Any business worth its salt these days has a strong and memorable presence on a number of social media platforms. Not every social network is suitable or applicable to every business, but there is at least one or two that every business can benefit from making use of – greatly so. It’s not necessarily true that the more social media platforms you’re on, the more successful your business will be – the key is to ascertain which social networks are right for your business and use them well. It’s better to have a solid and consistently engaging presence on two social networks as opposed to dabbling in five different ones and only having limited outreach.
Each social network you operate on must be approached differently, in that the content you create and share on each one should differ in some way – don’t just post the same things on every one, and if you do, make sure you vary the wording on each post. For example, pictures and photos do better on Instagram and Twitter (the latter because the retweet function will mean you gain more exposure to new audiences), whilst links to product pages usually do better on Facebook, and asking questions often works better on Twitter. However, there are no hard and fast rules for social media – it’s often a case of analysing each platform to see where your content would fit best.
Making every post count on all of your social platforms is another thing you should always focus on – don’t just post things for the sake of it. Post updates you think are interesting, thought-provoking or appealing to your target audiences, and try to steer clear of sharing inconsequential or irrelevant material, as it’s a waste of your time and your audience’s time.
Here are some of the more popular social networks, all of which can be very useful for businesses to one degree or another:
Instagram presents a great social networking opportunity for any business or brand that wishes to represent itself on a visual level. Instagram is a really straightforward social network: it’s just pictures and captions (and the latter are optional). I think this is one of the reasons it’s so popular – there’s no faffing about involved. Take a picture of something you like or want to share with people, and post it. Instagram allows brands’ products to speak for themselves – which is, after all, what all great products should do.
Clothing companies can really capitalise on Instagram, because it allows them to showcase their products for all to see – whether this is on stupidly good-looking models or just hung up on a nice wooden hanger.
American Apparel (USA) is a clothing company whose use of Instagram is exemplary – it posts between three and five pictures a day, usually covering both genders and all age ranges. It incorporates a lot of different scenery and greenery and a variety of models so that it’s never stale, and a lot of the photos are just of their staff wearing their clothes, from stores around the USA (an accompanying caption explaining who’s pictured and where they’re from adds a bit of individuality to each post, too).
Patagonia is another clothing company that capitalises on the endless world of visual potential Instagram offers. For those of you who don’t know what Patagonia does, they make highly functional and good-looking outdoor clothing (for extremely reasonable prices in comparison to a lot of other US-based outdoor brands). They also do Instagram in a much different and more innovative way than most brands. Unlike American Apparel, they tend not to take close-up photos of their products on models as such, they simply post pictures of the lifestyle their brand represents. Think breathtaking landscapes, snow-capped mountains, surfers in action, people who look like Ernest Hemingway fishing, log cabins and camper vans.
Both of the above-mentioned brands are big players on Instagram because of their genius approaches to it, with hundreds of thousands of followers each. The latter’s tendency to not take a salesy approach whatsoever is very interesting – though this in itself has no doubt led to a great increase in their sales as a whole. Their brand is for outdoor types who still very much aesthetically-concerned, and they know that their clothes sell themselves to an extent.
Any business – not just clothing brands – should certainly delve into Instagram if visually representing themselves would be advantageous and be of interest to their target audiences – this could be their products or the general day-to-day goings-on in their workplace, or anything, really. What all businesses must bear in mind is that the pictures they post on Instagram must at all times fall in line with the overall image (for want of a better phrase) that they are trying to get across. To unashamedly make use of a clapped-out cliche (because it’s true) – a picture says a thousand words.
Twitter is a social network which can improve any business, the benefit being that it opens you up to so many internet users. Having a good Twitter presence is something every business should look to establish and maintain – no matter what their nature. As with Instagram, clothing brands can really capitalise on Twitter – again they can post pictures, but can also provide links to their websites and even specific product pages.
Not only can clothing brands make the most of Twitter, though – any brand can, whether we’re talking food and drink proprietors, law or accountancy firms, independent shops or film distributors (it should go without saying that newspapers and magazines, or anything that publishes writing for that matter, should have a strong Twitter presence.) If you can command the attention of your followers on Twitter and thereby consistently engage your target audiences, the buzz around your company will increase dramatically and you’ll find that much more business comes your way as a result.
