The second-generation applications today depend on marketing through social media platforms. Additionally, technological advancement is growing, and this is ensuing changes in consumer behavior. Both have given rise to an effective marketing approach to improve communication and co-creating of services among the wider audience. Consequently, it has become unavoidable for companies to re-shape their marketing strategies and include digital marketing practices.

Consumers’ decision-making process has a major influence on social media marketing. Digital content has been influential on consumers and assisted them in quick decision-making. And they have been potent for businesses too as they boost leads and sales. Data shows that social media videos influence about 64% of online shopper’s decisions. Social media marketing, hence, best compliments digital marketing practices.

There are so many options of social media platforms to begin marketing with. But a few among those platforms have more audiences on a global scale. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Snapchat, Pinterest, and Slideshare are the major platforms where you can begin to experiment with your business promotions.

How to determine what platforms to use?

If you are to take your business and actively partake in your social media accounts, it will most likely get difficult for you to balance them both. But, narrowing them down to some selective platforms would make it easier for you to manage. To figure out how to determine the platforms to use it is necessary, first you need to be clear about your own business, its model, and its approaches.

Either it’s Business to Business (B2B) or Business to Consumer (B2C), both need digital marketing strategies. In B2B, your target audiences are wholesalers and retailers. And, LinkedIn is one of the most popular and widest used social media for B2B. 

Likewise, B2C is about interacting with the consumers for selling their products. Here, Facebook provides a broader audience as it has almost 2 billion active users. Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, Pinterest are also effective in generating leads. 

Managing resources is not as complicated as it sounds. It is only when businesses fail to divide proper human resources and investment that it results in the ineffectiveness of the marketing strategies.  Companies can either distribute this work among the in-house staff or seek out help outside like agencies, experts, or consultants.  But, if you need it, there is still quality help that can acquire for this process. 

Defining your goals is an important action to take on the primitive stage. Having a specific goal guides you in moving ahead with the strategies. It includes things like deciding your target audience, choosing your social media platforms, settling on your content, scheduling, generating leads and sales, and many more. Without pitching your goals you won’t be able to move in the same direction every time.  

Which industry should use which social media platform? 

Deciding on the appropriate social media platform depends on the type of industry you belong to and/or on your targets. But before starting, you must do proper market research and plan out the strategies on respective platforms.

To give you better insights, here are some platforms that companies could consider based on the type of industry they belong to:

Start-ups:

Social media platforms are the right boost, a stepping stone to use if you are a startup company. Since you are at the beginning phase of building your brand, they are the right choice given their detailed ad targeting capabilities.

Facebook provides you a wider range of users and access to promote business. This is a cost-effective strategy that allows you to run your ad campaigns at an affordable price. It is the easiest path to generate better leads. Twitter can also be equally important for start-ups. The right use of hashtags, mentions, tweets, and retweets allows your content to spread faster and wider.

Start-ups can also use Instagram to make the content more engaging and transparent. Since the users are usually younger, they explore the content more than the older generation. Pinterest also comes in handy when it comes to startups. It gives your brand recognition as you can share, collect, and discover newer ideas.

Humanizing a brand is possible through the use of these platforms. You can do this by sharing stories, behind-the-scenes, and conversing with your users. Leave the link to your website and cross-link your social media profile, this brings you organic traffic. Also, use appropriate keywords, so that when people search for something they land on your ideas based on them.

Small Scale Industries: 

As social media helps build brand awareness and strengthen relationships, it is an important marketing strategy for all businesses. The platforms are cost-effective to all sorts of industries yet it depends on how efficiently one can capitalize on this opportunity. Industries also need to maintain existing customers and interact with potential customers.

Facebook, as mentioned, is important to all sorts of business industries. And networking is easy on this platform with its diverse links. Instagram is also useful for a similar purpose. But, results will depend on how you schedule your posts and interact with the users. If you are a small-scale industry, you need to be content-specific in social media platforms so that you can worry less about spending on advertisements.

Twitter is more appropriate to discover new trends than any other online platform. Moreover, with the help of Twitter, you can track what people are talking about you or your brand. You can even trigger the emotions of users. Twitter can give you a larger engagement if you get noticed by the right set of individuals.

LinkedIn is rather helpful if you are following a B2B model or targeting consumers based on job titles. It is also easier to find the exact target and connect with professionals.

Large-scale industries:

There are many sectors to look upon when it comes to the marketing of a bigger company. It becomes difficult for a single person to handle them all which is why it is recommended you divide the work. Meanwhile, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter are all-purpose social media platforms that almost all enterprises use. They can generate a better lead and traffic to their websites.

YouTube is also getting popular these days for businesses to promote their content and create a lasting impression. It is a productive platform to tell what your brand is about. Large-scale industries are even capable enough of investing more in larger and better video content. As videos alone can give the results, they can prove to be helpful to large-scale industries.

LinkedIn connects large-scale industries to professionals and establishes long-term relations in different sectors of the company. A company’s profile helps people learn about their works, products/services, and job opportunities. Here, you must leverage user-friendly content.

Brands/Multinational Companies

As a multinational brand, the consumers expect quality over quantity, which must be the prime goal of your marketing strategy. Humanizing the brand won’t be effective if there is no quality content. Strengthening relationships is necessary on a global scale. But, as a multinational company, your target must be to be visible on all sorts of social media platforms. Since the audiences are on a global scale they are available to all social media. 

It still depends on how you choose to handle your social media plan. Being a multinational company, you have an adequate amount for budget to bring quality content. Social media being a cost-effective platform you need to focus more on spending on the content than boosting them. 

Eventually, everyone has to step towards a digital platform and the competition is quite tough there. Even though there are certain platforms determined for businesses to be useful, there are no strict rules on determining the platforms. 

So, besides the mentioned platforms a company should be willing to experiment with their social media strategies on the other platforms as well. What’s important is that don’t miss out on the main strong platforms but then don’t hesitate to try other social media platforms.