Choosing the Right Social Media Platform for Your Clients
If I learned anything about real estate (and I can assure you I’ve learned very, very little), it’s the saying “location, location, location.” Guess what? That’s also true when it comes to social media platforms for your clients. If you’re struggling to decide which platform is the right fit for your customers, struggle no more! This hand-dandy guide will help you choose the perfect place for your promotional posts.
Before we get into the nit-grit, let’s get one thing straight: it doesn’t matter what platforms you like, or your clients like, or which ones are most popular. The bottom line is to find the platform(s) that your clients’ customers are on and that are appropriate for representing your clients’ brands. So there.
Now let’s dive into the good stuff! Here are four questions you should answer before choosing the right social media platform for your clients!
Question 1: Where is the Target Market?
One of the most important questions you need to answer before settling on your platforms is determining if that is where the clients’ dream customers live. You wouldn’t go on LinkedIn if your target is 18 YO females, just like you wouldn’t plan a TikTok strategy for 68 YO males. Here’s the lowdown on some of the most prevalent social media platforms that will help you decide what pond your fishies are swimming in.
Audience: Primarily professionals across a wide age range, with a significant portion of users between 25 and 54 years old.
Purpose: Professional networking, job searching, B2B marketing, and industry-related content sharing.
Key Demographics: Slightly more male users than female. Well-represented across various industries, with higher education levels being common.
X (Twitter)
Audience: Broad, with a significant portion of users interested in real-time news, entertainment, politics, and sports.
Purpose: News, entertainment, microblogging, and public discourse.
Key Demographics: Slightly more male users. Popular among users in their 20s and 30s, though it has a presence across all age groups.
Audience: Very broad, with significant global reach. While younger audiences have diversified into other platforms, Facebook maintains a strong user base across all age groups.
Purpose: Social networking, news, business marketing, community building, and entertainment.
Key Demographics: Fairly even distribution between male and female users. Increasingly popular with older adults (40+), though still widely used by younger demographics.
Audience: Skews younger, with a core user base among teenagers and young adults.
Purpose: Photo and video sharing, storytelling, influencer marketing, and entertainment.
Key Demographics: Slightly more female users. Particularly popular among those aged 18 to 34.
TikTok
Audience: Predominantly younger users, especially Gen Z, but growing rapidly across other age groups.
Purpose: Short-form video content, entertainment, creative expression, and viral challenges.
Key Demographics: Slightly more female users. Dominated by users under 30, but expanding into older demographics as well.
YouTube
Audience: Extremely broad, with content that appeals to virtually all age groups, interests, and demographics.
Purpose: Video sharing, entertainment, education, and information.
Key Demographics: Evenly split between male and female users. Strongly represented across all age groups, with particular popularity among those aged 18 to 34.
Question 2: What Kind of Content Will You Post?
One of the best ways to get the most out of your client social is to leverage the features of the platforms. They LOVE when peeps use their newest features, so if you truly want to get the platform to cooperate with you, you have to start by cooperating with it.
Here are some of the platforms I recommend by content type:
Static Posts
These posts typically play better on sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook
Video
Video is so hot right now. Most platforms love short-form video content, so I would cross post the heck out of it. But I would definitely not recommend an Instagram strategy that doesn’t include at least some video and, of course, you can’t post to TikTok or YouTube without video.
Stories
Stories are available on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, and can be either static or video content. Some people love stories so I absolutely recommend!
Polls
Polls are available on most platforms and are a great way to boost engagement!
Question 3: What is the Overall Strategy
The platforms you use should align with your overall marketing strategy as well! Whether you want to circulate your newsletter more, engage with customers, convert them or are considering promoted or paid posts in addition to social, you should account for your overall business goals and core values in the platforms you choose.
Consider:
1. If the platform supports the type of media and messaging you want for your clients.
Short, pithy messages? X (Twitter) it is! Longer form content? I’d go LinkedIn or Instagram
2. The tone and voice of your brand.
If you like to sound more corporate and buttoned up, LinkedIn might be your best bet. Super casual and fun? Try IG or Facebook!
3. If you want to promote posts and/or the budget.
If you are working on social media ads, consider your budget before deciding which platforms to use. You get a boost on organic content while you’re advertising, so leverage that, bb!
Question 4: How Can You Stand Out?
One of my favorite marketing strategies is to swim upstream with client content. One of the best performing clients I ever had on LinkedIn was a luxury boat maker. Why? Because the content looked different than everything else on LinkedIn.
Think about how to make your clients look and feel different on the platforms based on everything else that’s available. While I’m a big, big fan of cross-posting content, choosing platforms that enable you to differentiate for your customers is a great plan.
Example:
Have a client that creates baked goods? Think about using LinkedIn to promote them as client gifts.
Example:
Want to impart your businessiest business wisdom? Start a TikTok channel that showcases your best advice.
Example:
Have a client who works in the road construction industry? Start a “where are we” challenge on Instagram stories.
There you have it!
Choosing client platforms isn’t rocket science, it’s about strategically getting the biggest bang for your buck for optimizing views, engagement and clicks. I hope this was helpful, but if you have any additional questions or need support with organic social media, click the image below and reach out!
