Nowadays, the market is flooded with various offers, advertisements, and promotions. To see your product or service reaching the desired target group as soon as possible, you need to break into social networks through digital marketing.
Logically, you want to have your fair share of all this, too, and to stand out in the best way. Social networks for business are certainly one of the best solutions. The question is – which one to choose?
What Does It Basically Mean to Open Social Media Accounts for Business?
Social networks basically mean that your business contacts and creates a relationship with people, that is, the audience. In short: social networks interact with your customers (consumers). Participating in social networks means that the more “friendly” your business is, the more successful it is.
One of the most important ways to bring potential customers to your business-related social networks is through a website, and this is not an issue to build a website by means of modern technologies. Such a website should be created to complement your marketing strategy with the help of content.
Be sure that your website is responsive. It would mean that it adapts to the device from which it’s accessed, be it a desktop computer, laptop, tablet, or mobile phone. The reality is that more and more people are using mobile devices and the percentage of people using them to browse websites is constantly growing.
As you can see Some research shows that 79% of smartphone owners in the world use mobile devices for shopping. As many as 88% of them have had a negative experience because a particular website they visited was hard-to-view. Also, 33% of mobile customers went to the competition, and 30% gave up on visiting it completely. If your website isn’t responsive, you’re in great danger of losing your business.
To make your website responsive & optimized you got to lease quality web hosting. We highly recommend you Cloudways or RedSwitches for managed cloud hosting company, their basic plan starts from 10$/month, and they also offer a 3-day free trial of their cloud hosting for your convenience. The popularity of budget-friendly web hosts has exploded in recent years. Basically, we don’t recommend leasing free hosting providers although they can be solid foundations. Especially for websites for which you don’t expect to have heavy traffic in the very beginning. However, it’s much better to get a good shared host at a low cost, than a completely free host.
LinkedIn and Facebook as Social Networks for Business: Differences and Similarities
Let’s start with the two social networks that are considered at the very top by significance. One has already established itself as a useful tool and the other one quickly paves its way to such status – Facebook and LinkedIn.
Every social platform serves to connect someone with someone, exchange a few words, even an idea. However, social networks for business are designed with a slightly different goal.
Source: smtusa
LinkedIn is a professional network that brings together colleagues and associates in one place but also offers jobs. Contrary to Facebook, travel pictures and the latest music hits aren’t shared here that much. Although corporate, it’s getting closer to traditional social networks. Nevertheless, it kept a professional approach.
Like Facebook, the LinkedIn business gives you the option to set your status, post a blog, and get your contacts interested in reacting. These are mostly topics that don’t provide information about your life, where you spend your vacation, and which concert you plan to attend. Here, you present yourself in a business light for everyone to see you. Maybe even hire you. Or hire the services of your company.
On the other hand, Facebook doesn’t have, as its primary function, connecting with colleagues and tracking companies that interest you. Given it was created much earlier and now has far more users than LinkedIn, its purpose was originally just a pastime. But, today, you can find groups related to job search and connect with like-minded people from the profession on this platform as well.
While it’s recommended that your company appear on both platforms, your goal via Facebook is for people to see and remember you. They will recognize your logo and have an awareness of your brand and what you offer them.
On the other hand, companies that use LinkedIn to develop their business actually offer potential clients an insight into the business of one company. Meaning – how many employees does it have, through what business is it connected with other companies, and who are its associates?
Whether you choose LinkedIn or Facebook largely depends on the nature of the business you’re in, as well as the services or products you offer.
Benefits of Social Networking for Business: LinkedIn and Facebook Groups
The advantage of social networks for business is largely reflected in the advertising and placement of products or services in the right way. Various groups that offer both LinkedIn and Facebook can help you with that. Let’s start with what you sell, that is, with what you offer.
The nature of the groups on LinkedIn and Facebook differs, in the first place, by the people who visit them. While LinkedIn groups bring together people from the same industry or similar business mentality, people will visit Facebook groups for a different reason. They visit it to share their opinion or interest in something.
If your company sells, let’s say, a well-known brand of a blender, you’ll post on the Facebook group. People will be engaged in exchanging opinions about the product, the price… If, for example, you offer soft skills training to the managers of a company, where professionals of the same group gather, LinkedIn gets the advantage.
Therefore, when thinking about which of these groups offers better options – start with the target group you want to target and why.
Here are some Leading benefits of using social media for marketing purposes worldwide as of January 2020
Source: Statista
How to Use Social Networks at Work: LinkedIn Ads or Facebook Ads
What’s best is that social networks for businesses, such as LinkedIn and Facebook, offer a wide range of advertising. Both have reached a fairly equal position in the past couple of years.
