Disclaimer: If you do not have time to keep a social media platform up, then you need to start by solving this issue first. A social media page that is outdated or inaccurate, will hurt you more than a haphazard delivery of content.
In years past, the easy answer was Facebook, but now there are more options and more questions to answer before moving forward.
Yes there are many platforms like Twitter, SnapChat, Instagram, Pinterest and so on, but do you need to care?
That depends on your customer base and target market(s).
When we say target market, we mean be specific. If your market is 18-20 year old woman looking to vacation to Cancun, then you will have a different marketing strategy, than if it is 40 year old married dads in the Portland Oregon area.
As an example, the first group will probably not see a Facebook ad, Instagram and SnapChat are probably better locations to spend ad money. The second group is probably on Facebook and your ad spend would do well. If they are a tie wearing professional, you may want to consider LinkedIn as a location for ad spending, but that probably will also depend on what you are selling.
This brings me to my next topic, which is know your product/service demographic. Business to business (B2B) versus business to consumer (B2C) will require different strategies, let alone if it is a product or service in the areas.
When you don’t know, ask your demographic. What we mean is actually ask those you are selling to, where they shop and spend time. Probably on their phone, but you can also ask about decision making.
Figuring out demographics can be confusing, so you can always google your product/service with the word demographic after it. Look for demographics options in social media advertising platforms and see which ones would match your customer base.
If you are still lost, hire a consultant or outsource this work.
When you are working with a small budget, many times you can’t afford to do the ad spend and have someone else do the work. If this is the case, you can look at hiring a consultant (like us) to help put together the strategy and maybe some basic coaching, but you spend the time executing the plan. This still cost some money, but can help your success and learning curve a great deal.
As a topic note, you may want to consider if the privacy issues that Facebook went thru has affected your demographics use of Facebook to see if you need to be shifting your ad spend to another platform or if you need to spend more into organic search optimization (SEO). Recent stats have shown search traffic increases since the privacy debacle. Whether that trend will last, time will tell.
We hoped this post has helped, good luck and please contact us for service or consultation if needed.