Introduction
3.96 billion people - over half the world's population - use social media, spending an average of 2 hours and 24 minutes a day according to data compiled by Digitalmarketing.org.
Are you using this powerful channel to help promote your business in today's challenging marketplace?
Read on to learn more about social media and how you can use it to help meet your business goals.
What is social media?
Definition
According to Wikipedia, "social media are interactive digitally-mediated technologies that facilitate the creation or sharing/exchange of information, ideas, career interests, and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks."
Major Channels
The major social media channels are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. Other popular social media channels include Pinterest, Snapchat and LinkedIn.
Emerging Channels
Smaller social media channels that are on the rise include: Twitch, Houseparty, Goodreads, Vero, Nextdoor, and Medium.
Why should I use social media for my business?
You may be asking yourself, why do I need to use social media, I own a store, I don't sell online.
Regardless of how you sell, with its high visibility, low cost, content options, extensive reach, and marketing effectiveness, social media is a useful tool to promote your business.
Visibility
For more and more people, if it isn't on the Internet, it doesn't exist. Even when they are shopping locally because they use the Internet to find local businesses.
In fact, according to BrightLocal's 2020 local consumer survey, "In 2020, 93% of US consumers searched online for a local business. From these, 34% searched every day, while 73% searched weekly (up from 70%)."
The bigger your Internet presence, the more visible you are to local prospects and customers. One way to increase your presence online is to use social media to promote your business.
Cost
Organic posts to social media platforms have no cost beyond the production of the shared content and with high-quality images, video, and audio as close as your smartphone production costs can be extremely low.
Content Options
Social media posts can include images, video, audio, and text, practically anything you can include in television, radio, and/or print ads can be used in your social media posts.
Reach
Out of the 328.2 million people in the US, 244 million people used social media as of 2018. Social media reaches 74% of the population of the US.
Effectiveness
According to a survey conducted by social media marketing software platform Buffer, 73% of marketers surveyed found social media marketing to be somewhat effective (43.4%) or very effective (29.6%) in marketing their respective businesses.
What social media channels should I use?
With so many social media channels to choose from, it may feel overwhelming. How do you know what social media to use for your business?
Key considerations when choosing a social media channel to promote your store include: target market, channel demographics, and the type of content you want to share.
Target market
Before choosing a social media channel, identify your target market and create a basic profile or buyer persona to represent the type of customer that you want to target with your marketing efforts.
You can create a simple buyer persona by thinking of your best customers in terms of size and frequency of purchases from your business and answering the following questions about them:
What is their gender?
How old are they?
What is their income level?
Where do they live?
What do they need?
When and where do they need it?
How do you help them?
After creating a buyer persona, you will have a basic understanding of the customers and prospects that make up your target market.
The next step is to consider the demographics of the various social media channels to find the channel the best aligns with your target market.
Channel Demographics
Demographics are defined by Merriam-Webster as "the statistical characteristics of human populations (such as age or income) used especially to identify markets."
Different social media channels tend to appeal to different groups of people based on the following demographics: age, gender, and income.
Social media software company Khoros has compiled the following demographic data for the major social media channels:
Active Users
2.7 billion monthly active users
Age
86% of people ages 18-29 use Facebook
77% of people ages 30-49 use Facebook
51% of people ages 50-65 use Facebook
34% of people that are 65+ years old use Facebook
Income
85% of households with an annual income of less than $30,000 use Facebook
88% of households with an annual income between $30k-$60k use Facebook
81% of households with an annual income between $60k-$70k use Facebook
88% of households with an annual income between $70k-$80k use Facebook
86% of households with an annual income between $80k-$100k use Facebook
86% of households with an annual income above $100,000 use Facebook
Gender
54% of Facebook users are female
46% of Facebook users are male
Active Users
1 billion monthly active users
Age
67% of people ages 18-29 use Instagram
47% of people ages 30-49 use Instagram
23% of people ages 50-64 use Instagram
8% of people that are 65+ years old use Instagram
Income
44% of households with an annual income of less than $30,000 use Instagram
45% of households with an annual income between $30k-$60k use Instagram
36% of households with an annual income between $60k-$70k use Instagram
55% of households with an annual income between $70k-$80k use Instagram
46% of households with an annual income between $80k-$100k use Instagram
60% of households with an annual income above $100,000 use Instagram
Gender
51% of Instagram users are female
49% of Instagram users are male
Active Users
330 million monthly active users
Age
38% of people ages 18-29 use Twitter
26% of people ages 30-49 use Twitter
17% of people ages 50-64 use Twitter
7% of people that are 65+ years old use Twitter
Income
23% of households with an annual income of less than $30,000 use Twitter
36% of households with an annual income between $30k-$74,999 use Twitter
41% of households with an annual income above $75,000 use Twitter
Gender
50% of Twitter users are female
50% of Twitter users are male
Active Users
322 million monthly active users
Age
34% of people ages 18-29 use Pinterest
35% of people ages 30-49 use Pinterest
27% of people ages 50-65 use Pinterest
15% of people that are 65+ years old use Pinterest
Income
18% of households with an annual income of less than $30,000 use Pinterest
27% of households with an annual income between $30k-$74,999 use Pinterest
41% of households with an annual income above $75,000 use Pinterest
Gender
70% of Pinterest users are female
30% of Pinterest users are male
Active users
LinkedIn has 260 million monthly active users
Age
21% of people ages 18-24 use LinkedIn
60% of people ages 25-34 use LinkedIn
17% of people ages 35-54 use LinkedIn
3% of people that are 55+ years old use LinkedIn
Income
