Introduction to Social Media Platforms
Social Media Platforms for Business Use
The main goal of any business is to attract and increase the number of customers. Your social media platforms can be used as a highly effective sales and marketing tool. They provide new ways to reach customers and market the business’ brand. Rather than just selling to your customers, you need to engage and build a relationship with them.
Anybody with access can operate social media platforms. Most people now have mobile phones, which has made access to social media platforms extremely easy. By using social networks, businesses can display their publicity, brand or advertisement on these platforms as often as they choose.
Social Media Platforms and Channels
It is important to recognise that no single social media platform is going to be enough for your social media functions. This is because it’s extremely unlikely that your potential customers use only one of the social media tools exclusively. Cross-promoting your social media accounts can extend the reach of content. In addition, just like the rest of your online presence, your different social media platforms should be regularly updated.
Facebook is the biggest social network on the planet with 1.3 billion users. Therefore, it’s important that people are able to quickly find you and connect. This means you should take the time to fill out the sections on your profile carefully, including lots of information about your company such as who you are, what you do and why they should care.
Many photographs are needed to make a profile appealing. These can be added through posts, or added all at once to an album. This will immediately add bulk to your profile.
Producing a professional quality video is challenging, therefore unless you can create a good looking video, avoiding these would be a good idea.
Your Facebook Business profile can be used to direct traffic to your website. Links to your website can be posted onto your wall where it will be seen by your Facebook following. Sections of text from your website can be inserted into the post, providing the reader with information of what they’ll find when clicking on the link.
We recommend posting on Facebook at least 3 times a week to get the most out of your profile. These posts can be links to your website, images/videos or sections of informative text. You can also help your Facebook profile by asking visitors to create a post, giving reviews of their experience with you.
Twitter is a microblogging site. While it is similar to blogging, you are limited to 140 characters per tweet. We recommend using your company name as your Twitter name to ensure there is no confusion as to who you are. Furthermore, you should also add a short bio to explain your company, and why people should follow you. Your Twitter bio follows this microblogging style as it is limited to 160 characters.
Users have the ability to pin a Tweet to your profile which will be one of the first things a visitor will see. Twitter also has the capability to respond to @mentions and direct messages in real-time, enabling you to be on top of your customer support.
A Tweets life span is generally around 20 minutes. This means your followers will be unlikely to see and interact with this tweet after this period of time. Studies show that the more you tweet on this social network, the more interaction you receive.
To get the most out of this social media platform we suggest tweeting at least 3 times a day. Tweets can be anything such as short captions, images and links to your website. These tweets need not include text, images and links in all of them. However, people are more likely to interact with your Tweets if there is some visual communication.