How Small Businesses Should Choose Social Media Platforms (2/4)

When choosing a social media platform for our businesses, we need to take 3 major facets into consideration: (1.) Who are our customers? (2.) Where are they? (3.) Which one(s) am I willing to use every day? When we can honestly answer these three questions, we are able to come up with the social media platform(s) that will guide our business in the right direction. In Part 2 of Social Strategery we’ll set ourselves up for success by discussing how small businesses should choose social media platforms.

1.) Who are our customers?

Many small businesses do not know the demographics of their customers, sad but true. We don’t know who we cater to, we don’t know who our ‘ideal customer’ is. Most small business owners have no clue who our typical customer is because we’re too focused on the business itself and we haven’t stopped to make any sort of analysis like this.

It isn’t important enough to stop day-to-day operations so that we can run reports, do surveys, or think about who we are targeting with our marketing efforts. We just wake up, put our heads down, and try to make as much money as possible that day. And since we don’t do these things, we aren’t targeting our messages. When we don’t target our messages, we are using a buckshot approach and trying to hit everything with one shot. This is ineffective on social media (& in many traditional forms of advertising as well).

I am just as guilty of it, I have no clue who my readers are. People always ask me, “So who are you writing for?” and I usually have to wiggle through an uncomfortable answer about management, mixed with some leadership, but sometimes marketing and a dash of sales. It’s hard to stop and take time to really think about who we want to talk to, and what we want to say to them. I’ll talk more on communicating on in the social space tomorrow.

Getting to know them

In the mean time, here are some great tools that can help us to get to know our customers. If we know who our customers are, we are more likely to find them in each respective ‘party’ (reference Part 1 of our Social Strategery series). We will analyze a few forms of social media below with information like m/f users and age brackets, these tools can help you find out these types of information.

• Survey Monkey – The largest online survey company
• Google Consumer Surveys – It’s as simple as choosing a target audience, choosing a question, and asking
• Zoomerang – Another large online survey company
• Poll Daddy – With free, paid, and corporate plans this has the capacity to scale for your business insights
• Constant Contact – If you are unfortunate enough to use Constant Contact, the bright side is that they offer survey services

Most of these are free, we only need one so choose which one you are comfortable with and starting asking your customers who they are! The power of feedback is incredible, and very few small businesses have ever asked what their customers want. Ask and it might open your eyes to some great opportunities!

2.) Hello… Is anybody out there?

We have to look in the right places to find our customers, think back to the analogy in Part 1 about social platforms being parties. Now if our target demographic is 18-25 year single old men, will they be in the same party as 30-45 year mothers of 3? Probably not, and as social media becomes more and more woven into our social fabric, we’re seeing each platform become more niche.

Think about MySpace. Back when it first came out in the early 2000’s it was the largest social media platform out there, then came Facebook, and now Instagram is on the rise. It will always be a competition for the top spot, but our businesses don’t attempt to be everything to everyone, so why are we chasing everyone? Now that we know who our customers are, we can go find them based on their social media platform of choice.

You almost forgot I mentioned MySpace, didn’t you? It’s still around, but it’s nowhere near as large as it used to be. It still has a very loyal following… amongst musicians. It has found it’s niche and become THE social media platform that bands use to connect. If you have a band or you’re a musician, odds are you have a MySpace account.

This is the trend that many social media sites are following, becoming more and more niche in order to provide better services to their users. MySpace used to be everything to everyone, and now if you visit the site it is blatantly obvious that it’s customer base is musicians. Nice pivot, MySpace. As social platforms become more niche, their users will become more and more specific and now is the time to stay ahead of the curve.

3.) Which one(s) am I willing to use every day?

Here is where the commitment comes into play. Which of these social platforms are we willing to put 90 days into? 180 days? 360 days? Having knowledge about who our customers are doesn’t help us unless we apply it. Knowing where they congregate doesn’t help us unless we go talk to them. We have to be willing to spend time where our customers are in order to make those connections.

If you’re not ready to put time and effort into this, stop reading now, you’re wasting your time. We will never be successful using social media by just putting out a “Check-In Here” sign on our door with the Four-Square logo on it. That’s a weak attempt that will fall by the wayside.

So now that we know who our customers are, we know where they hang out, we should have 1 or 2 options for social media platforms to choose from. Some demographics are below for users on the top social platforms, this should help us decide where we want to start.

Case Study

If you’re looking for a good example of what I am talking about, go find Stephan Futeral on the social space. He is a Charleston Lawyer that does an amazing job on social media using platforms that are applicable to his business: Google+ & LinkedIn. He connects with people, he comments on posts, he likes what other people are doing, and he writes great content to get them back to his firm’s site. I will reference Mr. Futeral again in our series again in our segment on communication.

Mr. Futeral chose the platforms where he knew he would find business professionals and he chose to make his stand there. He’s able to be found on Facebook & Twitter, but he’s not wasting unnecessary time there.  He has a Futeral & Nelson (his firm) page set up all over, but he only spends significant time on Google+ & LinkedIn.

Find what is best for you by preparing to attack social media like it’s a real part of your business. If we treat it as a ‘ho-hum thing we have to do’ it will never pan out and you might as well not waste your time. Treat it as an opportunity. If you’re ready to dig in and put forth some good effort, you will see great results.

Statistics

Facebook – 

• Users: 1.19 Billion Worldwide
• Growth: 26% from 2011 to 2012
• Age Demographics: 29.7% of users are ages 25-34
• Gender Demographics: 53% Female, 47% Male
• Sources: Zephoria, StaticBrain

Twitter – 

• Users: 554,750,000 Active Worldwide Users (Monthly)
• Growth: 135,000 new users daily
• Age Demographics: 55% of users are 35 or older
• Gender Demographics: 60% Female, 40% Male
• Sources: Royal Pingdom, StaticBrain

Instagram – 

• Users: 150,000,000 Active Worldwide Users (Monthly)
• Growth: 55,000,000 Average photos taken per day
• Age Demographics: 90% of users are 35 or under
• Gender Demographics: 68% Female, 32% Male
• Sources: Instagram, Business Insider

Pinterest –  

• Users: 25,000,000 Active Worldwide Users (Monthly)
• Age Demographics: 63% of users are 35 or older
• Gender Demographics: 79% Female, 21% Male
• Sources: Digi Daily, Royal Pingdom

Other Popular Networks

• FourSquare – Location drive site that encourages people to check in
• Tumblr – Blogging site aimed at a younger (18-25) crowd
• LinkedIn – Business professional site (perfect for B2B)
• Google+ – It’s run by Google so it’s got to be important

These are just a few of the top sights out there in the social space. Do some research for yourself and find out which is best for you. No two businesses are the exact same, and no two social media strategies will be either.

So far in our Social Strategery series we’ve talked about How to be Everywhere in Part 1, and today we talked about Choosing the right platform(s) for our business. In the coming posts we’ll talk about communicating in the social space and putting together the tools we need to have a successful social media marketing strategy.

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What is your social media platform of choice? How did you come to the conclusion that was best for your business?

Connect with me on Twitter, I’d love to hear how you picked the right platform. 

P.S. 15 Days till Christmas!