Top 5 Social Media Marketing Platforms

In this article, we’ll discuss how to create and roll out strategies for marketing on these platforms, the peculiarity of these tools, how to post and advertise on these platforms and the pros and cons of being on these platforms.

The top 5 social media marketing platforms selected are based on Monthly Active Users (MAUs). They are;

Facebook – 2.9 billion Monthly Active Users
YouTube – 2.2 billion MAUs
WhatsApp – 2 billion MAUs
Instagram – 2 billion MAUs
Facebook Messenger – 1.3 billion MAUs

1. Facebook

Facebook being at number 1, remains the most used online platform by teens and adults alike. This creates maximum visibility for brands and businesses when implementing a Facebook marketing strategy.
Getting started often proves difficult and confusing, but with the five steps we’ll review to help you get your Facebook marketing strategy off the ground, it will be a stroll in the park.

1. Set goals for Facebook

Setting the right goals is the first step in any marketing strategy, as this will be an essential reference to measuring the strategy’s success.

Every organized business sets yearly goals, and only an effective Facebook strategy can help attain them. Here are a few:

 Increasing quality of sales:

creating a . It is advised that you work on what you know best and use Facebook as a source to improve your reach.

 Better pulse on the industry:

get to know what your competitors are up to with the help of social media monitoring tools that can help you listen, track and report on all social conversations revolving around you, your competitors or the industry you are in.

 Smarter growth:

limiting spend, increasing acquisition and reducing churn are all parts of a successful business, and interestingly Facebook can help in each of these areas. Whether its through spend on adverts, increased targeting or more social selling, addressing your Facebook marketing strategy can help you get closer to these goals.

2. Know your Facebook audience

Awareness on who is on Facebook and what your current audience looks like will be instrumental in determining which Facebook marketing strategies you should use and how.
It is also very important to spend some time getting familiar with your Facebook demographics using Facebook page insights.

3. Engage Proactively with your audience

Just like any other social media channel, Facebook is built to converse, discuss and share content. With this in mind, you shouldn’t forget that basic idea of what makes a social media network. That means conversation and engagement should never be moved to the back.

You can dive in to your Fcebook engagement by simply asking people to engage. However, you shouldn’t sit back and Wait for your followers to interact. We know you can’t reach everyone, but there are ways to increase engagement. For example, you can habitually reply to comments on your posts to further engage your followers and therefore create continuous conversation as your brand could act as a good source of info for loyal customers.

4. Schedule your Facebook content

Content creation and presentation are unavoidably important components to any social media strategy. There are many more choices on the types of posts you can use. This ranges from stories to status to group posts. The option you go with should reflect the specific type of content your audience is interested in. You should also have this in mind while evaluating the marketing techniques for Facebook that will work best for you.

For scheduling content, you have both free and paid options available. Facebook’s Page controls allow you to schedule your posts right from your own page. Scheduling and planning your calendar makes it easier for you to see where gaps are in your posts.

5. Determine your Facebook ads strategy

Specifically on Facebook, there are more than four million advertisers with just an average click-through rate of 9%. Advertising on Facebook is simpler, but not easier. You still have to effectively build your brand and showcase it perfectly with ads.

2. You Tube

According to the US internet population statistics, the 18-25 year age category makes up the largest visitor base of YouTube with 81%, followed by 26-35 years with 71%. 36-45 and 46-55 age groups come in third and fourth positions with 67% and 66% users respectively. The last place being given to the 56 year and upwards category with 58% visitors.

The above statistics reveal indeed why You Tube is the best platform to market your business. But, without a strategic marketing plan, your business won’t be known.

Here are seven steps to attaining a successful You Tube marketing strategy.

Step 1: Create a You Tube channel for your business

You’ll have to start by creating a You Tube channel, but before that, you will need to create a Google account since You Tube is part of Google. You might choose to use an already existing account or create one especially for managing your business.

Managing your You Tube account with a Brand account/ Channel is a best practice, as opposed to running it with your personal Google account as a brand account allows access to managing and updating your You Tube channel by others in the company.
Next, you’ll need to add an ‘About’ information, channel art (image and /or profile picture), social media and website links.

Step 2: Learn about your audience

It is important to figure out what your audience really wants. Spend some time researching who your target audience is already on You Tube. What types of videos do they watch? There are a couple of ways to do this:

If you already have your You Tube channel set up, check out your Analytics Tab. This will give you valuable insights into your audience’s demographics and interests. You can see how many people are finding your videos through, seeing it in their suggested feed or through other sources.

