There’s no longer any question that social media is a necessary marketing channel for any business that wants to be visible and relevant online. 

But getting started can be difficult, and even something as simple as choosing a social platform can be more complicated than you think. There are many social networks out there and choosing the right ones and creating a strategy can be daunting. 

The good news is that there are ways to figure out which platforms work best for a brand. You can now also make the most of AI in social media by leveraging it to optimize social media content and campaigns.

Why is social media important?

As you probably know, there are social media platforms out there for everything and everyone, including ones to connect people with shared interests, similar hobbies, comparable demographics, and much more. 

The point is that there are way too many for you to be active on them all, particularly if you are a small or medium-sized business with limited resources and money. Plus, your time would be better spent focusing on the sites that help reach your goals. 

86% of marketers say that social media has helped increase exposure followed by increasing traffic at 73% and lead generation at 64%, according to Statista. This means that if you’re not using social media effectively, you could be missing out on a huge opportunity.

The use of social media has continued to grow over time. It’s now so popular as a channel that over 5 billion people spend an average of 2 hours and 20 minutes per day scrolling or engaging. People also go between platforms – an average of 6.7 each month, according to DIGITAL 2024: Global Overview Report.   

Of all the social media networks, the top ones in terms of monthly active users ranked by an ‘active user index’ are YouTube, WhatsApp, Facebook  and Instagram.

Let’s look at 4 effective ways to pick the right channels for your business. 

1. Define Your Social Media Goals

There are many benefits to using social media, but it’s important to have specific goals before you move forward. That way you can create a successful social media strategy for your business.  

For one, your objectives will help determine not only the social platform you choose, but  the content you create and the audience you target. 

When it comes to figuring out the best social media platform, the first step is to prioritize what’s important to you. Do you want to:

• Expand your reach 
• Generate more leads 
• Boost brand awareness  
• Drive website traffic
• Engage customers
• Provide customer support
• Get insights about your industry or market
• Build a community
• Improve search engine rankings
• Boost your brand’s reputation

All these goals are possible using social media networks, it’s about prioritizing your goals and choosing the right platform or platforms to achieve them. 

For example, is your business visual so it lends itself to platforms like Instagram or TikTok? Is it focused on real-time events and would work well on X? Or is your audience diverse and so needs a combination of platforms such as YouTube and LinkedIn? 

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2. Determine What Channels Your Audience Uses

The entire point of successful social media marketing is to connect you with your most receptive audience. So, it’s not advisable to choose a platform where your audience isn’t active. 

Unfortunately, there’s no ‘Field of Dreams’ opportunity here where your prospects will start using the social platform of your choice. Instead, analyze which platforms your audience prefers and be active on  those network/s.

A key thing to do when starting this process is to conduct some audience research to define a buyer persona. That way you know your target audience/s and can narrow down the platforms that they use by gender, demographics, interests, values, etc. 

There are a few different ways you can go about finding where your audience hangs out online. 

One of the most straightforward is a simple customer survey. Email marketing may be the best channel if you don’t have a captive audience on social media or connect with brand advocates or loyal customers through WhatsApp if that’s an option. 

Ask questions like what social sites they use, where they get their information online, and which influencers they listen to. 

Another way to get information about your audience is through paid ads on social media. 

By using paid advertising, you can tell platforms like Facebook about your ideal customers, and they will find the right audience based on demographics like location, age or gender. You can then narrow it down further through detailed targeting such as relationship status, education or income or even interests and lifestyle.  

Another channel is your website. Use analytics like Google Analytics 4 to find out what social channels people are coming from to your site. Even if you don’t post regularly, you may be surprised how people found you. ▶

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3. Review Your Content

Different types of content work better with certain social media platforms, so it’s key that you consider carefully the types of content you like to create that will work best for your business. 

The type of content you create will depend on several things, including your industry, your business, and your target audience.  

Uses of different social media platforms and successful content:

• Blog posts – Blogs are a great way to inform and drive traffic to a website or landing page. They also help with SEO as you can write blogs based on keywords or key phrases that people search for and want answers to. Check out this guide to SEO writing to see how to do it effectively. 
• Podcasts – Collaborate with industry leaders to tap into their audience on social networks and use hashtags when sharing to increase reach. Here are some podcast tools and templates to help. 
• Testimonials – Your customers are your most important asset, so make sure to use their opinions and experiences to promote your brand. 
• User-generated content – This is the holy grail of content as it’s not you creating it but your brand advocates. Get inspiration from some great UGC campaigns. 
• Webinars and live streams – Live video is great for audience engagement and learning more about your buyers, particularly through a Q&A session at the end.
• Ebooks – This type of long-form content can provide huge value to potential customers and is great for data capture and lead generation. 
• Whitepapers – The perfect content to demonstrate industry knowledge, show thought leadership and generate leads through downloads. 
• Videos – The ultimate in content, videos can expand your reach widely if something you create goes viral. Check out these 9 ideas for social media videos to get you started. 
• Photographs – Using photos to showcase the inner workings of your business, your team or even something humorous can help drive engagement and traffic.

It’s also important to think about what type of content you already make. Don’t try to start from scratch. Look at what you already have to see if it would work on social media or if it can be repurposed.    

4. Match Your Goals, Audience & Content with the Right Platform

Once you’ve decided on your social media goals, determined where your audience is, and decided what type of content works best, you can compare the different social media platforms to see which one/s will meet your needs. 

To help you decide, here’s a rundown of the top platforms by audience size, what they’re good for, and what a typical user looks like:

Facebook for Business

Currently the largest social media platform, with over 3 billion monthly active users, Facebook is great for lead generation, and its advertising platform can be highly customized to target specific audiences. 

Facebook is also a good platform for building relationships, showing the human side of your business, and turning leads into loyal followers and customers. Facebook groups are popular and can provide insights into what customers want and enable you to connect with prospects and customers.   

Many different content types do well on Facebook, but video content (and live video if you have the capacity) to show off products, how-to tutorials, provide industry or company news or host live Q&As), behind the scenes content, and user-generated content tend to do well.