When developing a marketing plan, it’s important to pick and choose if, how and what types of social media should be included. Due to the amount of time it takes to use before social media becomes effective, this is worth some initial consideration. Maybe your customers’ traits and habits don’t fit into a particular network?
If you do decide to utilize social networks as part of your plan however, it is extremely important to make an educated decision regarding these choices. Here are some facts you need to seriously take into consideration.
Social networks, ranked by monthly active users:
- Facebook: 1.28 billion
- Google+: 540 million
- Twitter: 255 million
- Instagram: 200 million
- LinkedIn: 187 million
- Pinterest: 40 million
This information comes from data supplied by “Digital Insights.” As you can see, Facebook is “the big dog” when it comes to overall social network users.
Does this mean you should join a social network based only on its size?
The answer to this is both yes and no. Depending on what you are looking for in terms of volume, something like Pinterest might be beneficial for you, assuming that the demographics fit.
However, if you base your decision on size alone, this may create problems. It is hard to find consistent up-to-date data on social networks. Though there is a huge gap between Twitter and Pinterest users, some places claim that Pinterest is the more popular of the two. Here are some other factors to take into consideration:
- Will reaching more users mean you will be getting more attention?
- Are your potential customers on the network?
- Demographically speaking, will this network fit your demographic?
- What presence does your business have?
Where are your customers located?
Using demographic data can aid tremendously when choosing a social network. Based on a survey conducted a few years ago, this simple spreadsheet illustrates this.
Using stats like these and creating buyer personas helps to identify which networks are likely to fit.
The three biggest questions you should ask yourself are:
- Does this make sense for me in regards to content?
- Do potential customers use these sites?
- Does this make sense for me?
This last question is probably the most important one to ask yourself. If you have done your research, but still can’t decide if social networks are useful to your marketing plan, trust your instincts.