Step 3: Research your competition

The fastest way to grow on YouTube is to figure out what’s working for your competition and then do that… but better.
You can start by looking up channels from the competitors you already know. Perform a competitor analysis for the following:

• Subscriber count
• Average views per video
• Frequency of posting
• Overall video quality
• What people are saying in the comments
• The main topics they post about

And then ask yourself:

• What are their most popular videos?
• How are they presenting themselves?
• What is their brand voice?
• How can I differentiate my company from them?
• What ideas can I get for new content from this channel?

Put all your notes into a SWOT analysis. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.

At first, your goal is probably to grow your subscribers and audience as fast as possible. So write down your competitors’ subscriber counts and views. Track your own progress against theirs monthly.
Plus, if you’re competitive like me, the desire to crush their numbers will motivate you to keep going with your channel, even if growth is slow at first.

Step 4: Learn from your favorite channels

Besides learning from your competitors, you should also be learning from your favorite YouTube channels. These don’t have to be channels related to your industry.

By consuming YouTube content, you will learn a lot about what’s working, especially since it’s always changing.

For example, did you know it’s more important to have good audio quality than video quality? It’s true: Bad audio can turn people off from watching your video or subscribing.

A lot goes into making YouTube videos people want to watch. When you watch others, pay attention to things like:

• Video thumbnails
• Channel art
• How other creators are linking to posts or products
• How other creators edit their videos, including text popups and other special effects

Step 5: Optimize your videos to get views

OK, let’s get specific about making you famous.
YouTube’s 2 billion users watch about 1 billion hours of video content every single day. So how do you rise above the noise and get YouTube’s algorithm to show your videos?

If you’re familiar with SEO and Google’s algorithm, YouTube works in a similar way with 1 key difference: Personalization.
When you search a phrase on Google, you’re served roughly the same website results as other people. I say “roughly,” because some results change based on location.

But if you and a buddy sat next to each other in the same room, on the same Wi-Fi and searched for the same keyword, you’d see the same results.

Not the case on YouTube.

When YouTube shows you search results, they take into account the keyword and similar things Google looks for: How popular a video already is, keywords in the title, etc. But YouTube also factors in your watch history and the types of videos it knows you like to watch.

That’s why no two users’ YouTube homepage or search results will be 100% alike.

Personalization plays a role, but it’s still important to do all those other YouTube SEO things to get your videos found in search.

Here are the 6 ways you need to optimize your videos to get more views:

Do keyword research

Before you can optimize your video, you need to know what you’re optimizing for. Keyword research gives you the phrases people are using to find content so you can add it to yours, too. (More on this in a sec.)

You can use Google Keyword Planner for keyword research. Additionally, type your topic into the YouTube search bar and see what comes up.
These are all things real people have searched for. This can give you ideas for new keywords.

Add your keywords to your video

You should have one main keyword and a few additional ones for each video. Here’s where to add them:

• The video title (main keyword)
• The video description (main keyword + 1-2 related keywords)
• Use the main keyword within the first 3 sentences
• The video’s tags
• According to YouTube, this has minimal impact, but use your keywords as tags anyway. It only takes a second.

Use timestamps

YouTube timestamps are like breaking your video into chapters. It allows viewers to skip around to the sections they’re most interested in. This increases the chance they’ll watch more of your video.

3. WhatsApp

Seth Godin, the entrepreneur, best-selling author, and speaker, writes on his blog, “If you need to persuade someone to take action, you’re doing marketing.” (source)

But to make your marketing effective, he suggests, “The other kind of marketing, the effective kind, is about understanding our customer’s world view and desires so we can connect with them” ~ Seth Godin.

If you are nodding your head right now, agreeing that you need to understand customer’s world view to do effective marketing, you should be investing time & effort to learn & implement WhatsApp marketing for your business — because your customers are present on WhatsApp and they want to be contacted there instead of on emails or calls where they hate getting interrupted.

JIKOO DIGITAL is a Business Marketing Solution and has helped multiple ecommerce businesses scale using WhatsApp marketing which makes us qualified enough to give you a quick crash course.

4 Key Benefits of WhatsApp Marketing

WhatsApp was launched as a tool for personal communication, but the growing popularity of the tool, its ease of use, and the responsiveness of customers make it useful for marketing purposes. And that’s why WhatsApp launched special tools like API, WhatsApp Business App, and WhatsApp Business API to make it easy for a business to send, manage & track their communication with prospects or customers.

No Spam Folder, No ignored messages

Email inbox is heavily guarded by spam filters that sometimes block genuine messages from reaching your audience.

