Choosing The Right Social Site For Your Business

March 29, 2013 By kristi@downlifter.com 0

These days, it seems you need hire someone solely devoted to keeping up with the Joneses of online social platforms. The question begged to ask is, what does social media actually produce for my business and which one will give me the most bang for my buck? This all depends on how you use each site. You’ll find success stories for each platform, all with the common denominator of fully utilizing the site’s functionality. So, let’s dig into each key social site and see what it’s capable of doing.

Photo/Video Based Platforms
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If you’re business sells a product or service, you can benefit from these photo/video based platforms. Remember, a picture is worth 1,000 words. Use at least one of these social sites for your business to communicate with this highly visual society.

Pinterest- promote your boards that are strategically organized. Add “Pin It” buttons on your website- particularly great for retailers.

Vimeo and YouTube- especially great for the service providers wanting to share their knowledge, creating how-to videos or tutorials. If you’re a retailer, live product demo’s are a powerful tool to use. Post these videos to your website also.

YouTube has over 450 million unique visitors each month, so it’s great to have a large audience. That being said, it could be more difficult for your audience to find your video with the plethora of others competing. It does help to know that YouTube is owned by Google, and connected to other Google sites, like Google+.

Vimeo on the other hand has just over 17 million unique monthly visitors. One selling point with Vimeo is that it has a paid pro account option for it’s users. The pro account helps make videos cleaner & require less bandwidth. Your pro account videos also get higher results pulled (with the option to disable ads on your video) than non-paid users. Either way, if you can devote time to either YouTube or Vimeo for creating your business channel, you’re speaking to a large audience that’s looking for you.

Instagram- This mobile photo sharing platform is a child of Facebook. Like Pinterest, you can use this to showcase your products, show your store/business culture, give behind the scenes photos, show how your product or service is made, introduce your employees…

News/Feed Based Platforms
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For those businesses who have a lot of information and updates to share, these are great platforms.
Tumblr is a blog posting site where you can share compelling stories or interesting tutorials in your field of expertise. Share your knowledge with the world and make your custom blog site.

Twitter is a powerful news feed. If you’ve got a lot going on and want to share frequent, short bits of news, Twitter is a great platform for you.

These sites might not generate as many sales as the other platforms mentioned, however they can help your business’ online presence in communicating the message you want to get out there to your customers.
Connection Based Platforms
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Customer interaction is the key driving factor of these social networks. Each is unique in it’s features and will produce different types of results for your business

Facebook is a common first choice for businesses in social media. It’s been around for some time and had quite a lot of exposure. If you’re using this social network to reach your current audience, you’ll probably find the majority on Facebook. As a business, you can gain “likes” by individuals who will then see your feed on their profiles. Users can share your posts and comment as well.
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Google+ is a newer player in the game of social networking. Similar to Facebook, Google+ allows for comments, shares and posts. G+ takes strides ahead of Facebook in many other aspects though, offering a unique point of difference that’s appealing to users and businesses. Individuals and brands can start or join communities & hangouts. These two features alone are worth using G+. “Communities” are groups formed around specific topics/interests. This is particularly great for targeted marketing. “Hangouts” allow groups to meet for discussions, demonstrations, etc. With Google owning YouTube, this is an easy way to upload your video made in the hangout directly. In todays society, people want to learn, feel involved and connected. G+ is a powerful tool that can help you do just that for your customer.

The other sticking point with Google+ is that it’s not just a social network. It’s a search network! Google Places has merged with G+, so not only are you getting great benefits of social interactions, but you’re social efforts are being included in search results. Facebook on the other hand does not pull search engine results for your social interaction content.

LinkedIn provides unparalleled B2B interaction and is a driving force in recruiting/hiring. If you’re looking to give your brand a professional image and market to other businesses and hire individuals, LinkedIn is the place to start.

So, What’ll It Be?
If you want Downlifter’s suggestion, join minimally one video/photo based platform and Google+ now while it’s in the early stages. You’ll be much more likely to develop larger audiences by starting early than if you wait until successes develop. Use these (and any other key social media sites you can fully commit to maintaining) to develop your brand, speak to your customer in the unique way that your business can and offer them a reason to want to engage with you.