Social Media Marketing: Choosing Social Channels For Your Audience

Blog Post – Part 2 of 3

In Part 1 of this series, we talked about the three “T’s” of writing a social media plan. In the second installment of the series we will review the demographics and benefits of 6 social media channels.

According to 2013’s Industry Report on Social Media 86% of marketers indicate that social media marketing is important. After writing a social media plan, it’s time to get started with a posting and advertising strategy.

When determining the best social media placement for your brand or products, it’s important to consider a few important points:

• Who is the target demographic and which social networks do they access the most?
• How is the key audience engaging with brands/products via social networks?
• 89% of marketers stated that increased exposure was the number one benefit of social media marketing. What are the goals for social media marketing and how is success measured?

Now that these important questions have been identified, it’s time to take a deeper dive into the social channels to identify the best outlets for posting and advertising campaigns. Because there are so many social channels, there may be a niche that works best for a particular brand or product. Today we are going to review 6 social channels that could be an opportunity to reach your audience.

LinkedIn – 40% of the over 300 million people using LinkedIn check the site daily. Most are using the network for business networking and are interacting with their news feed, their connections, their groups and their company pages. On average, LinkedIn reports that users spend close to 17 minutes per month on their site. They offer many interesting ways to engage with people including offers, recommendations and videos. Men are more likely to use LinkedIn than women and they skew toward a higher household income bracket, reaching 38% of those with $75,000 per year or more.

Facebook – with over 1 billion users worldwide, Facebook is the largest social network. Facebook makes it easy for businesses to create a page, generate posts with content, video and photos, and advertise to key groups or individual using a dynamic ad platform. There are many different types of advertising options including promoted posts, sponsored stories, display ads, applications, groups and news feed. Facebook also offers advanced targeting features based on location, interests, demographic profile and more. The self-service feature and tracking via Facebook Insights makes it easy to launch a small test campaign on Facebook.

Twitter – the top micro-blogging social network, Twitter allows over 250 million people to share 140 character messages and include photos and videos. Twitter is a highly mobile network, over 70% of users connect using a mobile device. Twitter has several advertising opportunities including promoted accounts, promoted tweets, promoted trends and Twitter cards. There is also an analytics tool available within Twitter to track and measure your tweets and campaign effectiveness.

Google+ – growing quickly and gaining traction due to alignment with Google search functionality, Google+ now has over 500 million users. Creating a Google+ account is a good idea if SEO is part of the marketing mix. Google has reported a 5 -10% click thru rate uplift for socially enhanced search ads. Google has also increased their ad extensions to include Google+ listings, increasing visibility for local businesses.

Instagram – Closing in on 200 million users after being acquired by Facebook, Instagram has been steadily growing into an important social network. Instagram recently launched an ad platform and has inspired many brands to post photos and use hash tags to create buzz. Currently 43% of the Top 100 brands are posting daily on Instagram. The visual network rolled out video format recently and has plans to continue to expand their advertising options. One of the key uses for Instagram for businesses has been photos of offices and events to humanize and tell a company’s story visually. They recently started a blog for businesses to provide ideas, insights and case studies.

Pinterest – 80% of the 75 million users on Pinterest are women. Pinterest users are very mobile and the iPad is the device of choice. Sharing is the main engagement point for users who Pin and rePin posts. Pinterest is zeroing in on Facebook and Twitter for the most sharing social networks and has already overtaken email to become the third most popular sharing channel on the web. Lifestyle is currently the most shared category with Food and Parenting close behind. Brands including Sephora, Four Seasons and Lowe’s have found success in marketing through Pinterest.