SMS comes along in-built with any mobile phone you buy, but When was the last time you sent an SMS or acted on one from a brand? While SMS is cheap, it’s not the top choice to communicate unless you are in a no-internet-data zone.
That’s why WhatsApp marketing is an efficient channel for reaching your customers. Your messages won’t be stopped from getting delivered.

Increase conversions & thus higher revenue

There are over 487 million WhatsApp users in India alone, making it the leading country in terms of WhatsApp audience size. That’s because it’s simple, nice, and user-friendly. Everyone from a young kid to an old homemaker can use it without any hand-holding. Try asking a commoner to use email; you will be scoffed.

While email largely superseded postal communications, businesses know that today, large numbers of emails never get opened; by contrast, 80% of messages sent via WhatsApp are seen within five minutes. (source)

When your message reaches your audience and gets opened, it increases the chances of them taking action. And thus, you get more engagement & revenue.

Increased trust & loyalty from customers

Customers feel that WhatsApp is a secure and credible channel. They want a quick and easy way to communicate with businesses but not by putting private information on unsecured channels.

WhatsApp has discussed its end-to-end encryption feature to great lengths, promoting it as a channel that can be trusted to share information. This builds confidence in customers that no one is snooping on their conversation with you.

WhatsApp also validates the authenticity of your business account. Customers are shown a message that they are interacting with the official business account of your brand.

Flexibility to choose from multiple message formats (Text, Image, Voice, Video, and more!)

WhatsApp allows you to send text, images, videos, or PDFs. That covers all major formats of communication.

• Want to send your restaurant’s menu or a catalog of your designs? Use PDF.
• Want to give an update about delivery? Go for a text message.
• Have an upcoming event? Announce the launch with a short video.
• Need to explain a complex process? Send screenshots and images.
• Add a human touch to your conversations by adding emojis 😉

For an even richer & interactive experience for your customers, use live video, voice note, or call functionality. It will help resolve the customers’ queries more understandably.

Strategy to Launch WhatsApp Marketing Campaigns

You can launch a WhatsApp marketing campaign in 11 steps:

• Build a list of subscribers (get opt-in & phone numbers): To let the world know that everyone can get updates from you on WhatsApp, you can do three things:
• Publish your WhatsApp number on your website
• Suggest to customers that they get notifications about orders and shipping via WhatsApp
• Include a click-to-chat link in your newsletters or promotional emails.
• Identify the campaign goals & actions you want from recipients.
• What do you hope to achieve with this campaign?
• What action do you want your contacts to take after seeing your message?
• Choose an official partner to get access to WhatsApp API: When you partner with DelightChat, we take care of getting you WhatsApp API access, provide you with approved templates in a few simple clicks and help you track your campaign’s performance.
• Create your WhatsApp marketing campaigns: Use text, images, videos, or PDFs to send messages to your audience.
• Reply to all of the responses you’ll receive: Use a shared inbox so all your team members can reply to messages, without losing the context of the conversations with your prospects. Here’s a detailed guide on how to deliver great Customer Support Using WhatsApp

Follow the rules set by WhatsApp: Send messages only when people have consented to be contacted on WhatsApp & allow them to opt out without any difficulty.

4. Instagram

Instagram is the second most accessed network behind Facebook. The popular visual-first social medium sees over one billion active monthly users and 500 million daily Instagram Stories.

Everyone and their dog (literally) is on the social media platform.

“Everyone” includes individuals, pets, and, you guessed it, businesses.

The increase in brands who’ve developed a presence on the platform has skyrocketed. Oberlo estimates that 71% of US businesses use Instagram. But is it worth their time, and should your business also be on the platform? The answer is yes, and here’s why:

• Instagram sees over one billion active monthly users and 500 million daily Instagram Stories.
• There are 140 million Instagram users in the U.S.
• Instagram is the second most accessed network behind Facebook. Users browse for an average of 53 minutes per day.
• About 71% of US businesses use Instagram.
• Nearly 45% of Instagram’s users are between the ages of 18 and 44.

It’s clear that Instagram isn’t just for personal use anymore. It’s now a global platform that allows brands to humanize their content, recruit new talent, showcase products, and inspire their audience.

Moreover, Instagram users aren’t just active — they’re engaged. About 59% of the platform’s active users visit the site daily, and spend at least 7 hours per week browsing content and interacting with friends and brands.

