There are so many social media platforms out there, that it can be difficult to decide which one to focus on. Should your business be using Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram? Or all of them? In this blog post, we will take a look at each platform and discuss the benefits of using them for small businesses.
Of course, having a presence across the three main social media platforms is important to any business, but so often when managing small businesses, you need to focus your time and budget on the things that get the best results.
The Godfather of the social media world, Facebook remains one of the most important platforms for small businesses. With over two billion active monthly users, it provides businesses with a huge potential customer base.
What’s more, Facebook is incredibly versatile, allowing businesses to share all sorts of content including text, images, video and live video. This makes it perfect for promoting both your brand and your products.
Who is using Facebook?
Facebook has over 3.5 Billion users, if your target market isn’t on Facebook somewhere, it may be time for a change of strategy… However, Facebook is the social media platform with the oldest demographic, over half its user base is over the age of 35+ which is significantly more than Twitter and Instagram. On top of this, over 55s are the fastest growing demographic consistently over the last few years.
What content performs best on Facebook?
The platform works best for visual content, especially videos. In fact, Facebook generates eight billion video views a day!
If you’re not using video content yet, now is the time to start experimenting. Live video is particularly popular on Facebook at the moment, with users watching three times longer when it’s live as opposed to pre-recorded. With the rise of new social media platforms like TikTok, Facebook has adapted its algorithm to reward video content more in recent times.
How to be successful on Facebook?
Build a community! Create content that people can engage with and start conversations. Interactions in the comments between members of the community will vastly increase the visibility of your post to the wider Facebook audience.
Twitter is slowly chipping away at Facebook’s vast user base, but it still lags behind with around 336 million monthly users. That being said, Twitter is perfect for businesses that want to share timely updates and news as it happens.
With a character limit of 280, Twitter is all about concise content. This makes it the perfect platform for sharing short snippets of information, links, images and videos.
Who is using Twitter?
The platform has a fairly even gender split with 52% of users being male and 48% being female. In terms of age, Twitter is the youngest social media platform with 37% of users aged 18-29 years old, 32% aged 30-49 years old and 31% aged 50+.
What content performs best on Twitter?
Twitter content is extremely reactive! It is the fastest-moving social media, with trends seemingly coming and going daily. You may see some of the content that thrives on Twitter, and think that it is absolute nonsense… but that is the beauty of the platform and what makes it so popular.
There are a variety of ways to position yourself on Twitter, but the key is being reactive to what is happening in the world, and posting relevant content very quickly. The angle can be anything from informative threads to memes, as long as the topic is in the public eye.
How to be successful on Twitter?
The key to success on Twitter is engagement. You need to be brave and take risks to stand out from the crowd. Don’t be scared to put yourself out there, get involved in discussions, and give your brand’s opinions on debates that are happening on the platform, this is the best way to grow a following. Eventually, you can start to lead these topics and discussion points within your follower base.
Instagram is a social media platform that is all about visual content. It is a social media platform that has gone about massive changes since it first became a staple in people’s lives. With shifts away from seeing what your friends are doing, to being a battleground of the biggest brands in the world trying to get their content to the front of the queue.
Who is using Instagram?
Instagram is a balanced social media platform with a very even split across genders and age groups, like all social media there is a shift towards an under 35’s demographic, but less so on Instagram to others; with the older demographics joining on very quickly.
What content performs best on Instagram?
As we mentioned, Instagram is all about visual content, so the best-performing content is images and short videos. That being said, with the rise of Instagram Stories and IGTV, there has been an increase in demand for longer-form content as well.
How to be successful on Instagram?
The key to success on Instagram is authenticity & consistency; with so many brands and influencers on the platform, you need to carve your path through the Instagram algorithm. It will be slow going at the start as you slowly gain followers, but patience and consistency are the only ways to turn the algorithm in your favour.
