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Entrepreneurs and small businesses looking to boost their digital presence this year should start looking into the promising benefits of social media marketing. About 3.5 billion online users worldwide use a social media platform for casual engagement and, more importantly, professional networking.
Social media platforms advertise themselves as casual online spaces for users to socialize and share their lives with friends and family, with digital marketers uncapping the true potential behind these free services. As a cost-effective marketing approach, these platforms offer real-time feedback to push brand awareness to potential customers.
This article will list some of your favorite social media platforms and how they can work as a practical marketing strategy.
Facebook is still one of the biggest social media platforms with 2.9 billion active users as of 2022. Despite the statistics, the platform has carried a stigma with the younger generation as an outdated site fitting for parents and aging members with little concept of the latest trends and worldly interests.
However, the type of audience and clientele do not have any influence on the platform’s approach to business ventures. While keeping a helpful and friendly image with the online community, Facebook supplies a separate section to encourage users to develop business pages and take advantage of the marketplace.
What makes Facebook a good marketing platform is its number of users accumulated over the years and the interconnectivity to share your business pages with your friend list. Creating a business account can also open a wide range of analytical tools to help you understand your audience and how to maximize engagement.
TikTok
Not since the addictive nature of Vine have, we seen another social platform that revived minute-long videos. About 2 billion users have downloaded the app on their mobile devices and spend an hour engaging with creative and viral content.
What makes TikTok stand out from competing platforms is its emphasis on discoverability. A personalized social space compiles posts, pictures, and videos taken or shared by close friends and family, but TikTok uses a tailored feed based on your interests. Content creators looking to market themselves or their projects should utilize TikTok's discovery algorithm. The chance of virality is one of the platform’s popular aspects that promises rapid growth of a social presence and attracts audience members at an alarming rate. The variability of audiences allows users to experiment and grow their brand or business with a few short videos.
With 310 million monthly users, LinkedIn stays one of the more professional social media platforms that offer a unique networking space for business owners and entrepreneurs. The site has a reputation for attracting career-oriented users who use the space to connect with industry partners and find a posting for potential recruits. It may not be a site to frequent as often as Facebook or TikTok, but LinkedIn is a networking powerhouse capable of generating leads and work relationships.
Linkin explores company culture by allowing several companies to upload job postings, transform users into customers, and show brand recognition through detailed information about the company and its workers.
Twitter is a highly active social platform with an online population of 326 million monthly users. Celebrities, journalists, certified organizations, and more rely on the site to stay connected with every aspect of the world and exchange their stories and news with short blogs.
Digital marketers see the incredible value behind a single tweet. Conveying a message no longer than a single paragraph is quick and digestible for readers, and added hashtags amplify audience growth by attaching the tweet to a trending topic. Twitter created a strategy to implement causal keyword targeting. About 10 million book pages would equate to a day’s worth of tweets, and those statistics suggest high engagement levels with the platform. As the king of microblogging services, Twitter holds infinite opportunities to market your business.
With a concentrated focus on photo and story sharing, Instagram is a popular social platform that dominates visual marketing. Like Twitter, the online space holds different celebrities, businesses, and brand icons that advertise their likeness to fans to increase audience growth and brand awareness.
Digital media in the form of high-quality pictures and short videos deliver the most impressions, giving a vocal platform to models, photographers, and creators who have experience with Photoshop and similar image-enhancement tools.
Marketers choosing to work with Instagram keep track of their high-performing posts and follow the latest trends on the platforms. A collection of posts or images that also hold narrative power has a chance to succeed for marketing purposes.
YouTube
YouTube is the second-biggest search engine behind Google, with 2 billion registered users. This video-sharing platform stays a hub for news and entertainment, allowing users to upload, share, rate, and engage with diverse content.
YouTube emphasizes the creativity of content creators that explore artistic or educational components. Shows or web series exist with low-budget costs, hidden talents, and ambitions that target any existing audience.
Well-produced videos or content with a large audience can attract sponsorship deals to advertise a product or service in exchange for payment. Professional Youtubers that understand the algorithm and value quality production can find a marketable approach through this high-traffic platform.
Conclusion
Social media platforms act as the direct connection between people and businesses. Seeing how much time the world spends on the internet, marketing strategies center around these digital services and using the provided tools for analytics and engagement.
Every platform has its audience, but gaining their trust and viewership will require dedicated time within the community and understanding the marketability. Familiarizing yourself with social media and growing with the new generation of users allows your marketing approach to be more acceptable and relatable.
Sources:
https://www.digitalmarketing.org/blog/the-importance-of-social-media-marketing
https://truelist.co/blog/social-media-marketing-statistics/
https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/helpful-tips-for-improving-the-visual-appeal-of-marketing-materials.html
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2022/08/25/how-social-media-marketing-can-help-with-business-growth/?sh=5e7d93932ed2