Finding the Right Social Media Platform for Your Business

Looking to find the right social media platform for your business? Instead of chasing the newest social media trend, you need to analyze which platform will be most effective for your business goals. What factors should you consider? How can you make your foray effective?

Before deciding what social media platforms to use for your business, you need to know what your goals are and what you hope to achieve. Ask yourself, what are your company goals? Are you looking to generate leads for your business or engage with existing customers?  What message do you want to communicate? After you have defined your objectives, your decisions for which platform to use will be more clear-cut.

Factors to consider when deciding which social media route to follow include:

Investigate and Experiment

• Trial and error is almost necessary when deciding which platform will best suit your company’s goals and objectives. Do your research beforehand to find out what each platform can offer, if there are any potential limitations and what the cost associated with using the each tool are

Listen to the Conversation

• Listening to active conversations is crucial before you begin and it will be a key indicator for how active a social media platform is for your industry. If there isn’t much discussion going on about your brand or industry within a specific platform, it might be worthwhile to skip it. Try using real-time social media monitoring programs such as, Social Mention http://socialmention.com/ , How Sociable http://www.howsociable.com/  and Google Alerts http://www.google.ca/alerts

 Profile Your Niche Market

• After you have listened to the conversation, you need to profile your demographic and figure out who you are able to reach. This will help you filter down what platforms to focus on, once you know your niche market.
  • Age, sex, education level, location, languages.

 Follow Trends            

• You don’t want to jump on every social media band-wagon but it’s important to know what platforms are popular and being used often. Following social media trends will help your brand remain relevant, top-of-mind and in-touch with your customer’s behaviour and interests.