The top social media platforms for business owners
Updated: Jan 7, 2022
Today, calling most people obsessed with social media would be an understatement. With over 2.77 billion users worldwide, you can bet that your customers are probably on their smartphones at this moment checking their social channels - whether it’s to send their friends adorable cat GIFs or request help from your business’ customer support. What does all this craze really mean for your business? That there’s no better time to take advantage of this market space. Here we’ve compiled information on the most popular social media sites (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn) and tips for your business to correctly find its presence on them.
Each platform gives your brand the opportunity to prosper from the way that you convey your business to your interactions with customers. So for starters, you’ll want to be familiar with the term social media marketing: the process of curating and sharing content specific to each social media site in hopes of achieving certain business-related initiatives. Not only will you need to share content on each of these platforms, but you’re also inclined to engage with users via likes, comments, and responses of many other forms. Let’s hone in on the specificities of each major social platform.
Facebook is not the oldest platform (founded in September 2006), but it is the most prominent. In other words, if Facebook were a country, it’d be the largest one in the world with its massive number of users marked at 2.27 billion per month. It’s a dominant place for everyday users to form connections with friends and businesses, share news, feelings and photos, and many other things you wouldn’t imagine (shop, sign up for events, rate your business, seek social media customer service, etc.). And although Mark Zuckerberg’s platform is no longer considered the most popular kid in school, the company is constantly working hard to stay relevant by coming out with new features nearly every month. Therefore, your business will certainly find it worthwhile to push its way through the crowd and find a place suitable to set up shop.
How to create a Facebook Business Page
For your business, you should start with a Facebook Business page. Consider this the Yellow Pages of the Internet today, as pretty much every business has one. If you need help getting started, this guide to creating a Facebook Business Page is your new best friend. After establishing your page, you can upload all of your relevant business information: Business hours, address, phone number, a description of your company, logo, cover photo, and most importantly a link to your website.
How to create and share content on Facebook
Once you have a Facebook page, you can start sharing content. Ideally, you should publish once a day, mixing original content with content you find online that’s relevant to your customers. (Of course, always ask for permission and give credit when you’re sharing someone else’s content.) But, we know that daily posts are not an easy task, which is why you should just focus on publishing consistently, even if that’s three times a week. It’s important to show your community and Facebook’s algorithm that you’re active on that platform and that they should know what to expect from you.
Maybe you’re afraid that the mere creation of an original post will take you too much time and resources? Social Posts by Wix, available in your site’s dashboard as part of Ascend, gives you stunning, personalizable, and free templates to easily create posts for every social platform. Your content on Facebook, and all of your social media sites, should be easily consumable as well as evoke an emotion from your audience. You can focus on social media ideas like these, as well as behind the scenes content, short videos, blog articles, and beautiful images. Sometimes it’s necessary to post informational content, such as in the case of a major announcement about your products (i.e., a product launch). But, avoid sharing this content on a regular basis in order to not spam your community. Lastly, a growing trend among businesses today is user generated content (UGC), which is content produced by your consumers themselves. On top of saving you tons of time in the creation and production process, it shows that you care about your community’s opinions enough that you want to make them proud. You will also capitalize on their own community of users, who will be more likely to share and like with their own friends too - creating a multiplying effect of engagement with your very own products and services.
How to promote your content on Facebook
Frustrating, but inevitable: due to the selection operated by the (always evolving) Facebook algorithm, not all of your hard work will appear on your followers’ timelines. To avoid this limitation imposed on your organic reach, you’ll have to consider paid ads. Fortunately, Facebook houses interesting ad opportunities for any budget - which will enable you to start with a small budget in order to test and get better with time. Not only can this promotion be highly affordable, but it’s also extremely capable of providing extensive targeting opportunities, for you to make sure you reach the exact people on the network (including, of course, potential clients). The settings enable you to specify (and practically pinpoint) the age, location, and other demographics and characteristics of the users you want to market to. Ready to start? All you need to do is create an account in the Business Manager tool from within your Facebook Business Page, then follow this guide to create a Facebook ad.
