Social Media marketing has been recognized globally as a marketing platform with unlimited potential. Innovative advertisement campaigns use social media to spread their message across to a global audience but it can be quite overwhelming with so many options available. A common question asked by people trying to get started is which social media platform should I use?
The answer isn’t simple as it will depend largely on what your goals are. Here’s a quick overview to break down the main players.
The giant of social media. If Facebook was a country it would be the 3rd largest in the world. Boasting an impressive figure of over 900 million active users, the super site is great for engaging people and increasing exposure. A vast selection of social plug-in’s make it easy to incorporate your profile or page into your website, blog or other social media site. With the right combination of tools and applications you can pretty much run your business from your Facebook profile. Conference calls, sharing apps, virtual office, collaboration utilities, etc. Facebook is definitely a social network that can be tailored to suit your needs.
When it comes to demographics, most users are between 18 and 35 years old. There is a balance between male (51.2%) and female (48.8%) users.
Micro-blogging site Twitter is probably the best site for viral marketing. It continues to grow both in number of users and number of tweets being made and is a great platform for networking and promotion. A huge range of tools and applications are available that allow you to do much more than just status updates of 140 characters. Share content, build relationships, post video’s, images and documents or conduct LIVE twitter interviews. Like Facebook, twitter has various social plug-ins and buttons that can be used on your other sites. A higher percentage of twitter users are female (around 55%) and most users are between 18 and 49 years old.
YouTube
YouTube can be used as a highly effective business tool. Share your knowledge, show your expertise, promote your products and network through the creation of your own video channel. YouTube has a broad demographic: 18-54 years old. 100 million people take a social action on YouTube (likes, shares, comments, etc.) every week and more than 50% of videos on YouTube have been rated or include comments from the community.
As of November 3, 2011, LinkedIn operates the world’s largest professional network on the Internet with more than 135 million members in over 200 countries and territories. Although LinkedIn is known as being great for job seekers it is much more than that. The platform offers a large number of plug-ins, tools and applications to enhance your profile and widen your social media reach. The average user of LinkedIn is male (57.9%) and aged between 25 and 54 years (67.7%); compared to 2011, the percentage of teenagers (18-24) has grown more than the other age groups.
The new player on the block is Pinterest, this social networking site is a virtual pinboard. Users collect photos and link to products to share what they find interesting. 10 million users are on Pinterest already, 97% of Pinterest’s Facebook fans are women, and it is obvious how the platform might have an influence on designers and marketers. There are 12 million monthly unique users, 10,4 million registered users, 9 million monthly Facebook-connected users and the daily user increase in 2012 is 145%. (Data collected by lemon.ly)