Rating 6 Top Social Networks for Business and What Each One Does Best
In our last blog article we discussed several great reasons why you should use social media for your business. In the next part of our blog on Social Networks for business, we provide a short description of what each one is good for and a rating on their usefulness for B2B(Business to Business) and B2C(Business to Consumer). The rating scale is 1 to 5, with 5 being the best. We derived this from our real-world experience in helping businesses of all types succeed. They’re not all created equal. It depends on your target prospects and customers and what you sell. We kept it to 6 to be a digestible first bite. Obviously, there are many more, but these will give you a start to decide on which ones to focus first.
Rating: B2B – 5 / B2C – 2
For getting to that targeted B2B audience and generating leads – LinkedIN is the place to be. Their targeting tools (e.g., by employee level, job title, skill set, industry, etc.) help you launch campaigns that get in front of the right people at the right time.
Research from several sources shows that:
- 80% of B2B marketing leads from social media come through LinkedIN.
- 92% of B2B marketers use the platform over all others.
- 46% of social media traffic to your company site comes from LinkedIN.
These aggregated statistics are too much to dismiss.
Rating: B2B – 2 / B2C – 4
This is the avenue you use to create content that takes your audience on a journey with your brand over time. Use Facebook to build a relationship with your audience and learn what they want to see or need to see in your offering. Facebook started 2017 with 65 million local business pages – the reach in incredible, as is the competition, making engagement and relationship management top priorities.
Rating: B2B – 4 / B2C – 4
Twitter’s ability to provide your audience with real time solutions is, in our opinion, it’s key differentiator across all SM platforms. Posting updates, answering questions and commenting quickly can easily make Twitter serve as a virtual customer service channel, put you in contact with influencers and brand advocates to help your social reputation and spread your brand across several platforms. The key here is to make Twitter a large part of your content strategy – the nature of this platform itself provides a wide reach, upping your engagement makes it easier for find more influencers and build a bigger name for your brand.
Rating: B2B – 3 / B2C – 5
With over 800 million active users, Instagram can be a great resource for keeping your customers updated on company products, changes, events and community involvement. Instagram is a visual platform where people send a lot of personal time and promotes unbound creativity. It allows users to upload photos and videos, add hashtags and geotags, graphical stickers, Augmented Reality objects, as well as apply multiple graphical filters to alter photos. The Explore tab allows users to find popular photos and videos taken nearby. With hashtags the photo-sharing platform users can connect photos and videos they upload other content, as well as follow particular hashtags. Using the tools provided by the Instagram platform allow you to grab the attention of influencers, clients and prospects while they are not in business mode.
Snapchat
Rating: B2B – 3 / B2C – 5
SnapChat has grown dramatically over the years and provides a creative way to engage and build relationships with customers and prospects. From running contests for the most creative snap using your company logo or products, adding promotions to your own snaps to stories of the most unusual ways your products or services have been used – the potential exists to help increase brand exposure and generate new leads.
Rating: B2B – 5 / B2C – 5
The search engine rankings alone make a Google My Business account worth the time. Google My Business connects your business to visitors and customers through Insights, Maps, Search, Google + and Analytics. It provides an online dashboard for managing how these different channels define your business on Google.
You choose which details and associated data to share when users search for your business or the products and services that you offer. Businesses that verify their information with Google My Business are twice as likely to be considered reputable by consumers. You can interact with users and customers by reading and responding to reviews and posting photos that showcase your business.
Google My Business also provides key data to help you understand and expand your presence through Insights and Reviews. Insights shows how many views, clicks, and followers your website may get, while reviews show the written testimonials of real customers accompanied with a star rating.
Which one is best?
If you have a B2B business, and you had to pick only one, which one would you start with and why?
Not that we would ever recommend only one Social Media platform; but, if we had no other option we would select LinkedIN. The way that they have continued to evolve and respond to the digital world is impressive. Not only with the capacity to launch highly-targeted campaigns, they offer access to a myriad of professional and educational resources and promote an atmosphere of continual improvement.
If you have a B2C business, and you had to pick only one, which one would you start with and why?
This one is a little more difficult to pin down; because it would depend on the type of B2C business. But, drilling down to one, we would say Google My Business. Aside from the search engine ranking benefits, it truly does provide an avenue for connecting your business to your customers. Visitors are provided with a wide range of information – the business name, photos, description, ratings & reviews, etc. – providing more detail and assuring them on the reputability of the business.
So, some great reasons to get started on social media for your business and which one(s) to start with. With over 2 billion active users worldwide (that number is projected to grow at over 25% per year) and 9 out of 10 businesses maintaining an active presence on social media it is easy to see why these channels should be a core part of your Inbound strategy.
There’s no time like the present to get moving and get started. Contact us today to see how we can help amplify your content and presence on social media.
