2023 BEST SOCIAL CHANNELS FOR YOUR BUSINESS

Not Every Social Channel Is Best For Every Business. And Not Every Business Is Best For Every Social Channel. There Are Major Differences.  

According to Social Media Today, these were the top social channels you will want to use to promote your business:

Facebook
Instagram
TikTok
Pinterest
Reddit
Twitter
LinkedIn
Snapchat

And here is a great chart to go along with this list thanks to tech.co:

Social media platform usage stats

Yet, even though these are the probably the best channels in terms of numbers, they still are not all the channels, nor necessarily individually important for your type of business.  Let’s dig down a little deeper into what channels are best for you and what you are promoting.

Facebook

Facebook is still a gigantic bohemoth social channel globally in terms of massive numbers of people.  Yet it is not used by everybody and does have a more specific focus it is great at.  You could say it is great for promoting anything, but there are some things or methods it is not good at promoting. Facebook has taken on a life of it’s own.  I think what is more important is can you take whatever you are promoting and identify your demographics for that product or service, as opposed to “keywords”.  Facebook is all about selling to a specific segment.  There are really 2 Facebook social channels to consider, free stuff and paid.  

For free stuff, Facebook is really great at promoting for free to your friends and relatives and all the people you have connected with in your past. If you are a member of specific Facebook Groups this can be a little more enticing for you and your promoting your stuff. What you will find, and this will be true of almost all social channels is the free aspect of that channel is more about contribution by you than self promotion.  Many groups will allow you to participate in a subject matter, but when it comes down to directly promoting what you want to sell, they will not allow it.  You have to be crafty how you integrate what you do there. 

As far as local business, Facebook pages are always worth setting up and get you as much bang for your buck as Google Business listings and Google Maps in some cases.  

When it comes to paid Facebook ads, the ability to promote by a segment like young women, older men, people in Idaho is where the paid part of Facebook excels.  Just remember again if you need to promote a specific thing people are looking for like “house hold pots and pans”, the paid part of Facebook is pretty much not a good thing for this.

So, we have identified what Facebook is not good at, specific search keywords. But we have identified for your business what Facebook is good at.  It is a good place to develop community for your product or service or whatever you are building.  It is a great place to sell when you know the demographics of your buyer. It is enormous and can not be ignored as a social channel. Ignore it at your own peril.  It has so much value today that it is a central part of many social channel strategies. 


INSTAGRAM


Instagram seems to be all about images.  If you are in the following industries: fashion, art, salon, food, restaurant, bar, hotel, clothing or any industry where the images are important then this is an important social channel for your business. And more specifically you need to be really integrated well into the channel if you are a small business making sure your Instagram is up to date, follows all the right industry people and continues to pump out new content.

If you are a tech person, this is not exactly the best social channel to use and promote yourself with. Also, Instagram does not allow for outbound follow links, so it is not so easy to use it for increasing SEO or creating linkage.

Because Instagram is integrated with Facebook, it is possible to connect the two, so that when one gets a post and image the other automatically does the same.


TWITTER


Twitter is back in favor, especially in certain industries like journalism, high tech, education, online marketing, crypto and NFT, writing, other sophisticated industries and other industries which pride themselves on information and not image. While Tweets will use images, the core of Twitter is Tweeting text content. That content, with hashtags and mentions can get your Twitter social channel noticed by people within your industry.

Like all social channels, the biggest recommendation is to build community and not sell.  Selling on Twitter is frowned upon, but educating is not. You can teach your community and followers all about how your service or organization works. Also, in Twitter is ok to comment and interact with people within your industry. This is how you grow your following.

Twitter introduced Twitter Spaces which is a way to communicate through group audio events like talks.  

The real question is if you are not within the industries that are big on Twitter, is this worth putting your time into this social channel.  If you are not a visual medium it makes total sense.  Also, not sure how useful Twitter is for local businesses compared with a Facebook and other social.


TIKTOK

Not being a user of TikTok, I can’t really tell you which industries TikTok will be useful for.  Obviously it’s enough global reach is important.  If you are a visual business or do something visual like dancing, singing, interacting with a community then TikTok is a perfect social media for your business.


PINTEREST

Pinterest is used specifically to show images, many groups of images that all correlate.  Because Pinterest is specifically not a written content medium focus, it is definitely drawing a different audience than something like Twitter.  On the other hand if you are an artist, a museum, fashion, curator or love to collect stuff, then Pinterest is perfect for you and your related business.  


REDDIT

Reddit is an information junkies social medium. If you are into financial analysis, stocks, data, crypto, information it is a great platform for you to build followers.  However, it is not a great place to get followers for local business, fashion or any type of visual industry.


LINKEDIN

Linkedin is primarily good at connecting and communicating between people in business. That means it is a great B2B marketing platform.  For all other types of personal communications or political or anything that is not business it won’t have the same impact.  If you are looking to find resellers or partners in your business then Linkedin is terrific, though the paid version of Sales Navigator can be pricey.  There is a lot you can do for free, without paying an arm and a leg for making contacts.




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