Marketing is always a big part of business whether you are a new entrepreneur or a seasoned businessman. If you do good in marketing, you have a higher chance to sell. Being able to reach your target market is critical to the business. If you can’t reach them, then you can’t sell on them. Things like increasing brand awareness, lead prospecting, and advertisements are some of the samples. One would probably think of things like posters, flyers, and other handouts to push their marketing. In may still be useful, but there comes a new platform in the market. The alternative marketing tool is through social media sites.
Technology evolves, and it affects everything significantly. One of the most affected parts is the market. Cashless purchase through swiping a credit card is not the future anymore. It was even taken further due to our technology. You do not also need to swipe your card anymore. You just need to grant access and shop even without leaving your house. This was the rise of e-commerce and many other innovations along with it.
Every seller were affected since the change on the consumers was big. Sellers need to adjust and adapt accordingly, or they will lose in the market. This is where social media sites come in and play a big part. Since the people also adapted to the new technology, so are the businesses. We will now talk about those social media sites and how can it help your business.
Social Media Sites for your Business
Social media sites are now the online hangout place of everyone. It is considered normal for a person to have a social media account rather than having none. Since the target market is here, then the businesses would have to go there. But how does this social media sites help the business and what are their differences? Here are the top social media sites you can use for your business.
1. Facebook
The most prominent social media that is present now is Facebook. Since Facebook is the biggest platform, most businesses tend to join in on this site. It is easy to create an account, and it works well with any content. It accepts texts, images, videos, and even live videos. A business could create its own page here and establish their brand. It would also be possible to create a group where you can let your customers join and meet other customers. It is also famous for using ads as a marketing tool that could help business in reaching out for customers or show off their products and services.
You can start with creating a profile and then your business page here on Facebook.
2. Youtube
Youtube focuses on videos as its service. It is a platform for video sharing in which billions of people watch every day. In this social media site, you can post your videos and let other people view, like, comment, share, and subscribe. The most basic type of marketers here are those what we call video blogger or vlogger. Since this is a site for video sharing, then it is the perfect platform to share and upload all your video blogs.
Create your own channel and start uploading videos. Youtube is probably the best platform to start if you are interested in being a vlogger.
3. WhatsApp
WhatsApp is a social media application that is used for messaging. It was primarily used for messaging between family and friends, but it changed due to its popularity. Businesses also started to use Whatsapp in their transactions and were able to transform it to somewhat a business platform. WhatsApp became a good business platform since it lets you create a proper business account. Using these accounts, you can provide customer support and share updates to your customers about their transactions.
4. Messenger
Messenger has the same services like WhatsApp, which is messaging. But what makes Messenger different is that Facebook owns it. In short, this is the messaging app that can be connected using your Facebook account. Unlike WhatsApp, which is a standalone platform, whereas Messenger is integrated with Facebook. The edge that it has is due to the number of Facebook users and its popularity. Today, Messenger is adding up different features like Messenger ads and chatbots. This is a cool feature that can help a lot in business transactions.
5. Instagram
Instagram is a social media platform that focuses on images. It was able to gather users because of the editing features you can use, which are called filters. It was able to establish itself as one of the top platforms. Instagram now releases new features such as Instagram Stories, Instagram Live, and IGTV to keep its users engaged. Since this social media site is mostly for images, businesses use this to show their actual products. Instagram provides an excellent opportunity for companies to have their products shown and use their profile as an album of it. It is also essential information that Facebook owns Instagram. Having integration with top social media site will inevitably boost your presence.
6. Tumblr
Tumblr is a popular microblogging and social media platform. It is a site for sharing text, images, GIFs, links, videos, audios, and more. Same as some of the top social media sites, Tumblr also has a wide variety of content in it. Many bloggers also use Tumblr as their own website since it allows you to modify your blog design. Most of the blogs that you would see might be using Tumblr. Since it enables every content possible, it would be a good idea to add in creative and funny posts if you are to use this social media platform.
7. Twitter
Twitter is a social media that focuses on news, updates, announcements, and such. The main thing about Twitter is that it emphasizes real-time happenings. Posted tweets are much more likely happening at the moment. Also, one of the main difference in Twitter among other social media platforms is the number of characters that can be used per post. It only has 280 characters per post, which is lower compared to other social media post. The good thing that this character limitation is that every post becomes informative. People tend to give in as much information as possible since there is a limit in characters. This could be an excellent platform for your business especially if you want real-time engagements with your customers.
8. Reddit
Reddit is also known as “The Front Page of the Internet.” It is a little bit different from other social media sites as this ensemble a forum type of website. In this platform, you can send questions, links, and other content. It allows other users to answer, discuss, and vote up or down on those threads. Reddit manages these threads by using the ‘subreddit.’ Subreddit is a dedicated forum for every specific post that is on the site. These subreddits are also helpful in search functionality. You just need to know the subreddit tag to be able to view the topics within that forum.
9. Linkedin
Linkedin used to be a site for submitting resume and job search. But now, it has grown to be a professional site and the best site for business-to-business marketing. It is a perfect site to build up a professional brand and meet other professionals as well. Since it started as a job searching site, it developed to be a site for professionals. You would be able to see experts in their industry sharing content, networking with each other, and doing business transactions. Linkedin is also one of the best sites for lead generation and client prospecting.
10. Pinterest
Pinterest is a social media platform where you can use virtual pinboards and post contents in it. You can also try in different formats like images, GIFs, links, and videos. It is also an excellent platform to promote your site since there is an option to attach a site link on your pins.
Conclusion
Now we have the list of social media sites that you can use to grow your business. It would be a good idea to study each social media platforms and leverage what it can do for your business. They can help you in different ways since each has its own focus on a specific area. But if you have the time, maybe you can try each one of them and test what would be best for you. It wouldn’t hurt to have an account for your business on each social media sites anyway.
Some things would be free, but since you are using social media platforms as your marketing too. Whereas you can expect some things to have payment. This is where you should be careful and prepare first. If you don’t want to use those services, that would be fine. But it is a proven thing that these features could really give your business a boost. So it would still be worth to look at them. What other social media sites are you using for your business? Let us know in the comments below.