Social media is a brilliant way to gain worthwhile brand awareness and connect with your target audience nationally and globally. Although it can be tempting to create an account on every social media website out there, it's best to do your research first to create a strategy that will be the most beneficial for your business.
Average age: 25 - 34
Gender: 52% Women 48% Men
Average Education level: University
Average Income: £23,000 or less
Facebook remains the world’s most well-known and popular social media platform. It's a business favourite due to its huge audience, useful marketing features, and ease of use. If you want to reach the masses, Facebook will point you in the right direction as everyone and their dog has an account!
The best thing about Facebook is that you can refine your target audience right down to their interests which really helps to bring the right people to your business. However, you need to be prepared to have a big budget to reach a large audience.
Also, it isn’t the best platform to target teens and young adults as recent studies show that they are more likely to use Instagram and Snapchat.
Case Study
Nutella's Facebook page perfectly captures what the brand is all about, and always incorporates the well-loved product with exciting visual content. Jumping on the popularity of Facebook videos they've shared creative Nutella recipes for their customers to enjoy.
Stats: Pew Research Centre
Average age: 18 – 29
Gender: 38% Female 26% Male
Education level: Some Higher Education
Average Income: £23,000 or less
If your company has great visuals, Instagram should be your go-to platform. Travel, food, fashion, beauty, lifestyle and luxury brands are the most popular on this social network as they can portray an aspirational lifestyle to their followers.
Corporate Instagram accounts are mostly driven by popular influencers who usually consist of models, celebrities, bloggers and public figures that share images of themselves with products or using services. Instagram hashtags are also a great way to spread user-generated awareness of a new product or campaign.
Case Study
Launched in 2014, Calvin Klein's #MyCalvins campaign is the pinnacle of Instagram success. Using Justin Bieber as the model for their new underwear collection, the brand recruited lots of famous influencers to pose in their Calvin Klein's at home with the tag #MyCalvins. This reached a global audience of 409 million, with 32k users joining in with their own #MyCalvins posts in the first two weeks.
Calvin Klein's Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram followings skyrocketed by 2.2 million, 1.8 million, and 1 million. The new collection had completely sold out globally and traffic to the website went up by 500%.
Stats: Pew Research Centre & ITBAverage age: 18 - 29
Gender: Female (25%) Men (24%)
Average Education level: University
Average Income: £58,000+
This year Twitter turned 11 and has wildly grown in popularity in the past few years. The epitome of twitter authority is having a verified tick, as every notable person on the network has one.
Business Twitter accounts must provide responsive customer service, as many customers turn to Twitter to complain or ask questions about a product/service.
Twitter is a great way to make business connections, especially with twitter chats that bring together people from the same industry.
This is great for SMEs (small medium enterprises) who are just putting their roots down and need those all-important contacts to climb the ladder.
If you have a lot of content, e.g. articles, this is also a great network to use as you can share your content which can reach a much larger audience if it’s retweeted and liked.
Case Study
The Innocent drinks account h
as consistently stuck to their fun, loveable brand voice. Rather than pushing smoothie sales, they engage their customers with entertaining random tweets that set them apart from their competitors. This has been very effective with 283,000 followers and thousands of likes and retweets.
Stats: Pew Research Centre
Recode Twitter Daily Active Users
Average age: 18 – 29
Gender: Female (27%) Male (31%)
Average Education level: University
Average Income: £58,000 +
This is the social platform for professionals, as 35% of employed adults are users. According to LinkedIn graduates and students are their fastest growing demographic with 40million of and counting on the network.
LinkedIn is best for advertising jobs, making important business contacts, monitoring competitors, and giving a snapshot into your company culture.
Anything else that is posted on the website/app should be very industry focused with essays on the state of the sector, updates and success stories.
Case Study
Disney adapted to the platform by sharing business insider articles, and praising and sharing the experiences of their employees on their page. Research shows that employees are 70% more likely to engage than outsiders, so it's a good idea to keep them onside! They also advertise job vacancies, giving hints and tips for a successful application, that interest LinkedIn job searchers.
Stats: Pew Research Centre
YouTube
Average age: 35 - 44
Gender: Female (38%) Male (62%)
Average Education level: University
YouTube is an obvious choice if your business has a lot of video content. It’s very competitive as over 300 hours of video are uploaded every minute, so you must make sure that your videos stand out.All the most successful corporate YouTube channels have branded cover images, links to their other social accounts all relating to their current campaign.
Like Instagram, influencers are frequently on YouTube by big brands as this is where most of the famous bloggers started from, such as ‘Zoella’, who create the buzz for new products.
If you’re in e-commerce, retail, fashion, beauty or lifestyle it can be more effective to sponsor vloggers to feature your products in their videos, who have loyal followings (sometimes in the millions) than doing it yourself.
Don’t feel like you must create a YouTube account if you have nothing to put on it, it looks worse to have an abandoned empty channel.
Case Study
PlayStation's YouTube channel includes game trailers, gameplay and videos on the making of the games. The branding of PlayStation is seen throughout with the colour scheme and logo, and the videos are put into categories which make it easy for users to find what they're looking for. With over 5 million subscribers they have one of the most popular business channels on the website!
Stats : Fortune Lords
Average age: 18 -29
Gender: Women (80%) Men (20%)
Average Education level: Some higher education/University
Average Income: £58,000 +
Pinterest is best for e-commerce, food and drink, travel, DIY, and art. With a huge 80% of users being female, it’s not the best platform to choose if you’re targeting men!
Although it’s thought of as a website for older women, 67% of their users are under the age of 40.
If you want to create a virtual mood board, for example, outfit ideas or party food, this is the perfect platform to do this on. Due to its aspirational style, it looks good to have your products pinned to other people’s boards as they can act as a wish list.
Case Study
Tesco Ireland's Pinterest boards of nicely presented food and meal ideas led to higher engagement and traffic. This also came at a lower price as CPC (cost-per-click) was 36% lower, and 49% more pinners viewed their posts than on other social media platforms.
Snapchat
Average age: 18-24
Gender: Female (70%) Male (30%)
Average Education level:
Average Income:
Snapchat is very popular with young people and is the only big social network that is purely mobile-based. Although the
A company Snap account would only be advised if you are aiming at a young audience and your content is light-hearted, brief, and entertaining. A snapchatting funeral director would not be a good idea.
Snapchat has unique advertising features that you won’t find elsewhere. From creating a branded face filter, making a geofilter for your office, or a user-generated story – the possibilities are endless!
Case Study
Cisco’s recruitment campaign is a brilliant example of how a corporate business can inject some fun to interest young people in the company. You can watch one of their Snapchat stories here.
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