If the shoe fits, wear it. This popular saying has a lot of applications, even in today’s technical age. If you’re a business owner, it applies to finding the right social media outlet for your company. The wrong “fit” can sink your social efforts. If you’ve looked around at social media platforms, you might find it difficult to determine what platform fits and which ones just don’t make sense for you. Today we’ll look at some of the top outlets and what kind of business might benefit from them.
For most businesses, Facebook and Twitter are a good start. In fact, if you do it well, these two platforms can cover your social bases for most types of business. This is because these outlets are easy to use, popular among adults and growing in mobile users. This means more and more people are downloading their apps and using them on the go. This puts your company in their pocket, so to speak.
So if you’re a plumber, auto repair shop, property management company or a realtor, you should have a Facebook, Twitter, or both. Facebook needs to be updated a few times a week, including some interaction with your friends. You can tips or share pictures and links, but you’re not expected to have lots of pictures and videos. People do expect you to keep your profile up to date with current hours, contact information and to check your messages. It pays to update more often on Twitter, keeping it short and sweet each time.
Now, if you have a very visual business, you might want to look at Instagram, Tumblr or Pintrest. These outlets are visually based and give you plenty of ways to share images of your work. People that follow you expect to see images, not just text updates. So, while these outlets don’t make sense for an attorney, they make sense for a custom bakery. Your line of service needs to match up with your social platform.
And while you might not really be a G+ user, or even have a Gmail account, your company will probably want one. While this outlet has notoriously low numbers of active users, it is owned by Google. Since they basically own the game of search these days, it pays to play ball with them. So start one and share similar information that you might on Facebook. .
There you go, a quick overview of selecting a social media outlet for your company. Keep in mind that one of the worst things you can do is start an account, post for a week and leave it dormant for months. So our final tip on on this is that no matter which outlet you select, make sure you use it! When you stop updating your account it makes people wonder if you’re still in business, much less a relevant option for them as a consumer!