Today’s entrepreneur will inevitably be asked at some point where you like to connect on social.

Are you on Facebook?  Insta?  Do you tweet? Pin? Prefer Linked?

If you are not in to social media, or you prefer not to have your business on social media, you will miss out on potentially thousands, maybe millions, of customers who use social to find all the information they seek.

But you have many options for choosing a preferred social media platform.  Some will say follow your audience, others will stay stick with favorite site. Some believe in only being on the biggest. Others like the niches. Some insist you should be everywhere, others believe you must specialize on one.

In all cases, consistent and valuable content helps build a lasting audience that always knows where to find you.

But what is the best path for choosing a social media platform? 

And how do you know which social media platform is right for your business?

Whether you love or hate social media, you are going to have to have a position on the platforms for your business.  Potential customers will look for you on social, and they will want to engage with you there.  You will also have the opportunity to market, promote and share value every day, all day.

So how do you choose?

Understand the platforms

You need to understand what each of the social media platforms are, and what they do. You should also understand the demographics for the dominate audience on each platform.

The basic idea of a social platform is that you establish a profile, post your text or pictures, and people engage with that profile, leaving comments and feedback that other people can see. 

Find Your Audience

When marketers say you need to know where your audience is hanging out, you can use either formal or informal approaches to finding this information.

The informal approach is to check out the sites and see who is there.  Make sure you set-up a profile and see if you can engage with other participants.

Search topics relevant to your business, and look at the people who are posting and commenting on the subject. Narrow your search as much as possible. If you search #entrepreneur on Instagram, you see tens of millions of posts.

But if you search #womenentrepreneursofsaskatchewan, there are fewer than 100 posts.

As you look at the public profiles or pages of your potential customers, you will be able to learn about their preferences and interests.

The formal search approach involves using paid analysis services.

When you are looking to analyze where the audience is located, you can look at sources like Hootsuite.  Every year there are multiple organizations that analyze social media trends and usage.  You could spend some time reading these documents, or you could just go to each site and see what’s there. 

Although these are great services for information, they present the information in generalities.  While the general profile of the audience may be valid, you will not have the specifics about your potential customers who could be anywhere. 

Be careful about dismissing a potential audience thread because you read the audience is more likely to be somewhere else.  Look at the content on the platform and see for yourself if you think the audience appeals to you. 

Go through the platform as a user, search for topics that interest you and see what comes up, and whether it’s easy or difficult to find what you are looking for.

Do you get bored after a few minutes or end up being sucked in for hours?  That’s the real test of whether or not the platform works for you – now ask does it work for your ideal customer?

Overview of Each Platform in Alphabetical Order

Facebook

Despite its increasingly eroding reputation, Facebook is still the social media behemoth.  With a couple billion users a day, Facebook is impossible to ignore.  But ironically it’s one of the more difficult platforms for building an audience.

You must bring friends to your Facebook page, and hope they will like or follow you, or preferably both.  Facebook is the most demanding platform when it comes to proving interaction.

Your potential customer must friend, follow and like you to count in your numbers.  That’s three clicks just to be recognizes as operating in your world.

But you have the benefit of using Facebook for long text messages, short messenger messages, images, videos, and links.  That kind of complete functionality does not exist on the other sites. 

If your business is prepared to spend Facebook also has a robust advertising program that allows you to directly target people who have expressed an interest subjects you define. The scope of their customer analytics is extraordinary, but the frequently changing rules is a challenge for all sides.

Goodreads

Goodreads is included as an example of a subject specific social site.  The site is for readers, which means it’s used by authors who have profiles, to answer questions, post reviews and engage in groups.

If you are a writer or writing a book that is linked to your business or other non-fiction in your genre you can engage with readers on the platform.  But be careful, Goodreads is a readers site meaning authors are not welcome to promote their books, only to offer value.

You can search for subject social sites and forums discussing issues around your product or service.

The occasionally-defined, and often-repeated rule is to add value first, avoid promoting your product or service unless permitted, and respect the site for its declared purpose, not as a place only for you to find more customers.

Instagram

For all the photography buffs, Insta is for you.  The site is defined by its visual presentation of images and videos. The emphasis on images leaves you with a limited profile and no place to put links inside posts.

Insta is perfect for businesses that use images in promotion like travel and cooking.  It has fewer opportunities to direct people off the platform, unless you have a business account, which does have additional features.

In the past, Instagram has been one of the best sites for growing an audience organically because you could use hashtags to connect your content to various topics and ideas, and people would discover you. 

However, it seems to be getting harder to be discovered on Insta which limits the options for those who do not have community coming from somewhere else.

Linked In

The site for professionals is all about profiles, networking and adding value. 

Linked In is probably the most serious of the sites, with people who have high expectations for the type of contact that should be available.  You can add links, videos, and pics, but all should be of the highest quality and interest.

This is probably the hardest site for growing a business and attracting people to developing ideas, but one of the strongest for more established ideas and information people can use in their existing professional lives.

Pinterest

Many are surprised to realize that Pinterest is more of a search engine, than a social site. This is a place where people are looking for specific topics and ideas. 

The user’s approach appears to make Pinterest more serious than a typical social site. Pins often lead to blogs, that provide detailed resources, keeping users off the social site.  But the functionality also makes Pinterest the most mysterious of the social sites.

You are pinning your ideas, which require extra work to find and create an appealing pin graphic, and then writing the post in the description area.  The organization and categorization of your pin is not intuitive. If you decide to become serious about using the site, you should do some research into keyword selection and writing for pins.

But if you are putting together interesting collections on your pin boards, you may be surprised about how you begin to attract new followers.

Snapchat

The site most associated with a younger crowd appears to have lost its original lustre.  But it’s all about creativity – pictures and captions – decorated and enhanced for appeal and attraction.

This site is mostly ‘fast,’ and in the moment so if that’s how your business rolls it could be your preference.

Tik Tok

This is one big party.  You could have room for your business here, but only if it’s a party.

Twitter

Whether you are inflamed or not by the messages, you know Twitter is where people make statements sometimes short, sometimes threads, and all range of controversy.

If you want to be quoted, leave your comments on Twitter. You can also just use the site to post announcements about your business.

If you are using Twitter for business, you may not want want to be doing anything that will effect your revenue or turn off your ideal customers.  The temptation is there to fill in those 280 characters with a shocking statement.  But it’s not always the most ideal way to move forward.

YouTube

If you set up a channel for your videos, you can use the description section in YouTube to provide more detail, and help people find you.

Although YouTube not set up as a social site, it can still be used as one. Viewers can engage with you in comments and you can reply – allowing others to see the discussion. 

Next to Facebook, YouTube is the biggest social site.  It’s hard to ignore the appeal of video.  Even if you are not comfortable on camera, you may still want to consider how the platform may be useful for you.

Summary of Social Media Platform Differences

Here’s a quick glance guide to each platform:

Facebook – short or long posts, images, videos, and links, but you have to get the audience to come to you. There’s an invitation step for friends, and a commitment from followers

Goodreads – readers, readers and more readers and all things books – look for similar sites in your niche

Instagram – images, videos, stories, people can find you through hashtags – but no links and not many long involved posts

Linked In – serious, professional, more thoughtful posts, but also more engaged and possibly more connected

Pinterest – images, text in the descriptions, links, more of a search network, no comments, but people can find you and follow you

Snap Chat – all social all the time, great if you want to be communicating with your audience all the time

TikTok – all performance all the time, if you have creative videos this is where you should be

Twitter – short phrases, witty posts, your quotes and brief comments hashtags, but not much room for serious engagement

You Tube – video with text explanations, a search engine, links in the description, social in the comments