Founded in October 2010, Instagram, has inarguably built the largest fort and has no plans of taking it down anytime soon. Originally (and still mainly) a photo and video sharing platform, Instagram has branched off into other sectors in hopes of slowly taking over the social media world - well, one-third of the U.S. popular so far, along with numerous other countries. From regular feed posts to Instagram Stories, hashtags, filters, polls, IGTV, and more, there’s something for almost everyone here. And since Instagram corners the visual market, your business can certainly benefit from using this channel to promote your products and services. Just make sure to gear your focus towards smartphones, as most people use the platform via the mobile application and a lot of these shiny features aren’t yet available on the desktop format.
How to create an Instagram Business Account
After you’ve created a profile for your company, switching to an Instagram Business Account won’t cost you anything but a few seconds of your time. Within the application’s settings, you can just click the button “Switch to Business Account” - a transition that automatically ups your professional credibility. This change also allows you to see more insights about your posts’ performance and followers, create promotions to reach more customers, and enable new contact options within your profile bio. Once you’ve created your business account, you should add an Instagram bio including your business’ logo, a link to your website, and brand-specific content and hashtags. Pro tip: If your Business Account reaches over 10,000 followers, you can utilize the ‘swipe-up’ link in your Stories to embed a website URL directly on your slide, accessible when users swipe-up.
How to create and share content on Instagram
Before you begin following other brands and users in your industry, you’ll first need to create content. It’s recommended to share 1-3 regular feed posts per day, and one Instagram Story within a 24 hour period to be considered an “active user.” However, just like posting on Facebook, producing and promoting that much content can be challenging for a business entrepreneur. Therefore, you should mainly be concerned with consistency. If you’re going to post once per day or once every other day, that’s not a problem, but stick to your plan. And if you simply want to save time and create beautiful content, try Social Posts by Wix in your Site’s dashboard.
Also make sure to keep your content relevant to your brand’s goals of promoting your products and services. Doing so doesn’t mean that you must be serious, it’s okay to let your fun and playful personality shine through as long as you keep a sense of professionalism (often times that’s more engaging anyways). You can share posts in the form of pictures (one or multiple) and videos with attached hashtags and texts. Stories are created and shared most frequently in increments known as slides, where each one represents a point in the story’s plot. The final slide symbolizes the climax, known as a call-to-action, which serves the purpose of luring in visitors and hopefully drawing in new customers, or retaining current customers, with a message like “shop now” or “sign up for our service,” or redirecting them to “like our latest post.” Using hashtags throughout your content is especially important for provoking the searchability of it.
Aside from the two most dominant forms of content (regular posts and Stories), you can use Story Highlights (to make your Stories everlasting), Instagram live (to share big news or events in real time), IGTV (a YouTube style feature for long-form videos), and Direct messages (to privately engage with customers - and also an excellent customer support tool).
How to promote your content on Instagram
Before mentioning promoting content, it’s necessary to discuss Instagram’s algorithm, the determining factor of which users see your posts, which in turn affects how well they perform on your feed. Engagement rates have dropped for many brands due to the ever-changing gears of this mysterious algorithm. Therefore, resources like promotions are one of the few ways to overcome this obstacle. In order to start promoting, you’ll first need a corresponding Facebook page, then you can click here to create Instagram ads through the Facebook Ad Manager. As mentioned above, Facebook’s targeting options are wholesome, making this initiative highly useful. Lastly, with Instagram, your ads will blend naturally into users’ feeds, whether you use photos, videos, carousel posts (slideshow of photos), or collections (photo collages).
The leading news source for many people today was founded quiet a long time ago in the whelm of social media lives - March 2006 to be exact. Twitter is a platform for consuming and sharing news updates as well as networking and socializing - by socializing, we mean that rants on random and peculiar topics are not uncommon. Yet with very few features, it’s attracted over 300 million monthly users due to its simplicity and directness. Twitter is a place to engage in conversations, spread news, and potentially go viral. Therefore, your business needs to be on the platform sharing content often, and engaging even more often in order to reach your customers.
How to create a Twitter Business Profile
It’s not much different from a regular profile to create a business profile on Twitter.