If you’re wondering how to use social networks for business, advertising through these platforms is the right solution. On Facebook, your ads will be seen by more people, as it has a larger user base. Interestingly, through Facebook, you can target your target group based on more personal information, such as life goals, behavior, etc.
LinkedIn, on the other hand, offers its own targeting capabilities and is a better choice for targeting potential customers for companies. Relatively recently, LinkedIn has added other types of advertising, including video, carousel, InMail content, and sponsored and lead ads. In addition, you can now schedule LinkedIn posts to send frequent content for better visibility and engagement. That is a significant advantage in targeting the corporate world.
On both of these social platforms, you can target your target audience based on their age, location, company name, job title, and income. Note that Facebook is allowing you to “dig” a little deeper. However, if you’re targeting other companies or their employees, keep in mind that job information is updated more often on LinkedIn than on Facebook.
Instagram: A Unique Opportunity if You Don’t Have a Budget
Social networks provide a unique opportunity for all those who don’t have a large enough budget to invest in the promotion of their products. One of the largest social networks quickly stood out as an excellent marketing channel. Also, as kind of online bazaar where young entrepreneurs turn their profiles into carefully designed stalls. As you can guess, it’s Instagram.
On this network, it’s possible to create coordinated, fun, educational, and intrusive content. In fact, creating aesthetically pleasing stuff in any sense is a sure way to the eyes and hearts of people, or rather, future customers. All this without too much investment, and all this is made possible by Instagram.
The primary platform on which small entrepreneurs developed their business used to be Facebook. However, it’s less and less popular with users, but also with administrators. That’s precisely because of the possibilities it provides and which are richer on some other platforms.
Certainly, it’s easiest to start a business today through social networks. Why? Because of the ability to reach a large number of people with the help of tools on social networks and easy interaction with customers. In addition, social networks, especially Instagram, provide insight into the statistics and results achieved.
The fact is that Instagram enables faster arrival to customers and maintains a connection with regular customers. In that way, it’s possible to be informed about news in the fastest and easiest way.
Instagram is the best influencer platform as compared to others…
What Can Instagram Do Business-Wise?
For a business on Instagram, it’s important to provide followers with a personal component. The brand of the future must have a name behind it. The time of big corporations hasn’t passed. However, today one Jeffree Star sells more make-up in one night than some big company that’s 50 years old in a year.
When a person is behind a brand, he/she has to take great care of the product and customers. That’s a big responsibility that didn’t exist earlier because the owner of a stake in a company only took care of the money. No one will ask a stakeholder if the product is of poor quality and if it’s made by children in Bangladesh. When you’re the person behind the brand, the only option is a good product.
The slogan ‘let your work speak for you’ is applicable when you do business physically. It means when there’s a place where customers will be able to decide whether to buy a product based on quality or not. However, when customers can’t touch the product in which they want to invest money, it’s necessary to provide them with something more. The best ‘something more’ is just a personal component. In that way, honesty is achieved, which is very important in business.
Instagram is a network designed to, in addition to having elements of entertainment and education, provide services that make business easier. One of them is a business account. This profile, as its name suggests, is used to place and promote business on social networks.
Today, Instagram, with more than a billion active monthly users, has more than 25 million business profiles. The success of a business profile on Instagram depends on precisely planned and completed procedures. These are precise goal setting, content creation, content scope, and its use, as well as quality photos and graphic solutions.
For a successful Instagram business profile, it’s necessary to use other functions besides classic photos. These are videos, GIFs, Stories, and even transitioning from image to videos to add variety. Additionally, having good interaction with followers by regularly responding to their messages and comments is crucial.
Let’s put the stories about the harmfulness of social networks, about their bad impact on young people, aside. It’s evident that, if used in the right way, they provide great opportunities for young entrepreneurs. Here lies an opportunity for those who want to develop a business, but aren’t sure how much they will be able to expand it.
Also Read: Social Media Marketing Tools
Which Platform to Choose? It’s up to You!
Which platform you are to choose depends entirely on several factors. These are the industries in which you’re developing your business, the audience you want to reach, and the marketing goals you want to achieve.
Ideally, you’ll use both for different purposes. For example, Facebook for business development can serve you to raise awareness about your brand and connect with customers. LinkedIn can be at disposal for targeted campaigns and call for a specific initiative or action.
In order for your business to be noticed, we recommend doing the following. You need to build your social networks for business as a tool that will strengthen your position in the world of digital marketing.
