What Social Media Platform Should You Market On?
Every business owner asks themselves, “what social media platform should I market on”? One of the first things to look at is what type of marketing you’re looking to accomplish. Are you a business advertising to another business aka “B to B” (Business to Business)? Or are you advertising directly to your customers, aka “B to C” (Business to Consumer)? The answer will help to determine the best platform(s) for you to pursue marketing on.
As a business owner and entrepreneur you need to spend your time wisely. Obviously you should post all your videos directly to YouTube, however should you also post your videos to Linkedin?
If your company is a BtoB (Business to Business) organization then you should definitely be leveraging your videos on Linkedin as well. Linkedin is where business owners spend their time social media wise. For instance if you’re an accountant, and you work with both consumers and business owners, Linkedin would be a great space for you. Both groups tend to use Linkedin and would be open to videos on that platform.
However, if you sell purses, unless your target demographic is women business owners only, I wouldn’t spend too much time posting on Linkedin. Something you also want to remember is 80% of the people on the Linkedin platform watch the videos on silent, so you want to make sure you add closed captions to the videos you post.
Learn how to add closed captions to Linkedin:
Facebook is great for both BtoB and BtoC (Business to Consumer) organizations who want to market to people in the 35-65 year old demographic. This platform is where people, in my opinion, waste a lot of time, so some of that time should be spent on looking at your videos! A key statistic to remember is that 80% of the people on Facebook are watching the videos on silent. Make sure your videos are heavy with text graphics, or at least have closed captions.
Learn more about Facebook video marketing:
Instagram is a great platform to use if you’re a BtoC business marketing primarily to the 18-35 year old demographic. Yes, the demographic is starting to spread above 35, however it’s still primarily a younger, more millennial platform. At the time of this blog post, Instagram still only allows videos to be 1 minute or less, which honestly is plenty of time to get your message across, especially to a young audience who has grown up with :15 second ads. If you feel you need more time, you may want to invest some time in the InstagramTV platform. Here your videos can be up to one hour, however the video must be in a vertical 1080 by 1920 aspect ratio. This can be easily done if you use your phone to record video or the new GoPro. It can be harder to leverage that same vertical video on other platforms though. Our suggestions are to create horizontal content and edit for vertical, or create unique vertical content that you’re only posting to InstagramTV.
Pinterest is a great platform to post videos on if you’re a BtoC company marketing to women 35 years and older. Now I am not 35 yet, and I spend even more time on Pinterest than any other platform, so I can attest that if you’re targeting women consumers of any adult age, Pinterest is where you want to be. You can either pin your videos from YouTube or your blogs that have videos on there. If you have a blog it’s going to be best to link to your blog directly, since that is going to get people to your website faster and easier than if you were to just pin the video. I love Pinterest as a user and if you’re a BtoC company, you’ll love it too.
Recap
So, think about where your customers are and who are your customers to determine the best platforms to market on. You don’t need to market on every platform. Only market on the ones that are going to be most beneficial to you and your business. What types of experience have you had posting your content to different social media platforms? Let us know in the comments below!
