How to Choose The Best Social Media Platform for Marketing Your Business Based on Your Target Market

When it comes to social media marketing, it can be overwhelming to think about building a presence on every major platform. Facebook pages, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, Reddit, Snapchat, YouTube, Tumblr, the list goes on. There are just so many of them and they all call for different tactics. It can consume way too much time and energy trying to keep up with all of them. But the good news is: you don’t have to.

The Best Social Media Platform for Marketing Your Business

In fact, a lot of the pros will tell you that you shouldn’t even try to cover every platform because spreading yourself too thin over too many platforms can result in a less-than-stellar engagement rate on any of them. Instead, figure out what social media platform is best for marketing your business. One way to do this is by determining which platform is most saturated with your target market.

Who Is Your Target Market?

To create an effective social media marketing strategy for your business, you first need to understand who it is you’re selling to. What works for your target demographic may leave others unfazed, so it’s important to think about who your customer base is comprised of.

Target Market Demographics to Consider When Choosing Your Platforms

• Age
• Location
• Gender
• Income
• Education

To figure out which social media platform is best for marketing your business, it’s important to consider your target customers. Different platforms have different user demographics, and you want to be sure you’re on the one that’s most saturated by those you’re trying to reach.

The Choices of Social Media Platforms for Business

There are tons of social media platforms available, and more seem to emerge as the years go by. But for the purposes of this particular article, we’re going to stick with the most popular ones. This leads us to number one:

Facebook for Marketing

Facebook is hands down the largest social network in the world. Nearly 2.5 billion people log on every month. Every minute of every day there are roughly 450,000 people scrolling through their feeds or fighting with someone who has a different opinion than themselves in the comment section of some brand’s page. Unlike most of the other social networks, Facebook is frequented by nearly half of every age group in the United States, with the exception of those who are 65 years of age and older.

While 71% of American adults are on Facebook, men hold down the majority on the platform. Studies have shown that women are more active on Facebook, however, regularly engaging and starting/managing groups, etc., more than their male counterparts. 77% of all of the users on Facebook have a college degree and earn more than $75,000 per year. And, even though every age group is highly represented, there are more millennials on the platform than any other group.

Facebook User Stats

• 71% of adults 18+ in America are on Facebook.
• Users are approximately 57% male, and 43% female.
• The majority of users are 18-44 years old.
• Only 40% of teenagers ages 13-17 in the U.S use Facebook.

Pros of Using Facebook for Business

• Popularity. As the network with most users, you’ve got a better shot at getting your products and/or services in front of the right eyeballs.
• Pages. Creating and managing an effective business page on Facebook is a wonderful way to connect with your target market.
• Groups. Groups are another great way of connecting with customers. They feel more personal than pages, which can make members feel a closer connection to you, and in turn – make them more comfortable spending their money on what you have to offer.
• Ads. Done right, Facebook ads can create a buzz among your target demographic.

Cons of Using Facebook for Business

• Censorship. Depending on what type of products and/or services you offer, Facebook may not even allow you to use their platform for marketing. For instance, if you’re in the MMJ business, don’t even think about it. Some other categories on the platform’s prohibited list: are tobacco, payday loans, and cryptocurrency. Make sure to read through their TOS before committing to an ad campaign.
• Spam. Facebook is notorious for fake profiles and spammy posts. In fact, in a recent article from HuffPost, they released figures collected by the platform themselves. The study shows that 5% of all Facebook users (120 million profiles) are fake accounts.
• Ads. The dragon and the dove, ads can be a lucrative tool on the platform if done correctly. But if not done correctly, you’ve wasted your money and potentially ruined some future business.

Should You Use Facebook for Marketing Your Business?

Although Facebook may be the largest and most widely used social network, whether or not you’ll be successful in using it for marketing purposes depends on what you offer and who you offer it to. If your target market is made up of adults between the ages of 25-39, you’re likely to find them on Facebook. Be sure you’ve got a great business page set up to engage with them.

Twitter for Marketing

Twitter began in 2006 as a social sharing platform for mini-blogs. 30 million of Twitter’s 145 million active daily users are from the United States. Gen Z (ages 18-24) is the most active on Twitter, with 44% of Gen Z’ers on the platform. If you’re targeting a younger audience, Twitter can be very effective, though only 26% of 30-49-year olds use Twitter.

There is a pretty solid mix of men and women on Twitter, with 57% of international users being men, and 42% being women. And as far as education history goes, over 30% of Twitter users are college graduates, while 25% have some college credits.

Twitter User Stats

• 30 million Americans use it each day.
• 40% of those Americans are 18-29 years old.
• 41% of Twitter users have an income of at least $50,000 per year.

Pros of Using Twitter for Business

• Trending keywords and hashtags. One of the best things about using Twitter to market your brand is the ability to use hashtags to bump your content up so that a greater number of people will see it.
• It’s easy to connect with major influencers. The platform is widely used by celebrities, politicians and other influencers. Twitter makes it easy to connect with them by using tagging and commenting features.
• Lists. Twitter Lists allow you to easily add and keep track of different groups of people. For instance, you may keep a list of clients, as well as influencers you’d like to work with.

