Which social media platform is best for business?
This largely depends on the type of business and its social media goals. Facebook has the largest audience and the most room to customize your social media marketing. Twitter is the best for receiving feedback from and directly engaging with customers. Pinterest is ideal for small and niche businesses that can market directly on the site. YouTube is arguably the best social media platform for driving traffic to other websites, such as a company landing page where customers can make purchases.
The best social media site is one you can leverage for your business’s specific goals. With that in mind, though, a combination of social media usage on multiple sites will typically yield the best results.
What are the disadvantages of social media for business?
The disadvantages of social media largely depend on the platforms you use, but there are some universal drawbacks.
● Time investment: It takes a lot of time to manage a social media account, and if you are outsourcing the work, it will take a lot of money to pay for that time. While the initial outreach generated from those investments is usually worthwhile, social media investments generate smaller returns over time.
● Bad publicity: Another major drawback is the potential for bad publicity. Something as simple as a typo can send the wrong message, and even after you correct it, the consequences of bad publicity will persist. It is practically inevitable that a social media account will encounter political or otherwise controversial topics, and someone is guaranteed to dislike your business’s discourse.
● Undue influence: One of the most challenging risks to manage is the influence of your social media followers. They will always represent a small portion of your total customers, but they will be the most vocal, and they could lead you to misread what most of your customers really want or think. Putting too much stock in social media can send a business down a bad path.
What budget should you set for social media marketing?
There is no magic number for social media marketing. While you should probably spend at least a little money on it, how much you get out of your spending will depend on the efficiency of your campaign.
According to WebStrategies, companies typically spend 15% to 25% of their total digital marketing budget on social media. That marks a nice place to start, but you can and should adjust your spending according to your ROI statistics once those numbers are available.
Kiely Kuligowski and Saige Driver contributed to the writing and reporting in this article. Source interviews were conducted for previous versions of this article.
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