Determining the best social media outlets for your business

“We do not have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is how well we do it,” Erik Qualman, social media guru and author of the Amazon #1 Best Selling book Socialnomics: How social media transforms the way we live and do business,¹ said.  Not only is it important to do social media well, but also to do the right kind of social media.

Many businesses, particularly small businesses, make the mistake of jumping onto the social media bandwagon and engaging in social media because everyone else is doing it. If it’s a social media outlet they’ve heard of before, they have to be on it. But according to B.L. Ochman in his Businessweek article “Debunking Six Social Media Myths,”² the number one social media myth is that this engagement comes cheap if not free.

Having an effective social media presence requires having a strong strategy geared towards reaching your target markets. It also requires executing the proper techniques to gain followers on Twitter and “likers” on Facebook, subscribers on WordPress and readers on Scribd. Most businesses don’t have that kind of expertise in house, so they’re forced to hire an expensive web strategy and social media specialist or turn to a social media agency such as Ignite or Ant’s Eye View.

Of course, these specialists and agency services come at a high price, according to Danny Brown, co-founder and partner at Bonsai Interactive, in his blog post “The Real Cost of Social Media.”³ A salaried specialist typically costs at least $50,000 per year, and a campaign strategized and executed by an agency could cost anywhere in the six-digit realm.

Arguably, the costs are worth the exposure, interaction and versatility that social media permits. But many businesses don’t maintain high enough advertising budgets to spend such large amounts of money solely on social media. Furthermore, many forms of social media aren’t necessary for every type of business. Selecting the right types of social media is crucial so businesses can make sure they’re allocating their budgets efficiently and reaching their primary and/or secondary target markets.

There are several important things to consider when selecting the social media outlets in which your business should engage:

1. Your overall strategy. It’s important to select social media outlets that will help serve your overall marketing and advertising strategy. Different types of social media can reflect different types of communication. If your business’s ad strategy is to gain a larger audience, using popular social media such as Facebook and Twitter can help in increasing awareness. If your strategy involves creating more of a word-of-mouth campaign and stir reviews and commentary on your company, however, Yelp or Yahoo! would serve that purpose well.
2. Your target markets. If the target markets for your campaign use certain social media and not others, stick to the outlets your targets use – primary or secondary. For example, a denture company’s primary market of elderly people isn’t prominent on facebook, but it still might be beneficial for them to have a Facebook account since the fastest-growing age group on Facebook, middle-agers, are a denture company’s secondary market. Middle-agers are the children of elderly people who may suggest certain denture brands to their parents. If neither your primary nor secondary market is prevalent on a particular type of social media, don’t waste time or money on that outlet. You don’t need to be using a social media outlet just because it’s there. For example, the one of the lowest-ranked demographic users for Digg.com is teenage and young adult females with a low level of education.⁴ So if your business is an online college geared toward uneducated young women or teen moms, it probably wouldn’t be beneficial to use Digg.
3. Your competitors. Don’t disvalue your competitors as a key resource. According to Adrian Swinscoe in his blog post “16 Lessons on Using Social Media for Business,”⁵ it all boils down to leverage. If you can figure out what social media outlets your competitors are using and how they are using them, you can determine what social media you need to be on to leverage yourself against them. Also, you can learn from their mistakes. If they have spent time and money on a social media outlet that doesn’t seem to be producing results for their company like other outlets are, that may be a red flag that you shouldn’t waste time and money on that type of social media.
4. Your budget. This has to be one of the most important things to consider when selecting what social media outlets your business will use. The size of your budget will determine how many channels in which your company can dedicate time and effort effectively. Going back to the example of a denture company, if the company doesn’t have a very large advertising budget, it may be more beneficial for them to allocate their money to social media outlets or media channels other than twitter or facebook, which lack a prominent amount of their primary market’s demographics, in order to better reach primary targets. Furthermore, it’s more valuable to have fewer outlets with great content and conversation than many outlets that don’t produce valuable content. According to the Businessweek article titled “Keeping Momentum in Social Media”⁶ by the Corporate Executive Board, many companies are enticed by the idea of social media but have difficulty utilizing them successfully. They end up needing to hire specialists or agencies to select and utilize social media effectively, which eats up budgetary dollars.

Social media is an incredibly valuable tool when selected, utilized and measured correctly. Once you’ve selected the right social media outlets for your company, make sure to do your research or hire the proper specialists to conduct a successful campaign and measure the social media campaign’s results. The feedback you receive may cause you to reevaluate the social media tools you use or how you use them. If your feedback shows that you’ve made some wrong selections, make sure to learn from your mistakes and correct them before your sunk costs sink any deeper.

Tags: Daniella Phillips, selecting social media, social media, social media and business, social media for business