It got me thinking about how each of the social media platforms requires a slightly different knowledge base and execution, but also should work together for the overall goal of marketing your business. Thankfully, understanding mastering each of these disciplines can be done without squeezing yourself into any form of lycra, unless that’s your thing. So let’s have a run-down of the business purpose of each* social media platform.

*This isn’t an exhaustive list – I know there’s Clubhouse, Tik Tok, Snapchat and more to consider, but I try to focus on the platforms that bring the most meaningful growth to my fabulous clients.

Facebook

Head of the eponymous conglomerate, the Facebook platform itself still holds the title for most active users with a quite healthy 2.853 billion worldwide. Old Zuckerberg and his friends have done alright since creating the platform in their dorm rooms and recruiting their mates.

Facebook has placed more emphasis on community in the last couple of years, so while the potency of brand pages took a sharp nosedive, there are still meaningful ways to interact with your customers through Facebook Groups or perhaps directly selling your products through their e-commerce platform. Facebook remains a great way of announcing and promoting events too, giving attendees the chance to share their RSVPs and encourage others to join.

Instagram

Like Facebook, Instagram’s gone through a major evolution, but probably more so. At its heart, the little indie photo-sharing app launched and gained popularity through its filters, helping us turn sorry selfies into glossy mag worthy close-ups (I’ve never looked better than with Nashville). Now it’s so far from just a photo-sharing app that they mentioned it in their recent company announcements on changes to the algorithm.

Like with all the platforms, the changes present opportunities, and businesses have really thrived on Instagram when building community, speaking directly to customers or harnessing influencer marketing.  They too allow seamless e-commerce through their Instagram shopping tab, which is set to dominant even more beyond 2021.

Twitter

No platform has arguably got a better finger on the pulse than Twitter, who really were the original champions of the words ‘trending’ and ‘hashtag’. Breaking down cultural and geographical barriers, Twitter gives you the news from the heart of the action in any sector, from politics to entertainment.

For businesses, there are two directions that work well: business-to-business and consumer-to-business. Twitter is a great social listening tool to gauge general sentiment towards your business, but it becomes harder for businesses to speak directly to customers. That’s not to say it doesn’t happen, or happen well; take the recent joint campaign from Weetabix and Heinz, who set Twitter alight with response to their beans on Weetabix meal suggestion. Barf-worthy idea, but from a marketing perspective, it couldn’t have been tastier.

Youtube

Launched back in 2005, if you were a company concerned with cats chasing laser pens, or perhaps riding a robot hoover, you were quids in. However, YouTube grew quickly beyond its usage as a sort of You’ve Been Framed portal into something that Google recognised had universal appeal, prompting their $1.65 billion acquisition of the platform in 2006, just a year later. Now that’s a payday.

Nowadays YouTube is recognised for its authority as the second most popular search engine (even if we don’t think of it in this way), with content creators providing thought leadership in every industry, from ‘How to Fix a Leaky Tap’ to the Pope’s ‘Our Moral Imperative to Act on Climate Change.’ Unboxing and ‘unbiased’ reviews are also a great boost for e-commerce marketing, with the option for influencers to add affiliate links.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the spiritual home of business online. Even though other social media platforms have tried their hand (can we say a quick RIP to Google+), keeping your work profile and your social profile separate has been LinkedIn’s currency since its inception.

Not a lot has changed since Microsoft’s acquisition of the platform, and its cornerstones of purpose remain the same: to provide thought leadership, build strategic business connections, hire talent and provide possible lead opportunities for businesses.

Pinterest

Home of craft moms and DIYers, wedding inspiration and diet meal plans, Pinterest is your digital fridge door, with their ‘pins’ acting like fridge magnets, saving ideas, recipes, quotes and more for either referral later or just to delight you. Like YouTube, Pinterest has become as much a search engine as a social network, with users engaging with the content rather than other users.

E-commerce businesses can add ‘rich pins’, which carry price details and a direct link to your online shop, increasing the chance of conversion.

So let’s recap on the main business purposes of each social media platform:

Facebook – Community building, events and customer service.

Instagram – E-commerce, community building and influencer marketing.

Twitter – Social listening and customer service.

LinkedIn – Talent acquisition, thought-leadership and strategic partnerships.

YouTube – SEO and influencer marketing.

Pinterest – SEO and e-commerce.

I hope this overview of the business purpose of each social media platform has served as a reminder of the unique opportunities available to businesses – to you – and given you some inspiration on the best content or connections to create for each one.

The post The Business Purpose Of Each Social Media Platform – A 2021 Comparison appeared first on Jem Bahaijoub Consulting - Social Never Sleeps.

