The Big Five Social Media Platforms Your Company Should Be On

Social media has been prevalent in people’s lives for years now. As a business owner, you have to make the marketing decision on which platform can help your business the most and which to invest in.

The problem is, they can all look alike and are difficult to quantify. Lucky for you, we have a guide to the Big Five and what each is all about in order to help you with your marketing strategy.

Facebook:

Facebook is the largest social media platform with 728 million daily users. If your company wants to increase awareness of its brand and gain a following, you should get a Facebook Page.

Facebook potentially allows you to build a relationship with customers. Be conversational in your posts, as this news feed is about catching up and reconnecting with friends and family. When posting, try to keep it under 250 characters, it could increase your engagement by 60 percent. Pictures and links get more attention than status updates.

Twitter:

Twitter is for real-time updates. Your company can keep up with instant news and display small bits of information to your followers. Unlike other social media platforms, it has a 140 character limit and this limit optimizes people’s limited attention span. Twitter users don’t want to read paragraphs, they are looking for the point quickly.

This forces you to get to the root of your message, highlighting the most important aspect and choosing your words carefully. Twitter would be a good platform for your company if you have something to say often and want to reach out and respond to customers promptly. To reach even more people with your message include relevant hashtags.

Instagram:

Instagram is all about visually representing your brand or company. It is a friendly and personable platform and humanizes your company by showing the people behind the work. By sharing company pictures, videos and time-lapses you show what is going on within the business and you invite customers into your company.

Add a hashtag to the picture to enjoy being part of a bigger conversation and optimize your picture for searching. Instagram is a great platform for companies wanting to reveal what their brand represents, after all a picture is worth a 1,000 words.

LinkedIn:

LinkedIn is a social media platform geared towards professional networking and sharing industry information. Your company can create content about your industry and engage with others in similar work or who are interested in your industry.

It will allow your company to build awareness within a professional audience and share industry or company information that will lead to your company being at the forefront of the industry. You can also use this platform for recruiting and hiring as members keep up-to-date resumes here and it is quickly becoming a replacement for hard-copy resumes.

Google+:

Google+ is a platform that has its value in sharing content and optimizing content for searches. It also allows users to organize their contacts and specify what content goes to different contacts. Google+ is helpful for businesses looking to optimize their Google search results and organize and target specific contacts. Content in Google+ should be compelling and use graphics because it is a platform that can support long-text content, videos and photos. As of April 2015, Google has announced it is changing its strategy with Google+.

After years of trying to get the platform to catch on, it still hadn’t reached where it needed to be. Tons of people were signed up for it, but people weren’t actively using the social network aspect of it. Read more about why it failed, according to Google Insiders here.

When trying to choose a social media platform for your business to use, it is important to take into consideration which one would work best for your company.

Developing a strong social strategy helps to determine where you want to go and what you want to get out of social media. Just make sure to quantify your online presence to keep from investing too much time in a platform that doesn’t work for you.

Meredith Kisow is a senior at LSU majoring in Mass Communication with a concentration in public relations. Meredith enjoys reading in her spare time.   

Work with Catapult Creative Media Inc. Catapult Creative Media Inc. is a digital marketing and design agency serving clients over the United States but is proud to call Baton Rouge, Louisiana home. Founded in 2007, Catapult provides digital, social and mobile marketing solutions backed by relevant strategy and measurable results. Catapult works the web to their clients’ advantage, launching them to their next level of success.