There are countless social media sites on the Internet, but three stand out as the biggest — Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. They each provide opportunities for marketing your business, but that doesn’t mean they all get the same attention or give you equal amounts of new customers. Take a look at the individual marketing capabilities of these three social media platforms to see which one you should use in your strategy.
Facebook: Used to Share Interesting and Exciting Content
Facebook is a good social media platform for marketing because it has the most users. As of 2013, Facebook is still the largest social media network with 7012.9 million monthly users. Twitter has 182 million and LinkedIn has 85.7 million. However, this doesn’t mean that more people will see your marketing posts on Facebook than the other social media sites. This is because the number of views you get is determined by the amount of followers you have, which is the case for all three of these social media sites.
However, Facebook is the best platform for getting others to share information about your business, especially if you present it in a fun and interesting way. Facebook users like to share things that they think others will like, such as funny quotes, pictures, and promotions. So, you can use this to your advantage. Of course, be sure not to overload your followers’ feeds or they may block you, which is counterproductive.
Twitter: Focused on Real-Time Updates
Some businesses find that twitter is a better medium for their marketing efforts. The biggest advantage of Twitter is that people are looking for real-time updates. So, if you have products or services that are time-sensitive, Twitter might be the best social media platform for you to engage potential customers and focus your marketing efforts.
One thing to consider about Twitter, though, is that it limits the amount of characters you can have in a post. This can increase the chances that your post will be seen, but it can also get your tweet buried in a long stream. So, to be most effective on Twitter, you need to play around with different posting time schedules.
LinkedIn: Based on Trust and Credibility
Image via Flickr by Shekhar_Sahu
LinkedIn is another social media site where your marketing efforts can pay off. It is a unique social media site because it is all about establishing credibility. People post resumes and share researched information with others. You can use LinkedIn in your marketing strategy because it will help you build trust and credibility with your customers. If they see that you have a track record of high quality you’ll gain more customers. However, it takes a long time to build your reputation on this site.
If you want to improve your social media marketing, your best bet is to choose one or two social networks and build a following instead of trying to establish a presence on all of them. Then, integrate your efforts with your email marketing campaign. Carefully look at your business and your goals to determine the best social media site to focus your marketing efforts.
