Social media is all around us these days. You can’t watch a football game or a new episode of your favorite show without being bombarded by hashtags, and millions of Americans are constantly updating their Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and posting photos to Instagram. The social media domination might make you feel hesitant to get involved with any social media platform; but the truth is, ignoring social media would be a huge mistake for your business.
Because social media is such an integral part of the average American’s life, it has become an excellent platform for generating leads. And each social media site gives you access to a different kind of audience. Let’s breakdown the most popular sites, so you can decide which one is right for your business:
Facebook is the only social media site that has ever had a movie made about it, and for good reason: the multi-billion dollar giant is easily the most popular social media site in the world. More than 1.35 billion people use Facebook on a monthly basis, and 864 million of those people log in every single day. Facebook is the undisputed king of social media.
Because of its dominance, Facebook is an appropriate choice for pretty much any business. Everyone from your Aunt Sally in Wichita to your 22-year-old cousin Jimmy has a Facebook account, so you can target various audiences.
However, one major negative aspect of Facebook: your business page posts have a severely limited organic reach. Any given post will reach only a small percentage of your followers. If you want to expand a post’s reach, you have to pay for it.
If Facebook is the social media king, then Twitter is the rambunctious prince that keeps getting photographed by the tabloids. Whenever there’s a big event, major news story or celebrity death, you can bet it will be all over Twitter. The social media site thrives on the instant nature of tweets, allowing anyone to express their immediate thoughts in 140-characters or less (not always a good thing). More than a few celebrities have gotten into trouble due to their ill-conceived tweets.
Unlike Facebook, Twitter doesn’t limit who gets to see your tweets; anyone who follows you will see them. However, Twitter is like a river: the flow doesn’t stop, and the current can whisk your tweets by quickly before anyone has a chance to read them.
Twitter requires more dedication than Facebook, because you’ll find more success if you tweet multiple times per day. The site also skews younger than Facebook, so it’s an ideal platform for reaching those coveted high-spending younger folks.
Unlike most social media sites, LinkedIn has never been about recreational socializing – it’s always been very business oriented. Because of this, it’s become the preferred site for business professionals and executives. The site itself boasts that executives from every Fortune 500 company use LinkedIn.
Because of its corporate audience, LinkedIn is the perfect vehicle for B2B lead generation. When you’re a B2B company, you want to be able to target decision makers: those that can make a deal without having to seek approval from a higher-up. With LinkedIn, you can target these decision makers specifically.
However, unless you have a mutual connection on the site, you will have to pay for the privilege of targeting specific LinkedIn users.
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