A Guide to using Social Media Channels for your Business

Any brand that wants to connect effectively with their audience and customers will no doubt have created pages on a number of different social media channels.

They all have something different to offer their audience and can help advertise their brand in a variety of ways. Here’s a guide of the main social media channels, along with the pros and cons for using them as part of your digital marketing strategy, and you can also click here for some interesting articles on digital marketing.

Facebook

A popular starting point for introducing your brand to social media as Facebook is the biggest and most widely used one out there. With more than 128 billion users worldwide, it’s safe to say creating a page on Facebook opens your brand up to a pretty large audience.

Pros:

• Fans are proven more likely to engage on Facebook with their favourite brands due mainly to the fact that the channel contains such advanced targeting capabilities for wide audiences.
• There are a number of really insightful tools available to help you assess the habits of Facebook users more efficiently, and to help you see what works well and what maybe to avoid in terms of content. You can check out Facebook tools on SimplyMeasured.com.

Cons:

• It’s size can also be your downfall, as the saturation of brands is so dense that it can be tough to make yours stand out.
• There is a significantly low organic reach, with it being said by ‘Facebook sources’ that it will continue to decrease.

Twitter

The main demographic of Twitter users is said to be mainly 18-20 year olds, but with over 271 million active users, it’s thought that the age range is increasing all the time. Twitter allows its users to post short statuses, photos and vines to their followers.

Pros:

• It’s great for interacting with your customers/fans quickly and simply, and therefore means it’s a great tool for customer service and for running things like competitions.
• Like Facebook, you can access analytics to learn more about the habits of Twitter users from twitter.com.

Cons:

• There is a problem with the lifespan of the posts that people write as they are significantly shorter than those on the likes of Facebook.
• Twitter holds many limitations, including the fact that posts are limited to 140 characters at a time.

Pinterest

Pinterest is a channel that is arguably seeing the biggest increase in users, as it now has over 70 million. 79% of its users are female, but again this is something that is experiencing a change. It’s an online resource for bookmarking pictures and links all in one place.

Pros:

• It’s easy for users to share their favourite photos and links with others on Pinterest and also on other social media channels too, creating ready-made audiences and spreading interest further.
• It generates over 400% more revenue per click than Twitter.

Cons:

• As mentioned above, the majority of users are female.
• If your brand isn’t already largely online, it can be difficult to use Pinterest to your advantage, or if you have little to no web presence already.

Google+

Google+ is said to be a more niche social network, with a lot of its users remaining largely inactive. However, it is a useful platform to be aware of. You can post photos and content on it and share your other pieces of content onto your Google+ page too.

Pros:

• The main (and huge) advantage of Google+ is that it’s of course owned by Google. This means that it has numerous SEO benefits to your brand; each Google+ post has a dedicated URL that can appear in Google Search, for example.
• Google+ and YouTube are linked, as are Google+ and Google Adwords.

Cons:

• As mentioned above, they have a lot of users but a large proportion of them remain inactive or only use it occasionally.
• It’s future is uncertain, with talks of it being abolished, which you can read about here.