Whether you’re looking to increase brand recognition, drive website traffic, generate leads, or boost conversions, social media marketing is often a reliable and viable strategy for your campaign. People of all ages and backgrounds use social media to discover, follow, learn about, interact with, and shop brands. Dependent on your marketing goals and target audience, there will always be an ideal social media platform for your media.
KEY FACTORS TO CONSIDER:
Audience
Who is your campaign targeting? Social media platforms will often overlap in userbase, but each still has a majority use case. For example, baby boomers have high engagement numbers on Facebook (Meta) but low engagement on TikTok. Inversely, Gen Z controls the TikTok majority demographic but has a lower Facebook (Meta) presence.
Content
The correct platform(s) will of course be dependent on your type of content. After identifying your audience and content type, you’ll almost always have a leading social media platform in mind. Shorter videos, often referred to as ‘Shorts’, will perform better on TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and even YouTube. Meanwhile, if your content is image-based, YouTube would be one of your last considerations. If your audience is ‘business professionals’, you’d likely start with LinkedIn and branch out from there.
Strategy
Are you targeting a local market? Do you have an SEO strategy built within this campaign? Is this organic or paid marketing? The answers to these questions, and more, will confirm what platform the ‘Audience’ and ‘Content’ factors have guided you toward thus far.
Instagram is ideal for ecommerce, TikTok is heavily reliant on influencer marketing, and Snapchat is great for geotargeting or location-based marketing.
Cons
Each platform will come with inherent cons. Each social media platform will vary in cost. Some are more resource-heavy, others have weak organic reach; weigh each con against each pro before making your decision.
Deciding on the social media platform(s) to utilize can be an easy task when you approach the decision from an informed position. Your market research will provide the most valuable information to make these decisions.
If you’re a non-profit considering social media marketing, read our specialized blog post here for additional insights and use examples.
