6 social media sites you should know
If you market your organization online, you need to be aware of the basics about the six social media sites that are currently the most popular and usable by businesses.
Are you familiar with all of them? If so, should you be using them, or would you just be wasting time and resources?
Although plenty of the people in your target market is on Facebook, so are lots of other people. So while plenty of people will tell you that your organization needs to be on Facebook, it’s also easy to waste a lot of resources there, especially if you go into it without a plan.
Not only that, but Facebook is now moving towards a pay-to-play model. In other words, Facebook wants to increase their revenue. And so far, they’re doing that by decreasing the amount of exposure unpaid updates receive, and increasing the amount of exposure paid updated receive.
So while a presence there is potentially a good idea, plan on budgeting some actual money to make sure key updates get the exposure you really want them to.
If a core part of your organization is current news, then you need to be making use of Twitter. If you’re on your cell phone constantly, then Twitter may be a great fit for you personally. And personal comfort is definitely part of the equation in picking which social media networks to focus on.
In the past, Twitter was nothing but 140 character text-based updates. In recent years, they’ve expanded that with embedded photos, videos, and even tagging people in photos.
Of course, Twitter needs to make money as well. So you can now promote posts on Twitter, just like you can on Facebook.
Google+
Google’s social media network continues to be somewhat controversial, forcing it on people using other Google products, while the core social networking site is far less active than some of the others. Not only that, but Google seems to be pulling down legitimate company pages more often than the other social networks.
Adding to the frustration is the fact that Google’s philosophy on rapid product development and innovation leads to documentation often being out of sync with what’s actually on Google+, and different pages exhibit different behaviors, seemingly arbitrarily.
Regardless, if ranking well in search engines is a priority of yours, then you simply have to be on Google+, posting to your page on a regular basis.
And if your target market includes the tech-savvy crowd, then your audience actually has a presence on Google+. You should consider being more active there than the other social networks.
LinkedIn continues to be a great option for those in industries that cater to professionals, as well as human resources companies. So if your organization serves other organizations, or utilizes a referral network with other professionals in it, you should consider being active on LinkedIn.
In February 2014, LinkedIn also rolled out the ability for everyone to publish long-form posts. The logic goes that this will help create more expert content on LinkedIn, and gives you an opportunity to further establish yourself as an expert.
Finally, In May 2014, LinkedIn reported hitting over 300 million members. They also recently added multiple options for their paid accounts, and introduced a $9.99 a month option.
YouTube
Ten years ago, it was a challenge to add video to your website. You had to go to a lot of effort to make sure your videos would play correctly across all possible setups.
Fast forward to today, and it’s a no-brainer to have videos on YouTube. We’re a visual people, so videos make sense in the first place. And hosting them on YouTube ensures that they’ll play right across all devices, and even be available on some devices people couldn’t view them on otherwise.
And, of course, Google owns YouTube. Which means that if your goals include ranking well in search engine results, you need to be producing videos around relevant topics and hosting them on YouTube.
With the move toward a more visual web, Pinterest has taken the web by storm. If your service or product has a large visual component, then you need to consider some sort of presence on Pinterest.
With 70 million users, Pinterest is a hot bed for sharing of photos and illustrations. And interestingly enough, while 33% of users have purchased an item shared on Facebook, on Pinterest it’s 59%.
The average Pinterest member is a 25 – 34 year old college-educated female. In fact, 20% of internet-using women were on Pinterest as of June 2013. So if that fits your target market, be sure you take it into consideration.
Need Help?
Obviously, this can be somewhat overwhelming, and you may be worried that you may make a mistake, or are just frustrated you don’t have time to do it all yourself. Although we’re not a fit for everyone, we’re happy to have a conversation to see if we can help. Just contact us if you’d like to talk.
You can use our contact page, or call us at 405-285-0348.