Which social media platform is best for your business niche?
Whether your business is involved in sustainable construction, eco e-commerce, ethical fashion or providing services - you’ll need to consider which social media platform is best for your business niche.
When it comes to tailoring a social media plan, it can be overwhelming to choose which platform to start with.
Your digital marketing strategy and content strategy should help to guide you in the right direction. If done right, your social media marketing can help you achieve organic digital marketing results that grow your brand awareness, reputation and result in increased sales.
Dependent on your product or service, different platforms are better for different things. It’s all about understanding your target audience, their social media habits, and where your business fits in. That’s why digital marketing for eco-friendly businesses is often best achieved by digital marketing agencies who have the experience and skills to create engaging content that drives achieves results.
Let’s run through the who’s who of social media platforms to get you in front of the right people.
Adapting the top 6 social media platforms to your business niche
Below we look at the top 6 social media platforms used by businesses and how these can be strategically adapted to suit your particular business niche.
Not every business will need to have a presence on each platform. Below we also look at how to choose which social media platforms to be on, depending on the niche you work in.
Facebook is one of the most well-known social media platforms available with the evenest spread of users across age groups than any other platform.
Currently, there are 2.79 billion active Facebook users, with most adults logging in every day. Seniors (considered over the age of 55 years old) are the smallest group, however, they are also the fastest-growing Facebook age demographic. Facebook is also the favourite social media network to engage with among seniors.
People in emerging markets are more likely to directly message Facebook businesses pages, meaning if you have an active Facebook account, expect to be sent some enquiries via messenger. As a general rule of thumb, the content shared on Facebook tends to be consistent with the same kind of content one would post on Instagram- engaging and easy to digest.
Of course, the biggest positive of Facebook from a marketing perspective is the use of Facebook ads, which allow businesses to target a very specific audience with specifically tailored content.
While Facebook ads do have an incredible ability to drive sales, the social side is more about conversations and building relationships with your client base.
Facebook is designed to be an online community, so think of your Facebook page as your shop front. You want to be open, friendly, and inviting. Facebook is great for businesses to interact directly with their customers about their products and/ or services and vice versa.
Brands that are targeting the millennial generation benefit the most from connecting with Instagram. 25–34-year-olds makes up the biggest age demographic with 18–24-year-olds very close behind. These young users engage with Instagram multiple times a day and are more likely to be active on various other forms of social media if they are on Instagram.
The important thing to remember about Instagram is that is first and foremost a visual platform. It is designed to look visually appealing, and so whatever content you upload needs to have an aesthetic element to it.
This can help refine if your business belongs on Instagram or not and whether you have the resources to create content that looks good. Instagram also utilises various algorithms that are designed to ensure users are seeing content from the accounts they engage with the most.
These algorithms update regularly, so it is important to keep up to date with these changes to ensure your business is doing all the things Instagram ‘likes’. Instagram also favours accounts that engage with other accounts, so spending time just going on Instagram commenting and liking as a business is beneficial.
Like Facebook, Instagram is best for businesses to interact with their customers for both products and services.
TikTok
TikTok is a relatively new social media platform compared to the other networks, but it is not to be underestimated especially if you are trying to target a younger audience. There are currently 689 million active monthly users with the most popular age demographic consisting of 16–24-year-olds.
TikTok’s best feature is its ability to set rapid trends, which when done properly, can catapult a business. These trends also tend to translate over to Instagram very quickly. Despite this, TikTok remains largely unused by many businesses.
Most users log on to TikTok to find entertaining and funny content, so this should be a consideration whether this type of light-hearted content is aligned with your business’s message and communication strategy. It is primarily a destination for short-form mobile videos, so thinking about whether your business has the resources to produce this is a must.
There is significant potential for influencer marketing within TikTok, so if producing content is something that your business struggles with, this could be a great option if paired with the right fit. Like Facebook and Instagram, TikTok is best for business-to-customer (B2C) interaction.
LinkedIn is the go-to for business to business marketing. The key demographic of LinkedIn are working professionals with a wider age range of 26-55-year-olds.
A well-optimised business page can increase visibility among the people looking for what your company is offering. It is also a place for prospective customers to learn about your brand more formally than other social media platforms.
A detailed LinkedIn account is a good place to list your company’s achievements, successful campaigns and anything that you are proud of as a company. It also provides an overview of the people working within the company so that the relevant people can be reached.
The content that is shared on LinkedIn tends to be more research, as it is a platform often used to showcase a business’s expertise within a certain field.
LinkedIn is a great social network for lead generation, especially business to business strategies that are seeking targeted and motivating audiences for their campaign.
Twitter’s audience is a lot more mature than Facebook and Instagram, with the largest and most active age group consisting of 30-49-year-olds.
It is a place where users gather quick news, see what is trending and interact with others. Tweets can contain photos, links, videos and text making them quite useful for several businesses use who have compelling photographs or interesting news.
Twitter is used as one of the leading sources of social discovery and newsworthy events, with the highest followed accounts being academics, politicians, and celebrities.
As a Twitter user the aim is for your tweet to be retweeted (the action of another user resharing your tweet), therefore as a business you must consider what type of information and content a potential follower would want to share. Retweets represent 78% of a brand’s user engagement.
The Discovery tab is a great place for businesses to source relevant people and keep up to date with news within their industry. Twitter is useful for both business-to-business (B2B) marketing and business-to-customer (B2C) marketing. Twitter’s new CEO, Elon Musk, is developing new Twitter features including the controversial ‘blue tick’ and various paid advertising models which are expected to be revealed soon.
YouTube
YouTube boasts an average use of 2 billion people per month, just shy of Facebook’s 2.79 billion, however, this doesn’t take into account that you can watch YouTube without being logged in so is likely much higher.
Unlike other social media platforms where user age demographics tend to drop off with the older users, YouTube maintains the most consistently active users across pretty much every age demographic. It is the second most visited website after Google ever and hosts content from just about every single subject you can think of.
While YouTube is one of the most effective social media platforms as a business, it is also one of the most time-consuming and resource-dependent. Videos with the word “beginner” in the title increased more than 50% in 2020, largely due to Covid’s stay-at-home inspirations.
This is an important tip to remember for those thinking about which themes to target for ad potential. There is proven potential with users being more likely to buy products or services from content on YouTube, and it remains an effective tool for both business-to-customer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) marketing.
Final thoughts on which social media channels are right for your business
Building an engaged and thriving community on social media takes time and effort. And it requires consistent posting and engagement to keep your community feeling valued and connected.
Digital marketing for small business Australia can have many positive business results, but it’s important to be strategic when choosing which platforms to create a presence around.
At Green Socials, we help sustainable brands like yours create rockstar social media marketing strategies. That includes analysing which platforms are best suited to your particular niche. Our diverse range of social media agency services includes social media content creation, Canva design templates, 1-on-1 social media coaching sessions, and managing community engagement.
Our tailored eco-friendly marketing packages are suitable for small, medium and larger organisations. If you want to grow your eco business online using social media marketing, we’d love to hear more about your business growth goals and how we can help you action them!
