In the business world, there is a common perception that to increase your brand presence, you need to be active on every platform out there. This is extremely overwhelming for many businesses, particularly those without a social media coordinator, since posting fun and engaging content regularly can be very time-consuming.
But being successful doesn’t necessarily require you to be active on every platform, in fact, it’s more beneficial for businesses to focus their efforts on fewer platforms where they can publish valuable content to targeted individuals.
In this blog post, we cover the three most important platforms you need to be active on to bring value to your customers.
With over 1.94 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the biggest social media platform on the web and a great place to share information about your brand and increase exposure.
As well as sharing online content like articles and videos, you can share ads and promote your page on Facebook to get in the eye line of customers who don’t yet ‘like’ your page.
On Facebook, you can inspire conversations and shares with posts since comments by users appear on the feeds of their friends, encouraging more responses and spreading the word about your business.
Facebook is also an extremely versatile platform, offering great business features like online booking, making it easy for you to convert users into booked appointments.
To get more from your data, Facebook allows you to track the success of the content you post and find the best times for posting according to how many views particular posts receive.
As well as being a great tool for shortening links, Bitly also offers stats on clicks generated from the links shared, giving you more ways to analyze your data.
Twitter is in our opinion, the best platform for engaging with customers. This platform makes it easy for businesses to see where people are talking about topics relating to your brand or industry as a whole, as well as allowing you to jump in on conversations by searching for related hashtags.
Businesses can easily interact with users by including their usernames, making it an extremely effective tool for responding to questions or customer service complaints.
Retweeting also gives you the advantage of being able to share positive feedback from users with others on the platform, spreading the word about your brand and encouraging others to follow you.
A great tool for Twitter is Buffer, which allows you to schedule content in advance straight from your browser. As well as eliminating the need to post 24/7, you can also post at times that suit active users from around the globe.
The main draw of Pinterest versus other social media platforms is its visual appeal. Given the fact that people have such short attention spans, if you can get your message across with an infographic or short video, this can be really great advertising and will draw people to your website.
Pinterest is also a great platform for sharing your product images, with 87 percent of Pinners having purchased a product they saw on the platform. Many people search for products directly through Pinterest, so the more your items are Pinned, the more people will be directed to your site and the more sales you will make.
If you’re new to Pinterest, be sure to organize your images by categories and caption images with wisely-chosen keywords to make them search-friendly. Also bear in mind that the content published other users should be attributed when pinning to your own boards.
Author: Arash Asli is at the forefront of business growth helping SMBs grow their businesses, as CEO of Yocale.com, an online scheduling and marketing platform. His thought leadership have been featured in major publications including Forbes, Huffington Post, and Inc. He is honoured to have been named Business in Vancouver’s Top 40 Under 40 business executives. Follow @yocalenetwork on Twitter and Facebook.
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