Social media marketing is an important component of a well-rounded content marketing strategy. But with so many different social platforms on the World Wide Web, how are you to choose which is best for your business? Below, we break down the most popular social networking sites and explain when to call upon each for your content marketing needs.
Facebook is, arguably, the most popular social networking website. The great thing about it is that, through Facebook, you can target audiences within a wide age range. Additionally, Facebook users represent diverse interests. Virtually any business should have a Facebook profile up and running, and you should maintain this profile with updates about your company and at least one new status (either an announcement or the sharing of an interesting article, video, etc.) per day.
Ultimately, though, business-to-consumer organizations should focus the heaviest on Facebook activity. This is because the structure of this website provides you with a direct link to the consumers you are targeting, so why not make the most of this resource?
Twitter
Another highly popular social networking site, Twitter is a great resource for business-to-consumer and business-to-business organizations because it allows for connections between both businesses and individuals. Unlike Facebook, all Twitter accounts are the same and function in the same manner. As such, businesses can create an account that allows them to interact more directly with target audiences in terms of actually going out and contacting individuals and companies within these groups.
Twitter, like Facebook, should be updated at least once per day. But the personal interaction on this particular platform is critical, as this is a wonderful way to reach out to individuals and really showcase your brand’s identity in an interactive way.
Pinterest is an interesting social networking platform because it is almost exclusively reliant upon images. While you can write blurbs under each image, every pin that you make is represented by a graphic.
People are driven by visual cues, particularly online, so this is a highly valuable resource for many businesses. Like Facebook, it is great for business-to-consumer organizations; however, it is important that companies create a targeted strategy when using this platform because it can be easy to muddle the marketing message. Organizations that sell products can easily pin pictures of their goods, but service-oriented businesses will need to get a bit creative in how to best represent their brands on Pinterest.
These are just a few of the social platforms you may need to integrate into your content marketing strategy. Keep an eye out for part two, which will describe the likes of Instagram and LinkedIn!