What social media channels should you use as a business owner?

As a (start-up) entrepreneur, of course you want to be seen. Maybe you already have a large network, but even without a large network, you can market your business well: with social media. Before choosing a company name, it is useful to check if this company name is still available in the trade register through the Chamber of Commerce and possibly with a trademark registration authority(read our blog on this) but certainly also on social media. There are several social media channels and they all have a different look, operation and user base. This group may also change over time. For example, young people will quickly abandon a medium if their parents-or worse, grandparents-become enthusiastic about it and start using it.

Twitter fell out of favor because too few characters could be used and there was too much tweeting about coffee coffee. Facebook gave more options in the use of long texts and took advantage of the “vacancy” at Twitter. Today, young people are reading less and less and watching much more video. That’s what channels like YouTube and Instagram have become big with. And Snapchat, on the other hand, is considered enjoyable because of its (brief) sharing of visual “stories. So social media channels are also subject to change, if they survive the whims of users.

Well, we have already done a nice introduction. But which channels are best to set up as an entrepreneur? This is due to a number of factors:

1. How much time will you spend on social media and how many channels do you want to fill?

2. What do you yourself find a pleasant medium to work with?

3. Where is your potential target audience located?

4. What kind of content do you want to share?

5. What is search engine technically useful to use?

How much time will you spend on your social media and how many channels do you want to fill?

You certainly don’t have to be present on all channels. Because keeping up with various channels can be a day job and then you don’t get around to other things. Unless, of course, social media is your business. In the context of cross-media campaigns, you need more than 1 channel to deploy in addition to your offline channels such as ads. If you have a clear focus on one social media channel and it is giving you enough work, then by all means keep it that way. You may also find over time that a channel doesn’t give you anything. Don’t hesitate to put that to rest then.

What do you yourself find a pleasant medium to work with?

Are you more of a copywriter, are you more of the photos and short texts or just an enthusiastic vlogger? If you can answer this, you can already make a nice separation between the various channels. Below you can see in ranking where which medium is best suited.

¹ While WhatsApp is considered a social medium, it is not publicly searchable and therefore not interesting for SEO

² Now rolled out for a select few

Where is your potential target audience located?

That’s a tough question. After all, are you fully aware of who you can count as your target audience? Have you done market research or are you going by gut feeling? Maybe you just target purely men, women, young people or just older people. Sometimes there is something to be said for that. The beauty of social media is that you can see who your followers are and thus belong to your target audience. After all, there may be a group you didn’t expect to be interested in your product or service.

What kind of content do you want to share?

This is another important question to ask yourself. The increasing importance of images, especially video, does not take away from the fact that many relevant articles (blogs) are still posted online sharing specific knowledge. Search engine tech can be very useful. Making a vlog (video blog) once is doable, but the power is in the continuity. If you get started as a vlogger, then you need to realize that you need to come up with a new video for your followers with some regularity.

For that matter, the same applies to a blog, although that frequency need not be as high as with vlogging. A blog (less suitable for 15-19 year olds due to the shorter attention span) can be introduced or spurred on with a (short) video. Should your blog be very successful now, you can also choose to still make a video of this and post it on YouTube and your website. Facebook boosts videos uploaded directly into a post better than links to YouTube clips.

Based on the research of
Newcom Research
from 2018, social media usage by age group in the Netherlands is as follows:

More content can be found at Marketingfacts.

If you do have clarity on who you are going to target, then you can base your choice of channels on that. Especially with the above figures. If you are a fan of Instagram, for example, and you target people over 65, then of course the 9% does not mean that you should abandon that medium. Instagram is owned by Facebook so then you might as well focus on that to target your specific audience your way. You could then use Facebook to advertise on Instagram. If you have questions about deploying specific channels and setting them up, we could introduce you to one of our partners.

What is search engine (SEO) technical skill to employ?

Social media channels, each to a greater or lesser extent, are suitable for making you more visible to search engines. Your goal is for people to like or prefer to share your post. When other accounts share your post it is an additional link to your article/website. Be sure to include in your website links or icons with links to your social media channels.

Google counts each link to a website or page as a “unique voice. Not all links have equal value; this depends on several factors. But you can assume that a link from a powerful site (such as NU.nl) will have much more impact on your search ranking, than a link from a local news medium. So it would be nice for an account with a lot of followers (and thus reach) itself to share your post. Pinterest is ideal for generating lots of links to your site via images, but you need visually appealing royalty-free imagery on your site. Snapchat does not help you in terms of SEO but it can make you visible to a young audience.

If you share an article on social media, make sure the post also lives up to expectations. If you post something about the latest trends on fashion, also refer to an article specifically about it. And use the right hashtags and terms in your post, so your post will be found on them in search engines and social media channels as well. On Instagram, you are presented with a list of hashtags when you are creating a hashtag. In that overview, you can also see how often that tag has been used. Apparently, those are favorite tags and will be searched for more. In addition, you can come up with your own hashtag and use it for an event or campaign, for example. So check beforehand to make sure that this hashtag is not in use by another account.

Use
Google Trends
to see what words are being searched for a lot and how they are spelled. That could just get you more traffic.

Analytics

For Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter, you can create a business account (in addition to your private account) to showcase your services or products. With these accounts, you get instant insight into various statistics of your channel and posts. Sometimes this does require you to have a minimum number of followers.

In addition, it is wise to integrate Google Analytics into your website so that you can analyze visitor behavior, among other things. You can also use
Google Analytics
easily see which social media channels drive traffic towards your website and what their behavior is. For example, you may receive a lot of traffic through Facebook, but they may only spend a few seconds on your website. In that case, you may want to take another critical look at the posts on Facebook and to what extent the underlying pages you link to (via Facebook) connect to these posts. In a
support article
we explain how to link Google Analytics to your website.

One last tip: Put your accounts public if you want to be found well. There are options to shield your account, but then it is difficult to build and reach a large audience.