Every business should also look at Twitter as a way of attracting new customers, not just retaining existing ones by keeping them entertained now and then. Simply sharing an article or piece of writing with your Twitter followers can have a snowball effect where your followers are concerned; if someone retweets the article you’ve posted, one of their followers may read it and then look at your profile and realise that you are a business or brand which is of interest to them. The more retweets you get, the more new followers you’re likely to attract, so tweeting good content is key – whether that’s the hypothetical article mentioned above, an amusing image, a YouTube clip, or an interesting quote; basically, anything that’s likely to entertain people for any space of time whatsoever is bound to do well on there.
Manchester’s Cornerhouse cinema is an example of a business that uses Twitter well. It could be said that this is the cinema in Manchester where people who are specifically and heavily interested in cinema go to watch films, so their target audience is somewhat different to the likes of, say, Odeon. The Cornerhouse is much more selective about the films they screen in comparison to nationwide multiplexes, and they show a lot of classic films too, so it could be said that they have a firm grasp of the intellectual cinema market in not only Manchester, but the North West in general.
The Cornerhouse posts trailers and links to synopses of the films it’s showing on Twitter, as you’d expect, but it also goes a little further – they ask questions that prompt personal interaction from their followers (such as enquiring as to what everyone’s planning on watching at the weekend). Asking your followers questions on Twitter is a great way for any business to not only garner (good) attention, but it’s also a great way to get a better taste of what your customers are into.
The Cornerhouse currently has just over 41,000 followers and a Klout score of 79, both of which are extremely impressive figures for a three-screen alternative cinema in Manchester. It’s tapped into the market and constantly posts content on Twitter which both appeals to its target audience and encourages them to visit the cinema.
Twitter claims to have 241 million monthly users, so to say that it’s an important social network would be a massive understatement – virtually any business would benefit from a Twitter presence.
Facebook is certainly an avenue every business should consider. Of all the social networks mentioned in this blog post, it’s the oldest as it’s been around for a decade now (though it only really took off in 2006 when it was open to everyone worldwide over the age of 13). However, the rise of Twitter and Instagram over the last few years has arguably lessened the appeal of Facebook somewhat. Twitter and Instagram are extremely visual social networks – the latter always has been but the former became much more visually appealing in late 2013 when it incorporated ‘inline’ images and videos, meaning that they appeared on the Twitter timeline as opposed to just appearing as a link. All this said, Facebook is still an extremely big player in social media, and the audiences your business could reach on it should not be disregarded because of the fact that it no longer dominates the social media world in the way it used to.
Facebook is still very useful for a great many businesses. One clear example would be clothing brands – or any company which sells products, for that matter. Such businesses can post links to their products on Facebook, which appear on the timeline in a clear and aesthetically pleasing manner – often showing a picture of the product and its name. When Twitter introduced its inline images, though, this meant that they could rival Facebook in this regard.
Facebook is a very good social network for posting videos and similar entertaining material. Just as with product links, video links are displayed on the Facebook timeline distinctly and with a thumbnail of the video in question. Of course, not all business will post videos, but the ones that do may find Facebook very useful for that. Again, though, Twitter’s introduction of inline videos as well as images meant that the same thing could be done on the micro-blogging site. Furthermore, the retweet function on Twitter of course means that your posts can reach new audiences, whereas on Facebook you don’t really get that. Granted, there is a bar on the right hand side of the Facebook homepage informing you what your ‘friends’ have ‘liked’, but this bar is only small and nowhere near as impactful.
All this said, there are a supposed 1.23 billion active monthly users worldwide on Facebook, so there is certainly a lot of opportunity there.
LinkedIn reportedly has in excess of 275 million users around the world, and more than 15 million in Britain. Not only is LinkedIn yet another extremely popular social network you can gain exposure on, but as it is one which is specifically devoted to business and professional networking.
One of the main benefits of LinkedIn is the discussions feature, which allows you to monitor what is currently being talked about. If you can then somehow get involved in discussion – whether that’s commenting on the posts of others or starting your own discussion – your business will be seen as one which is on the ball and concerned with current trends and issues.
Other social networks
If you business deals overseas – or is looking to expand and venture overseas – you may want to see if the country in question has any social networks of its own which are very popular. Though Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook are the leading social networks throughout the world, in some countries there are other extremely popular ones which are specific to that country. For example, the Spanish social network Tuenti is said to be that country’s equivalent of Facebook, with millions of users.
Ending thought
It’s important to carefully consider each social network before deciding to establish your business on it. Effective social media campaigns need a lot of thought and planning, but they are becoming more and more essential to success due to the fact that the digital world is so prevalent in this day and age.
What do you think? Which social networks do you rely on as a business? Let us know by getting involved on Twitter at @theukseo.