On average, a person spends 2 hours and 22 minutes on social media and that increases every day. Studies show that when you spend six hours a week on social media marketing, the results skyrocket. With social media strategies like Instagram promotion, you grow website traffic, improve search results, and eventually increase conversion rates as well. That is why social media is indispensable in our daily lives as marketing professionals.
There are many social media channels and each has its own advantages and disadvantages. To find out what the best social media channels are for your company, you have to ask yourself a number of things. In this article, we will discuss how you can find the right social media channels.
There is a plethora of social media channels but with these tips, you will find out how best to work for good results. So read on to increase your social media influence.
How do you determine which social media channel is suitable?
Before we can answer this question, we will first ask you a question in return. Where is your target group? Or maybe we should even ask a question: Who is your target audience? Each platform has its own users and in order to put your brand forward as well as possible, it is important that you do that in the right way. the way in which should match the platform and therefore appeal to the target group. The time of starting Facebook ads and hoping that your sales figures skyrocket seems to be over. That is why you as a company must be active on the social media channels where your target group is located and create content that attracts their attention. Let’s take a look at the properties of some of the most popular social media channels. Because the biggest social media channel doesn’t always mean the best.
In the Netherlands, there are currently more than 10 million people on Facebook. It is the largest social media platform in the Netherlands. Although Facebook is certainly no longer rising fast with numbers, you can certainly reach a large target group. Young people aged 15-22 are the least active on Facebook while 40+ are still the most active. We, therefore, advise you to always remain active on Facebook. More than half of the Dutch have an account and could therefore theoretically be found.
Instagram is the younger brother or sister of Facebook and has almost six million (daily) users in the Netherlands. Engagement is currently higher on Instagram than on Facebook. “Insta” is more image-oriented so your content should be just a bit more creative here than on Facebook for example. Where you can get away with half a thesis on Facebook about the latest legislative changes, that information will actually be lost on Instagram. This social media platform is very visual and therefore you as a brand must be able to tell your story on screen. Text is of lesser value and that can sometimes be a stumbling block for some people. While an accounting firm may seem to have less to say than a Dutch marketing firm, you shouldn’t underestimate the power of Instagram. Because the content provokes a lot of engagement, you can also use it by binding with your customers and building a stronger bond by, for example, capturing your working day in different posts or photos.
The social media channel for professionals is Linkedin. Of the various social media channels, Linkedin was the channel with the least eye for content. That has changed in recent years. Now, with Linkedin Stories, creator mode, and even blogs, there are millions of content creators on Linkedin. The platform has tried to attract daily visitors to its social media channel more often and has succeeded. Linkedin is no longer the “help I’m looking for a job” website but is now used more to network and devour content than ever before. In the Netherlands, Linkedin has 5 million users who are older than 14 years. The Linkedin community consists mainly of professionals and also gives you numerous B2B opportunities.
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Tiktok
“If you’ve never heard of TikTok, you’re probably too old for TikTok” was a familiar phrase a few years ago. TikTok has almost two million users in the Netherlands and worldwide the counter stands at 800 million. Tiktok is the channel where you upload useful or funny videos yourself. The videos are short and have high entertainment content. TikTok is still relatively young and the advertising mechanisms that make Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube run the money machine are not yet so active here. Yet the TikTok trend has also blown over to business and we see more and more TikTok accounts of larger brands and companies. On this social media channel, it is perhaps most important to speak the language of the target group. Thirteen in a dozen content doesn’t work here. You are therefore discouraged from pretending to be young, you will fall through the basket quickly enough and that is counterproductive. Just like Instagram, we expect that within a few years, TikTok will also conquer the hearts of 35 – plus people but for the time being the age category 14-25 years is what is in power here.
Twitter has been around for a while and although you don’t always hear as much about the platform, there are still almost three million users in the Netherlands. This platform has a lot of impacts and is still used to respond to the latest news. In addition, Twitter has a very open effect, and that in turn ensures that “tweets” can go viral, not only in the Netherlands but also worldwide. Many tweets still make the news every day or are spread on other social media channels such as Facebook. If your service and products have a lot to do with the news or you see a way to involve the news in your offer, you should certainly not skip Twitter.
Clubhouse
Instagram is image, Tiktok is video and Clubhouse is sound. Of all the social media channels we mentioned above, Clubhouse is the youngest. Last year, Clubhouse, an app that allows you to communicate in channels, only had a few thousand users. Now there are millions of daily users and the market value is already about a billion dollars. The platform recently had Mark Zuckerberg and also Elon Musk as speakers and that almost caused the platform to crash. With Clubhouse there are several “rooms” in which users can talk to each other about certain topics. You should be in a chat room but with your voice instead of typed messages.
As a brand, there are not too many opportunities to promote your company, but this is of course already possible as a professional. It’s a good way to network and share your and your company’s opinions with other interested parties. Entering this social media channel is a bit difficult because the invite-only still applies. You must receive an invitation from a Clubhouse user to use the platform. Because of the short life of Clubhouse and the great popularity that Clubhouse has already won, you would do well to see as soon as possible whether you can make a difference with your company before the masses go to this channel.
Our tip: be original in your approach and combine different social media channels
Creating content is quite a lot of work, especially if you have to do this constantly for different social media channels. Yet, as far as we are concerned, in 2021 it is impossible to skip social media in your marketing strategy. Even if you think you can’t persuade your target audience to buy something on social media, it will at least improve the bond with your customer base and increase brand awareness of your brand. You don’t have to be on every social media channel, but which social media channel do you choose? As we said in our introduction, it depends on where your target group is located. If this is Instagram, you can see what other brands from your niche are doing to reach their followers. You do not copy this but you are inspired and create content that is just a little better or more responsive to your services.