Social media is the trend in recent times. Some social media platforms have been the essential tools for consumers to engage with their favourite brands. That’s why social media is vital for businesses that want to build a presence online and boost sales.
You may question “to what extent social media can impact consumer behaviour?” The best observations are how much time do consumer spend on social media and how many people use these platforms worldwide.
According to Statista, as of 2019, the daily average time spent on social media is 144 minutes, that is 2 hours and 24 minutes every day. And this number is just an average. In some countries, people spend even more time on social media.
Now, the number of worldwide social media users has reached 3.5 billion, nearly 50% of the planet’s population, and it grew 9% over the past year. Plus, users are spread across more than 230 countries and territories.
With so many potential consumers using social media every day, this presents an immense opportunity for businesses to enhance brand awareness and advertise themselves, especially for small or local business with tight marketing budgets. Therefore, choosing the best social media platform for your business would be an important key to success.
Introduction of Social Media Platforms
The numbers about the Internet from Our World in Data indicates that Facebook is the most popular social media platform today followed by YouTube, Instagram and WeChat with more than a billion users respectively.
Aiming at the top 4 social media platforms, your strategy will differ based on which social networks your audience spends most of their time on and its demographics. Now let’s segment the strategy by platform.
Facebook is the largest social media platform in the world with 2.2 billion monthly active users. It is possibly the best one for businesses to reach their target market as it is used by the most diverse audience and you can find users of all ages.
If your target audience is above the age of 18, then Facebook is worthwhile for you to invest because according to the recent statistics, people aged from 25 – 34 make up the largest user base. Apart from age, you can find pretty even balance of gender on Facebook. This means no matter whichever gender you are targeting, you will be able to find your audience on this social media platform.
One of the unique features that make Facebook a popular marketing tool is its targeted digital advertising. It uses general targeting attributes such as geo-targeting, behavioural targeting, socio-psychographic targeting, and users’ view history from Facebook to target those who are most likely willing to purchase your products or services. This assists your business in getting your ad content in front of the right users at the right time.
Another reason why Facebook is a good platform for your business is its e-commerce integrations. Not only does Facebook allow consumers to share information or connect with friends but it can also help with their purchase from your company with tagged products. At the same time, they can straightly interact with you through Facebook messenger for one of the closest brand interaction in marketing.
YouTube
YouTube, owned by Google, now is the second largest search engine in the world with 30 million daily active users spending 40 minutes watching video every day, generating just as many views. This makes YouTube a popular and excellent channel for businesses to reach their target consumers by creating and uploading appealing video content.
This video sharing platform reaches consumers aged from 18 – 49. When it comes to gender demographics, YouTube users are predominantly male, with 55% male users and 45% female users. YouTube presents a great opportunity and affordable way for companies to drive more engagement and influence conversions by publishing video content.
Your video content can be easily integrated onto your website or shared on other social media platforms for greater reach. This means not only does YouTube allow your business to reach active, engaged, and interested audience of viewers on a consistent basis across the globe, but it can also help with your SEO.
Instagram comes in third for social network popularity, which was acquired by Facebook.It sees 500 million daily active users spending 53 minutes enjoying photos and video posts from their friends, family, and even brands. According to Ad Espresso, 80% of users follow brands on Instagram.
If your business is aiming at young consumers, let’s say under the age of 30, then Instagram would be one of your great options, and you can also be focusing on female consumers as its users are predominantly female.
Perhaps the greatest perk of Instagram is that it allows you to tell your brand’s story with unique and engaging visual content, both images and video. No matter what industry your company is in, you can use Instagram to demonstrate your services and products and tell your brand story in a way that’s visually compelling.
Social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, instagram and more may be popular worldwide but they are all banned in China. WeChat still easily get over 1 billion monthly active users because its users are predominantly Chinese community and China has the world’s largest population.
According to Statista, the age of WeChat users spread quite evenly from 19 to 45 years old. As of February 2019, 28.3 % of WeChat users in China were between 25 – 30 years old, and 4.3 % of users aged over 46. In addition, more than 26 % of the mobile users in China spent above 30 minutes each day.
Like WhatsApp, the WeChat app has evolved considerably since those early days. Now it is like what is called an all-in-one messaging app developed by Tencent. Not only does WeChat provide basic functionality like voice, video calls and Facebook-like Moments feed, it also added games integration, mini brand apps run entirely within WeChat, and moved into the digital payments field. From statistics, WeChat’s range of services give it the functionality of a whole suite of apps for its huge userbase. Indeed, its reach is so complete in China that it presents a great opportunity for businesses that want to build presence especially within Chinese community.
Make Best Use of Social Media Platforms
Overall, social media marketing as a whole is incredibly valuable and a powerful way for businesses of all sizes to reach your target audience. It brings remarkable success to your business, creates brand awareness and even drives leads and sales. Now, your customers are already engaging with brands through social media, it is recommended to make use of social media platforms for the generation of engagement and interaction for boosting the volume of traffic.
Contact WeBoost for more.