Social media consumption has skyrocketed in the past decade. There are now almost four billion active users of social media and the average person spends 2.5 hours on social networking or messaging every day.

If you’re a business owner, there is no doubt that social media is an amazing way for you to expand your reach and grow your audience. In fact, social media is a key aspect of any effective digital marketing strategy. Whether you have an internal marketing team or you outsource your marketing to a professional company like Digital Marketing Service Pro, you can experience rapid growth and success by using the power of social media.

With new social media platforms appearing every year, it can get overwhelming trying to be present on every one of them. It’s often easier for brands to focus their attention on just a few platforms to avoid spreading themselves too thinly. If you’re unsure which platform is best for your business, you must first identify your target demographic.

Any digital marketer will preach the importance of defining who your target audience is before you do anything else. As a brand, you need to know exactly who you are trying to reach. You need to identify what type of people would benefit the most from using your products or services. To identify your target audience, you need to create a buyer persona. This is a representation of your ideal customer and it’s based on your previous market research through questionaries, surveys, and interviews.

Once you’ve built a detailed picture of the people you’re trying to reach, you can base your social media content around your buyer persona to ensure you’re creating content that will resonate with the right people.

Now you’ve perfected your ideal customer, you can start to brainstorm which social media platforms will best suit this type of person. Where is your target demographic? Which social media channels are your customers most active on?

To make your research a little easier, here is a breakdown of each social media platform so you can determine which ones are right for your brand.

Instagram 

Instagram is one of the most popular platforms nowadays. With 80% of its users following at least one brand account, it’s the perfect place to be if you’re looking to grow a loyal audience. Predominantly, Instagram users are between the ages of 18-35, so if your ideal customer lies within this age range, you need to be active on here!

Instagram has been a major player in accelerating the growth of thousands of small businesses. If you’re a start-up owner looking to boost your brand awareness and spark some initial growth in your business, posting regularly on Instagram can really help. The platform enables photo and video sharing, and it now has a stoppable tags feature, which enables you to tag your own products in your posts. Incredibly, the platform receives around 130 million clicks on commercial posts.

Facebook 

Facebook has been around for almost two decades, but it is the largest social media platform with over 2 billion active users. It is extremely business-friendly, with its business pages now enabling you to include your mission statement, product catalog, and customer reviews.

The platform has simple built-in paid advertising tools that enable business owners to check their advertisement’s analytics. This makes it easy to check which of your posts are being well received by your target audience.

Twitter 

Twitter is known as one of the more controversial platforms, but it can still be beneficial for business owners to increase brand awareness.

With over 500 million tweets being posted every day, you can use Twitter as a microblogging network to interact with hundreds of consumers and make genuine connections with your audience.

The outspoken nature of Twitter gives you the opportunity to gain truthful feedback on your products or services. You can use this feedback to refine your offerings and pivot according to your audience’s demands.

LinkedIn 

LinkedIn is seen as a more formal platform, but it is still classed as social media. It provides a great chance for you to connect with other businesses or find highly qualified employees. Approximately 50% of its users have a college degree or higher, and there are around 55 job applications being submitted on the platform every second.

If your target audience is high earners that earn a decent wage, or if you’re looking for potential business partners, LinkedIn will be a viable choice for you.

Suggested:

The Dos and Don’ts of LinkedIn marketing.

Complete guide to using LinkedIn Live.

Ways to Market your Online Business on Social Media.