Social Media Sites You Need to Be in for 2021
Just like how social media sites connect friends, families, and friendly strangers together, it can be used to connect customers and brands as well. We are going to look at how social media can benefit your brand and what social media should your brand be in.
Here are what we are going to cover:
- Benefits of social media for business
- What to consider when choosing social media sites
- 7 social media sites for brands in 2021
- Final Thoughts
Benefits of social media sites for business
There are many advantages of using social media for your business. Let’s take a look at some amazing benefits of social media.
It builds brand’s awareness
First of all, social media gives you places to make your business known. Well-calculated and unique style posts of your brand will set your brand apart from others and keep your brand stand out.
It makes people recognize your brand better. When you actively post content on brand’s social media, people in your connection will see your brand often and they will remember you.
It is cost effective
Social media is the cheapest marketing tool, you can even use it for free. For new or small businesses, budgets are limited. Social media helps cut marketing costs so you can invest in other forms of marketing.
It helps you reach more potential customers
Since social media sites are big platforms that connect people around the world, being on social media gives the opportunity for the brands to reach more people.
Social media also leads to peer recommendation or word-of-mouth marketing. When your customers post about your brand on social media, their friends and followers will see your products as well. This is the most effective way to reach potential buyers since they will get to know your products and brand from the real customers.
It builds connection between brands and customers
Social media is the quickest and easiest way to connect with your customers. You can post new information for the customers anytime. It makes news about your brand reach the customers and followers in minutes.
The customers can contact you directly and you can reply to them right away. It creates a good experience and good customer service.
It helps boost your SEO
Being present on social media helps your SEO since it brings more views and interactions to your brand. This will then lead to your websites and bring more traffic. More traffic and views will signal search engines that your website is good enough to be ranked better.
To make it even better experience for the customers and make them come back to your website again and again, you need a well-design website to go with your social media sites.
What to consider when choosing social media sites
Now that you know amazing things that social media can do for your business, you might want to start your social media marketing now. Before doing that, you might need to decide on which social media you would like to use first.
Here are what you should put into consideration.
You want to pick social media platforms that you target customers are using and are compatible with your products or services. For example, if your target market is teenagers, you might want to reach them through social media like Twitter, or Tiktok. If your brand is about arts and designs, Pinterest or Instagram might suit your brand more than Facebook or LinkedIn.
Moreover, you should choose platforms that are well known in your country if your customers are mainly in your country. For example, Line is widely used in Thailand so if your business is based in Thailand, you might need to have a Line@ or official Line account. But don’t forget to be on world famous platforms for more opportunities.
Also, you should be on every big social media site like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. These big platforms have users all over the world in a huge number. More people on platforms means more people see your brand. It makes your brand widely known.
Another factor you need to consider is types of content and activities that you could do on social media sites. You need to design what type of content you want to put on each social media and pick the one that can serve your purpose.
Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram allow you to post texts, photos, and videos. They also allow you to have private conversations with your clients as well. These platforms tend to work well with every brand. On the other hand, platforms like YouTube, Line, and Pinterest are great only in some aspects. You can only post one type of media and have limited ways to interact with the users.
7 social media sites for brands in 2021
Now that you know how to choose social media platforms, let’s take a look at selected social media sites that you should not miss.
Facebook is the most used platform for every generation. It is used by billions of people all over the world each day. Facebook is great for engaging audiences, advertising and customer service.
Facebook business pages have many useful features for brands. You can sell products, post contents, and do live broadcasts there. Moreover, Facebook offers a post ads service. You can pay to have your page reach users that might like your products or searching for brand like you.
Twitter is known to be fast and real-time. It is used by more than 180 million people per day. Twitter is a great platform for users to stay current with news and situations.
For businesses, Twitter is great for staying connected with the customers and keeping them updated about your brand. And You can buy ads on Twitter.
Twitter limits the alphabet number in each tweet but you can post pictures and videos on Twitter. You can also post links to take them to your website as well.
Instagram is a platform where you will mainly post pictures and videos with texts as captions. It is good for showing images of your products and reviews. Also, with stories and live features, you can keep your followers connected and informed about the latest news and announcements. However, Instagram does not allow you to attach links in the captions and posts.
It is also a great social media platform to show your brand personality and style. You can use hashtags to engage your followers and reach more people. You can also buy post ads and story ads on Instagram as well.
LinkedIn is used by over 700 million users. LinkedIn is a professional social networking site. It is great to be on LinkedIn to reach people around the world and seek potential employees.
You can post news and updates about your brand on there with texts, photos and videos.
LinkedIn gives you opportunities to connect with professional businesses and workers. Which might bring both customers and employees.
YouTube
YouTube is a video based platform. YouTube is great for showing brand culture and showing product reviews, tutorials, and demonstrations.
You can post YouTube videos to show the real quality of your products or services. It builds brand reliability and credibility.
You can attach links in video descriptions. And you can also buy video ads which will be presented shortly before the users watch other videos.
YouTube now has Short feature videos that you can post videos like Instagram stories and short videos like TikTok. They also now allow you to post text announcements as well.
TikTok
TikTok is one of the newer social media sites. On TikTok you can post short videos only. People on this platform are mostly younger generations.
It can be used to show short tutorials or review videos. You can also use TikTok to participate in new trends or even start new trends about your products to have people participate in.
TikTok is great for engaging the customers and creating brand awareness. You cannot post long texts on TikTok, and you cannot post any links. But they do have business options for you to use as well.
Pinterest is great for showcasing your products. It allows you to post photos of your products and link them to your website.
Pinterest allows you to share photos with text descriptions similar to Instagram. But with Pinterest, you can add links that will direct users to your website.
Pinterest can bring lots of real human traffic to your website. Pinterest users who visit your website are those who are interested in your products and have more chances of buying your products.
There are many more social media sites other than these seven ones that you can use to promote your business. If these selected ones are not what you are looking for you can always find others. However, we encourage you to be on the big social media sites like Facebook and Twitter first to get started with social media marketing.
Final Thoughts
Social media sites have many benefits that businesses should not throw away. It might not be enough to market your brand only on social media sites, but it can help your businesses tremendously in many aspects if you do it alongside other marketing methods.
Keep in mind that you do not need to be on every existing social media site. You should pick ones that can work well with your brand. Always be consistent with posting and start with a few platforms and make sure you can handle it well before expanding to other social media platforms.