Cons of Twitter for Business

• Character limit. This is probably one of the most annoying things about Twitter when it comes to using it as a marketing platform. You’re (extremely) limited in the number of characters you can use in each post, which can make it difficult to get your point across in a simple way that engages your followers.
• Really, really fast-paced. With 500 million tweets being sent out every day, and 6,000 every second, it can be difficult for followers to even see your content at all unless they go looking for it.
• Randomly get locked out of your account. While it’s possible to get tossed from any social media platform, it happens all too often on Twitter. You can get put in Twitter jail for all kinds of things, sometimes even for mistakes. To avoid winding up in a situation where you lose all of your hard work, make sure you save all of the passwords and backup security measures (phone etc) that you use to make the account in the first place. That way, if you have to jump through hoops to get it back, you’ll stick the landing.

Using Twitter to Market Your Brand

So, is Twitter the right choice for your business? If your target consumers are males or females between the ages of 18-30, Twitter is definitely something you want to consider. Just keep in mind that you’ll need to post pretty frequently to engage with your market. Everything moves very quickly, and it’s easy to get lost in a sea of tweets if you don’t come up with a scheduling game plan that works for you.

Pinterest for Marketing

Pinterest is often overlooked when it comes to marketing. In fact, only 27% of marketers currently report using the platform. But that’s good news for you since it means that your content has a better shot at getting seen by more of the 300 million monthly users.

Pinterest User Stats

• 85 million monthly users from the U.S.
• More than 79% of users are female.
• 50% of millennials use Pinterest.
• Half of the users on the platform earn more than $50,000 per year.

Pros of Using Pinterest for Business

• High monthly view counts.
• High conversion rates. 87% of Pinterest users say that they’ve bought something after seeing it on Pinterest.
• The life of a pin is much longer than a tweet.
• Pins show up in Google search results.

Pinterest is often overlooked when it comes to marketing. In fact, only 27% of marketers currently report using the platform. But that’s good news for you since it means that your content has a better shot at getting seen by more of the 300 million monthly users.

Cons of Using Pinterest for Business

• Manually pinning (and repinning) can be time-consuming.
• Lifestyle-focused, rather than business-centric.
• The tendency for randomly (and wrongly) flagging accounts for spam. Once it happens, it can be nearly impossible to recover the account.

Should You Use Pinterest for Marketing?

Pinterest can be the best social media platform for marketing your business if you utilize it correctly. They have some of the highest conversion rates of any of the social media sites, and they’re very popular with women in the U.S, particularly moms.

If your target market includes women between the ages of 25-45, you should definitely be using Pinterest to reach them. Consider taking a course on Pinterest marketing, like this one from Ell Duclos of Boss Girl Bloggers, if you’re not very familiar with how to use the platform for your business.

Instagram for Marketing

Instagram follows closely behind Facebook in popularity among social networks. But how does it hold up for social media marketing? When you think about which social media platform is best for marketing, Instagram is probably one of the top names on your list. And it should be because there are several benefits to using Instagram for business.

Instagram User Stats

• 500 million users per day.
• Nearly 50% of users are men and 50% are women.
• 71% of users are under 35 years old.

Pros of Using Instagram for Business

• User-generated content.
• Easily connect and engage with influencers.
• High engagement rates.

Cons of Using Instagram for Business

• You can’t use clickable links. You’ve probably noticed that influencers and brands all have a little blurb that says “follow the link in my bio to read more about…” at the end of their posts on Instagram. That’s because the platform doesn’t allow businesses to include live links in their posts. This is bad news since it means you have to rely on people actually taking the time to copy and paste your link into their browsers. Of course, you can always use Tailwind and create a smartbio, which allows visitors to click through specific links to different pages.
• You can only add content from your phone. This is hands down one of the worst aspects of using Instagram. Not being able to post something you’ve created on the computer can prove to be redundant when it comes to images and videos, etc.

Should Your Business be on Instagram?

Instagram is one of the most widely used networks among millennials and Gen Z’ers. More than 500 million people use Instagram stories every day. If you’re targeting a younger crowd and you’ve got the visual content to make this platform work for you, it could be a lucrative marketing tool for your business.

YouTube for Marketing

YouTube is the second-most visited search engine in the world, second to only Google. And yes, YouTube is technically considered both a search engine and a social media platform. Because of this, we’re going to skip the demographics section for this platform. YouTube operates much differently than any other site on this list, but it should absolutely be taken into consideration when choosing which social media platform is best for marketing your business.

Pros of Using YouTube for Marketing

• Video gets shared 12 times more than images and text combined.
• Monetize your promotional videos.
• YouTube is the second-most popular website in the world. (Google is number one.)

Cons of Using YouTube for Marketing

• The only way to get your content seen is to market it elsewhere or pay for ads. Sure, you can hashtag your videos and hope that someone ends up finding them, but it’s very unlikely that without putting the videos into circulation on other social media sites you’ll get the results you’re looking for.
• Ads. ‘Nuff said.

Using YouTube for Social Media Marketing

In the introduction to this article, we mentioned how it’s best to focus your energy on building one or two profiles on the social media platform that works best for your business. But since YouTube operates a bit differently, it’s not a bad idea to have a YouTube channel for your brand where you can post videos you create, in addition to other platforms on this list. It’s easier to share a link to your YouTube than it is to upload the video to the platform itself.

What is the Best Social Media Platform for Marketing Your Business?

Which platform(s) you choose to use to market your business should be largely based on who it is that you’re trying to reach. Think about your customer base and start growing a presence where you know you’ll be able to engage with them.

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