27% of households with an annual income of less than $30,000 use LinkedIn
3.8% of households with an annual income between $30k-$60,000 use LinkedIn
40% of households with an annual income between $60k-$70k use LinkedIn
49% of households with an annual income between $70k-$80k use LinkedIn
50% of households with an annual income between $80k-$100k use LinkedIn
60% of households with an annual income above $100,000 use LinkedIn
Gender
43% of LinkedIn users are female
57% of LinkedIn users are male
YouTube
Active Users
2 billion monthly active users
Age
81% of people ages 15-25 use YouTube
71% of people ages 26-35 use YouTube
67% of people ages 36-45 use YouTube
66% of people ages 46-55 use YouTube
58% of people that are 56+ years old use YouTube
Income
83% of households with an annual income of less than $30,000 use YouTube
81% of households with an annual income between $30k-$60k use YouTube
80% of households with an annual income between $60k-$70k use YouTube
80% of households with an annual income between $70k-$80k use YouTube
82% of households with annual income between $80k-$100k use YouTube
89% of households with an annual income above $100,000 use YouTube
Gender
Over 50% of YouTube users are female
Snapchat
Active Users
Snapchat has 381 million monthly active users
Age
53% of people ages 15-25 use Snapchat
34% of people ages 26-35 use Snapchat
18% of people ages 36-45 use Snapchat
11% of people ages 46-55 use Snapchat
4% of people that are 56+ years old use Snapchat
Income
32% of households with an annual income of less than $30,000 use Snapchat
33% of households with an annual income between $30k-$60k use Snapchat
31% of households with an annual income between $60k-$70k use Snapchat
42 of households with an annual income between $70k-$80k use Snapchat
39% of households with an annual income between $80k-$100k use Snapchat
39% of households with an annual income above $100,000 use Snapchat
Gender
61% of Snapchat users are female
38% of Snapchat users are male
Content
While the various social media platforms can all handle most types of content, certain platforms are better with some types of content than others and the type of content you expect to share can help guide your channel selection.
Business News and Thought Leadership
If you are working to establish yourself as a leading expert in the fashion or gift giving industry using whitepapers or blog posts, LinkedIn is especially well-suited to the content.
New Products
If you are sharing the launch of a new product or service for your business with an image or short video, Instagram or Pinterest would be good platforms.
If you are curating a list of gift ideas or collection of websites using hyperlinks, Twitter and Facebook are good choices.
What should I say?
The key to successful social media posting is creating and posting content that is interesting and relevant to your customers and prospects. Be sure to keep content aligned with the tone of your business.
Possibilities include:
employee features
new products
live video of special in store events
behind the scenes looks
inspirational quotes
industry news
social media only offers and discounts
infographics
customer photos
testimonials
tips and tricks
surveys
What shouldn't I say?
Perhaps even more important than what you should say in your business social media is what you shouldn't.
While it is your business and you can certainly say what you want, if your goal is to maximize profits, alienating customers and prospects isn't going to help you.
Here are some things you should avoid posting in your company's social media to get the most benefit from your efforts:
complaints about customers
complaints about employees
angry rants
divisive political opinions
religious rants
fake news
trashing the competition
personal drama
party photos
anything illegal
risque photos or content
anything irrelevant to your audience
How should I say it?
Each social media platform has specifications regarding text, video, image, and audio files that need to be followed to ensure that the content will be displayed and perform effectively.
Social media platforms constantly evolve and change their specifications, check out the "Always Up-to-Date Guide to Social Media Image Sizes" blog post from SproutSocial for the latest specs.
How often should I say it?
One of the key components to the successful use of social media in marketing your business is regular posting to your social media channels of choice.
Great! So what is regular posting?
Here are some guidelines for the major social media channels from popular visual social media blogger Louise Myers.
The minimum number of business Facebook posts recommended are 3 per week, with the ideal being 1 per day.
Recommended at least once per day to Instagram, with 1 to 2 per day as the sweet spot.
The posting frequency for Twitter is higher than the other channels with 3 per day minimum with 15 per day suggested.
Pinterest also should be posted to more frequently with 3 per day minimum with 11 per day suggested.
LinkedIn postings should be at a minimum 2 per week, with one daily recommended for more effectiveness.
How can I grow my local social media following?
Clearly, the larger your social media following, the more customers and prospects your social media messaging can reach.
The following tactics can help you to build your social media following and amplify your social media marketing messages.
Giveaways and Contests
Giveaways allow prospects and customers to enter a drawing for prizes by following your social media channel and/or sharing a post with their network.
Contests require entrants to compete for a prize. Social media contests typically ask entrants to create original content - photos, videos, essays, etc. - around a product or service that can be shared via the social media channel hosting the content.
Discounts
Giving a one-time discount to customers and prospects for following your social media channel(s) is a great way to grow your following.
Personality
Your customers come into your shop for a lot of reasons, price, selection, location, etc. - but don't undervalue the personality of your store and make sure that your social media captures and shares your businesses personality through your posts.
Signage
Be sure to include signage on your door, in your store window, and at your point of sale to make customers and prospects aware of your social media presence and encourage them to follow you on social media.
Resources
Some great resources to help you with education, strategy, content production, publishing, and measurement include:
Education and Strategy
Content Production
Publishing and Measurement
Summary
Now you have a solid foundation in the basics of social media.
You understand what it is, why you should use it, what types of content to embrace and avoid, how often to post, and some of the tools and resources available to help you educate yourself, develop strategy, create content, publish, and measure outcomes.
Your next step is to take the plunge and begin your social media marketing journey.