The five things you should focus on specific to your business are:
Your business’ name as your Twitter Handle (@mycompanyname)
Your profile image (your logo)
A short 160-character bio describing your business
Header image
Pinned tweet - You should be aware of the fact that it’s the first thing visible on your business’ profile, which means that it should be popular, timeless, or specific to an occasion.
Aside from this, just don’t forget to link to your website in order to drive traffic where it matters most to your business.
How to create and share content on Twitter
Once you’ve established your profile, you can start sharing content. Typically, it’s recommended to tweet anywhere from 1-5 times per day starting out. Later on, you can even increase this stat up to 15 times per day. Yet, while you’re still testing the waters, share different forms of content that your think could work. This can be company updates, relevant articles, and other interesting pieces of information that promote engagement, like photos, polls, inspirational quotes, tips, and even GIFs. One major feature of this platform is hashtags, which serve great usability in determining what’s trending on this newsource and allowing people that don’t follow you to find your content. Sharing this content is far from complicated, as you can basically just tweet and send direct messages when you initiate things. Aside from just sharing content, it’s important to be available and responsive with your followers. This includes liking tweets, replying, and retweeting other users’ content.
How to promote your content on Twitter
One free and great way to promote content on Twitter is by including some of the top trending hashtags in your posts. You can find what’s trending in the search tab on your mobile application or the left hand side of your home screen on the desktop version. By including the hashtags related to these topics, there’s a chance your posts could even go viral. Yet, you might not want to base your marketing on chances, which is why you might consider giving paid promotions a try. Simply posting the organic way makes it quite difficult for your content to be seen. This is because, just like Facebook and Instagram, Twitter has a magic little algorithm attached to its timeline too. But, advertisements will help you get more likes, retweets, comments, and followers - and most importantly: new customers. From targeting a specific audience to choosing your ad spend, and evaluating your performance, this platform offers the whole circle. To begin, create your account, then visit the Twitter ads page here.
This is the third most popular social channel. Yet, it’s not competing for first place. LinkedIn serves a different purpose altogether from its buddies as the one and only professional network. Since its launch in December 2002, it’s grown to attract 260 million monthly users. For general users, it’s their home for job hunting, recruitment and networking with other professionals. And for your business, it’s a place to showcase your skills, accomplishments and employees, to network, and so much more.
How to create a LinkedIn Company Page
This is your hub on the social channel to reach consumers through engagement and promotion, as well as increase brand awareness. But first - whether you are the founder, head marketing expert, or designer for your team - you’ll need to initially set up your personal account (basically comprised of an extensive version of your resume) before you can create a Company Page on LinkedIn with a custom URL. Then you can start crafting your Company Page, including a description, a cover photo, strengths and specialities, and so much more. To get you started, check out this complete guide to creating a Company Page on LinkedIn.
How to create and share content on LinkedIn
After your Company Page is intact, you can share content to your page. A recommended amount is to post once per day or every other day. Here you should certainly use a more professional tone with your content than the other platforms - but, including your brand’s personality into that mix is equally as important for authenticity. LinkedIn attracts a more sophisticated, purposeful crowd than other platforms. People are coming here to gain insights from industry experts and to advance their careers - so be their gateway to that. Therefore, when deciding what to post, consider quality over quantity. Overall, this platform offers an opportunity to flaunt your business’ hard work, promote your jobs, acknowledge your employees, and share powerful and informative content with your industry. And on LinkedIn, company specific content works better in comparison to any other platform. You can achieve all of this creativity and informativeness in the form of articles (self-made or shared from other industry role models), company updates, quick tips, photos, and long-text posts.
How to promote your content on LinkedIn
As usual, promotions get your content “out there” more than simple feed posts. Creating ads on LinkedIn will only take you a few minutes too. You can create ads in the form of Sponsored Content (target users on their general news feeds), Text Ads (sidebar, pay-per-click ads), or Sponsored InMail (personalized messages sent to inboxes). Pick your preference, test it, then test another to see what works best for your business and type of content. For more information, get start with LinkedIn ads here.
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