain more traction for B2B sales, then LinkedIn is the social media channel to go to as this will be far more likely to gain success for this particular objective.
3. Study Your Local Competitors
There’s absolutely no shame in seeing how your competitors are doing. At HAiHAi, we do it all the time.
A lot of the time, this can even be a good thing - you can stumble on ideas you might not have thought of before, or get some inspiration for your future content.
We conduct thorough competitor analysis for our customers, focusing on:
Which platforms are popular among businesses?
What type of content resonates with the local audience?
How frequently do successful local businesses post?
Chances are, if a particular type of post on a particular platform works well for one of your competitors, then there’s no reason why it won’t work for you as well (as long as you make the post your own, and don’t just copy it word for word).
Seeing how local competitors within your industry are doing can provide insights that can help you to put together strategies for your customers that stand out in your local area.
4. Content is King
You won’t find a decent digital marketer out there that doesn’t regularly put out great content, and there’s a reason for that.
What is it that catches your eye and makes you stop scrolling endlessly?
Content.
What can provide useful bite-size bits of information that can grab your attention, leading you to go onto that company’s website to learn more?
Content.
At HAiHAi, we believe in creating content that reflects your brand and engages your audience.
We match content types with the right platforms:
Video content showcasing your products or services: YouTube, Instagram Reels
Behind-the-scenes glimpses of your business: Instagram Stories
Professional updates and industry news: LinkedIn, Twitter
Community events and local partnerships: Facebook
Matching the right kind of content to the right platform can work wonders for your brand, and help to meet your company’s set marketing goals.
5. Platform Features
No, not all platforms offer exactly the same thing as each other.
All of them have their own little quirks or special platform features to make them differ from each other, in one way or another. At HAiHAi, we like to make the most of these individual features for our customers, such as:
Instagram's location tags to boost local visibility
Facebook's events feature for promoting business gatherings
Twitter's hashtags to join regional conversations
LinkedIn's networking tools to connect with professionals
With every social platform offering its own features, it’d be rude not to use these features to get the most from them, all to help your customers get more business traction online.
6. Start Small, Think Big
Imagine this:
You’re on Day 1 and you go out and make an account on every single social media platform out there. You try to grow your brand on all of them by posting consistent content for each specific audience, but it’s hard to keep on top of it all.
Someone replies back to you on Facebook, but you’re still talking to a potential new customer on LinkedIn. Suddenly, that person on Instagram who messaged you but you haven’t seen it yet decides to go to someone else because they got back to them quicker.
At HAiHAi, we advise our customers to start with 1-2 platforms where their audience is most active. This stops you from spreading yourself too thin when trying to build your online reputation. Then, as your social media presence grows, we can help you expand to other channels strategically - and at a pace that works better for everyone involved, without leaving those potential new customers for your company on ‘read’.
7. Data-Driven Decisions
There’s analytics for everything online these days, on every social media platform.
At HAiHAi, we use advanced analytics tools to track your social media performance, to see what’s working well and what isn’t. This data assists us in consistently improving your strategy to achieve the best possible outcomes in the market.
After all, if it’s not working - why keep doing it?
Focus your efforts on what works better, and watch your customer’s brand’s digital presence grow through positive engagement online.
8. Adapt to Changes
Algorithms online are ALWAYS changing. Because they’re always changing, it means that you can’t keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting the same results - regardless of what platform you use.
At HAiHAi, our team stays up-to-date with the latest trends and algorithm changes, ensuring your strategy remains effective - and ensures that our customers stay in front of the eyes of their target audience, and not pushed all the way back to the bottom of the SERPs page.
9. Quality Over Quantity
Have you ever seen those company pages that regularly post content on their socials every hour on the hour, and you think to yourself,
“I could have done a better job than that”
Yeah, we don’t do that - and you shouldn’t either.
We focus on creating high-quality, locally relevant content that resonates with your audience, rather than spreading efforts too thin across multiple platforms and leaving viewers with a bad taste in their mouth when looking at your posts.
Choosing the right social media platforms
is important for businesses.
At HAiHAi, we combine our local knowledge with digital marketing expertise to create tailored social media strategies that drive real results for our customers - and we’ve been having a lot of success with this so far. If you’re interested in learning more on how to use the right social media channel for your business, get in touch today - and we’d be more than happy to help!