The power of LinkedIn over other social platforms is its specificity – meaning it empowers users to be hyper-targeted in their outreach and content marketing strategy. As a result, an effective LinkedIn campaign can have a very high return on investment. 

The first step to any successful LinkedIn marketing campaign starts with setting goals and establishing your target audience. Are you looking for business leads? Do you want to hire a new employee? Do you need to find a new job? Define your goals and who you want to reach first.

Once you have established your goals and target audience, you need to address 3 different aspects of your LinkedIn marketing: 

1. Profile Optimisation – Ensure your personal and company profiles are up to date and that their full potential to achieve your goals is maximised.
2. Content Marketing – Ensure you communicate and share quality and relevant mix-media content on the platform daily to appeal to your target audience.
3. Sales Outreach – Ensure you are using effective tools and methods to reach out to potential customers, employees or employers.

Here is my top advice to maximise your business on LinkedIn according to the above 3 categories:

Profile Optimisation:

Before diving into content creation, it is paramount that you improve or even revamp your LinkedIn profile. Let’s start with the obvious, use a professional high-quality profile picture. If you’re running a company page and your logo is too big to be clearly visible, think about how you can scale down the design. Think of how Disney, Starbucks or Chanel do this. 

Apart from your photo, the first thing viewers look at is your headline. Instead of just writing your job title – as most people do – showcase your speciality speaking directly to the audience you want to reach. Entice people to take a closer look at you by being specific and attention-grabbing. Go for “Reliable babysitter that will report on the mischievous acts of your kids” rather than “Babysitter at ….”. For company pages, make sure that besides specificity, you focus on reflecting your company values and mission in your headline. “Making the elderly smile since 1999” is way more alluring than “Elderly entertainment services”. Grab attention in your headline, there’s more room to elaborate on what exactly you do as a person or business in your summary. 

Make sure that your summary doesn’t sound too academic either. Tell your story rather than laying out your resume. We’re all more interested in people than we are in plain facts. Let your audience get to know you or your business in an informative and engaging way. Another thing you should focus on is getting quality recommendations. They boost your credibility and give meaningful insights to your audience.

Lastly, let’s talk about SEO! Regardless of how you phrase your profile items, you should do these two things to improve your discoverability.

• Optimize your profile for keywords, especially your headline. How? Let’s say you’re looking for a job. Find 5-10 job ads for the position you’re interested in and get an online word cloud tool such as wordle or wordclouds up and running. See which words get commonly used and implement them across your profile! Other great tools to find out what keywords are great for your industry are Google Keyword Planner and SEMRush.
• Get your proprietary LinkedIn URL! Click on “View profile” and “Edit public profile & URL”.

Content Marketing:

There is more to LinkedIn than just having a fully optimised profile and company page. Like other social media platforms, sharing quality and relevant mix-media content on a regular basis and interacting with other people’s content is crucial. See it as an effective way of “warming up” potential new business leads. 

Like other social platforms, hashtags are also important on LinkedIn (up to 5 hashtags per post is recommended). In particular, the mechanism to follow hashtags specific to your industry via your company page allows for trending industry content to show up as a notification. This empowers you to interact, monitor and share industry content in real-time.  

Another overlooked factor of LinkedIn, especially with regards to your company page, is the power of employee advocacy. In order to increase the reach and impact of your company posts, it is crucial for your team to share your company updates on their personal profiles. They don’t have to share every single one but advocacy from your team members will boost brand awareness. LinkedIn has a functionality that allows you to notify employees when you post new content. Use it! 

Sales Outreach:

A fully optimised company profile page and a robust content marketing strategy are both key to effective sales outreach. However, it doesn’t end there. A highly targeted and personalised InMail campaign takes your sales strategy even further. The two LinkedIn tools that can help you with this are LinkedIn “Advanced Search Function” and their InMail messaging system. Remember you need to warm up your audience first before sending them sales message, however, personalised introductory email can be effective. If you are considering an InMail campaign then you may want to  consider upgrading to a premium account. 

There is so much to say about LinkedIn. Whether you’re looking for work or promoting your business, you need to focus on standing out from the crowd. LinkedIn’s user base is growing which means that there is more competition. Optimizing your profile and putting in the work to keep your page running takes time and effort, but is well worth it in the end. The magic is in the specific, and you wield the wand. There’s no time to waste! Get your profile in order and start exploring all features of LinkedIn such as LinkedIn Groups and InMail. Don’t wait for success to happen, you have to create and foster it. I hope these tips will help you warm up your leads and reach your goals!

The post How To Maximise Your Business On LinkedIn appeared first on Jem Bahaijoub Consulting - Social Never Sleeps.