How to Choose the Best Social Media Platform for Your Business

What social media platform should I use for my business?

I hear this question all the time from businesses who either don’t know where to start on social media or don’t have the time to be everywhere (good news: I don’t usually recommend being everywhere anyway!).

It can be overwhelming when you’re trying to choose the best social media platform for your business.

“What if I choose the wrong one and it doesn’t work?”

Well, that’s the great thing about social media. If something isn’t working for you, you can adjust the content you’re posting, or you can try your efforts on a different platform.

Where to Start

My # 1 recommendation for choosing a social media platform for your business is to choose 1-2 platforms at first and learn how to do those ones really well.

I’ve heard, read, and listened to plenty of social media platform advice saying ‘choose the platform where your customers are”. Which is great if you know where that is.

But what about if you don’t know which social media platform your customers are hanging out on?

Step 1: Understand your ideal customer avatar.

Make sure you know who your customer is. What is their age (approximately)? What do they read? Do they have kids?

If you need to create a customer avatar, I discuss in my free social media framework course.

Step 2: Check the demographics of each social media platform

Match your customer avatar to the social media demographics, and decide which one makes the most sense to use.

Check out this infographic below which gives a rundown of demographics per platform.

Step 3: Decide on your goals for social media

The different social media platforms each have nuances that make them unique, so you want to align your business goals with the purpose of each social media platform you choose.

A Breakdown of Each Social Media Platform

Facebook is the largest social media platform and they are focused on creating the best user experience which means they want you to create content that keeps people on Facebook.

The organic (unpaid) reach on Facebook is decreasing, so you need to focus on sharing content that facebook prioritizes, which is video, and live video. Facebook is a great platform for brand awareness, increase leads, video views, increase event attendance and increase app installs.

Instagram is becoming one of the most popular social media platforms to use because it’s fun, easy to gain more attention and reach for your business, and it’s very interactive.

Instagram is a great platform for market research, brand awareness, increase leads, video views, job recruiting and job searching.

Twitter is a platform where you can connect with influencers and brands. On Twitter, even if someone doesn’t follow you, you can answer their questions, re-tweet their content, and Tweet to them to ask them questions. It’s a great platform to increase your website traffic, and connect with influencers.

Pinterest is a social media search engine and many big bloggers say Pinterest is their secret weapon for website traffic. Because many Pinterest users use Pinterest to search and save items, it’s a very intentional platform, meaning people go to Pinterest for a specific reason and to find something.

Pinterest is a platform to use to increase your website traffic.

LinkedIn is a professional network and is there to allow you to network online and learn from other professionals. LinkedIn is perfect for job recruiting, job searching, online networking, and personal brand awareness.

YouTube is the second largest search engine behind Google and is also a very intentional platform. People use YouTube to find something specific, oftentimes a how-to, tutorial, etc.

YouTube is a platform for increased video views, brand awareness, and to be found via search.

If your goal for social media is to gain more website visitors, consider Twitter or Pinterest. If you want to create videos as your main source of content, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram (Stories) would be platforms to compliment that content.

Once you decide on a platform

When you choose 1-2 platforms to get started with, make sure to create/ share content specific to that platform. A shorter video on Instagram with hashtags will likely perform, whereas a longer video on YouTube with proper tags, title and description will be better there.

No matter which platform you choose, if you focus on that platform, show up, and are consistent, I truly believe you can make any platform work well for you, but you may need to adjust your content or strategy.

Make sure to track and measure your progress on each platform so you can see if you are achieving your goals and if that platform is, in fact, working well for your business.

For even more tips about using the best social media platform for your business, sign up for my free social media course to get more insight into who you’re speaking to, where to post, what content to create and share, and why you are using social media for your business.