In today’s world there are so many social media platforms out there for consumers to choose from and spend their time on. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, and Reddit are just some examples of the social media platforms available to consumers today. So the question is, should a brand adopt only one platform as its main or primary channel? If so, how does a marketer decide what platform to use? Or is it ok for brands to use multiple social media platforms? And if they do, how do they decide where to allocate their marketing resources?
Social media can be fun, demanding, confusing, rewarding, and time consuming. Therefore it’s essential that marketers choose the not only the right social media platform for their audience, but the correct marketing mix for their brand messages. In this blog article, we’ll discover if it is ok for brands to utilize multiple social media channels, how to choose the best social media channels for your brand, and take a look at a real-life example of how a marketer determined a social media marketing mix for their brand.
Can brands utilize multiple social media platforms?
According to a 2014 Pew Research study, more than 90 percent of brands are using two or more social networks. 100 percent of the brands in the home goods category were using multiple channels and 86 percent of the apparel industry is using four channels. Some brands even take it a step further and have multiple accounts that serve different business needs on each of these networks.
For example, Nike has separate Facebook pages for each of its product categories including golf, snowboarding, the Nike FuelBand, football, and more. Nike also has a separate Facebook page for customer service related inquires. This helps Nike keep customer complaints off of the pages it utilizes for its marketing communication efforts.
So now that we understand that we can utilize multiple social media channels, the question becomes, how do we decide what channels to use?
Choosing social media platforms
According to social media expert Scott Levy, it’s important to select the platforms that offer the best potential for reaching your ideal audience as well as the type of media that is best suited for your brand. Therefore, marketers should always start out by taking a look at their target market and determine what social media channels they utilize in their everyday lives. Once marketers determine what social media channels their audience spends their time on, they then need to strategically look at these social media networks and determine which social media channels make sense for the type of content the brand will be pushing to its audience.
Putting what we learned into action
For example, let’s take a look at small company out of Pittsburgh, PA called fi360. fi360 helps its clients gather, grow, and protect assets through better investment and business decision-making. fi360 provides innovative solutions to financial services providers, including the AIF® and AIFA® designation programs, the fi360 Toolkit™ software, and fi360 Fiduciary Score®.
fi360 relies heavily on content marketing. Each month fi360 produces numerous content offers such as podcasts, webinars, and white papers. Some of the content is kept behind gated landing pages, others are not. fi360 hopes to utilize social media marketing to fill the top of the marketing and sales funnel and draw people to its various content offers. After a user views a content offer, they are automatically put into an automated marketing campaign.
So what social media sites should fi360 utilize to complete their goal? First we need to take a look at fi360’s target audience. fi360’s target audience is comprised of the following demographics:
Gender
76.41% of all financial advisors are male, therefore the male gender will be fi360’s focus.
Age
A majority of today’s financial advisors fall into the 35 – 49 and 50 – 64 age brackets and will be the focus of fi360’s target market.
Income
The average income for financial advisors is $75,320. Therefore, fi360’s target audience is considered high-income.
Region
fi360’s targets financial advisors all across the United States. However, the top 10 states with the most financial advisors are in California, Texas, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, New Jersey, Ohio, Massachusetts, and North Carolina. This target market is evenly dispersed across both urban and the suburb markets.
Education
61.34% of financial advisors highest level of obtained education is a bachelor degree. 28.28% have obtain a master’s degree. Therefore, fi360’s target audience is considered highly educated.
Marital Status
fi360’s target audience will primarily be married or divorced.
Race
fi360’s target market is primarily made up of the Caucasian race.
At this point we have an understanding for how fi360 wants to utilize social media and who their target audience is. Therefore, it’s time to take a look at various social media platforms and determine if they are a fit for fi360’s marketing mix.
3 social media channels that maybe a great fit for fi360 are Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
Facebook
71% of adult internet users use Facebook. 66% of male social media users use Facebook. 71% of these male Facebook users are Caucasian. 73% of users are between the age of 30 – 49 and 63% are between the ages of 50 – 64. Moreover, 74% have an income of $50k - $75k per year. 57% of Facebook users completed some college education. Facebook is great if you are looking to build a community presence or want to reach as broad of a network as possible.
LinkedIn
28% of adult internet users use LinkedIn. The site is particularly popular among college graduates and those who are employed with a higher-income. 44% of LinkedIn users have an income of $75k+ and a majority of the users are men in the 50 – 65 age demographic. LinkedIn is the only social media platform where those ages 30 – 64 are more like to be users than those ages 18 – 29. LinkedIn is perfect for sharing job-postings, company descriptions, and branded content.
Twitter
23% of online adults currently use Twitter, a significant increase compared to the 18% who did in 2013. In the past year, Twitter has seen a significant increase among a number of demographic groups, including: men, Caucasians, those who are 65 years and older, those who live in households with an annual income of $50k or more, college graduates, and urbanites. Currently, college educated males who earn $50k or more and live in urban areas are the primary users of Twitter. Twitter is typically a great for information junkies that are searching for topic based news or timely insights. Many industry conferences also utilize Twitter to help facilitate conversations between attendees.
Social media platforms such as Instagram and Pinterest are not a great fit for fi360. Instagram is very visual and a better fit for the lifestyle, food, fashion, and luxury brand sites. fi360 does not produce much visual content and the older male demographic is less likely to utilize these social media platforms. Therefore, fi360 could make better use of its time elsewhere.
I hope this blog article contributed to your understanding of how to choose the right social media sites for your brand!
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