Instagram can also help you grow your brand awareness and introduce new products. Every month, 130 million Instagram users engage with shopping content. Instagram allows you to promote your brand and product in a friendly, authentic way without hard selling to your customers.

Build your Instagram Marketing Strategy

Since Instagram is very different from other popular social sites, it requires a distinct marketing strategy. Start here to develop your brand’s own unique style.

1. Set your goals for Instagram.

Before you start posting on Instagram, ask yourself (or your team) one thing: Why are you on Instagram? As popular as the platform is, your answer shouldn’t be, “… because everyone else is.” To be successful on Instagram in the long-run, you must have a set purpose and goals so you can justify your time, energy, and monetary investment.

2. Determine your Instagram target audience.

Determine the audience you want to reach before you begin marketing on Instagram. If you have other marketing strategies in place, draw from those to keep your efforts consistent. Don’t forget to consider factors like age, location, gender, income, interests, motivations, and pain points.

Don’t know where to start? Monitor popular events and interest hashtags related to your business. See who’s using and engaging with these hashtags and check out their profiles. You can also take a look at your competitor’s followers. Instagram makes it easy to define your audience.

3. Conduct a competitive analysis.

After you determine your Instagram audience, do a competitive analysis to see what other marketers in your field are posting.

If you already know your top competitors, start by reviewing their Instagram profiles. If not, search for terms related to your business and industry to find similar accounts.

Conduct a quick audit of related accounts to see what posts are getting the highest engagement, what popular hashtags they’re using, what their captions are, how often they post, and how quickly they’re growing. This information can serve as a benchmark as you start growing your own account.

While auditing your competitors’ content, take note of any opportunities they might’ve missed. Adding unique content into the mix will help your business to stand out from the rest.

4. Configure an editorial calendar.

Creating an editorial calendar can help you save time and manage your Instagram presence. Fill in your calendar with some Instagram post types and plan your captions, hashtags, and posting times in advance.

Your editorial calendar is also a great place to record any key events to highlight on your Instagram account, such as new product launches or special offers. With an editorial calendar, you can keep an eye out for real-time opportunities instead of scrambling for last-minute posts.

5. Build a consistent brand on Instagram.

Random or disjointed content confuses your audience and can cause you to lose followers. To prevent this, maintain a consistent brand aesthetic on your Instagram account.

Determine what this looks like by thinking about your brand personality. What are your brand values? How would your customers and employees define your brand? Are you bold, playful, gritty, or adventurous?

6. Grow your Instagram follower base.

Growing your following takes serious time and energy. You may be tempted to take the easy way out and buy followers … don’t do this!

Purchasing followers won’t actually drive engagement, which is really what you need to ensure your posts are being seen. (Also, Instagram’s recent API changes will automatically delete those followers!)

Here’s what you can focus on to build a following the right way.

• Make sure your username is recognizable and searchable. If people can’t find you, they can’t follow you! Fill out your bio. It’s the last thing someone sees before they make the decision to follow you so be sure to include who you are and what you do.
• Once your profile is optimized (which we talked about in this section), start posting. It’s a good idea to populate your feed with ten to 15 high-quality posts before you really start engaging people.
• If users visit your profile and find it empty, they probably won’t follow you.
• Then, start following accounts that interest you and relate to your business. Think of Instagram like a community and look for other businesses in your area or influencers who might enjoy your product or service. As you follow accounts, Instagram will suggest related ones that you can follow, too.

5. Facebook Messenger

7 ways to use Facebook Messenger for your marketing

1. Deliver your content

The most common approach to deliver content to your readers is to use email. But HubSpot wanted to find out if using Facebook Messenger is a better alternative. So instead of just asking people to fill out a form and get the gated content via email, they offered the option to skip the form and get the content via Facebook Messenger. After four weeks of testing, they found a clear winner.
The Messenger strategy results in a 242 percent higher open rate and a 619 percent higher click rate

2. Help your followers find the most relevant content

Besides pushing content to your followers, you can also use Facebook Messenger to help your followers “pull” content to themselves.
Creating a chatbot that allows your followers to search is a little more complicated than creating a chatbot that simply delivers content. But tools like ChatFuel, ManyChat, and Botsify have guides and templates to help you. If this strategy excites you, I would encourage you to have a go at these tools and see what you can do with them.

3. Engage participants during event

You can also use Facebook Messenger is to send important information and reminders about events that people have signed up to. Similar to the example above, they found that the response rate on Facebook Messenger was significantly higher than that on email.

4. Generate high-quality sales leads

Since Facebook Messenger is still a relatively new and novel marketing channel, it is a great way to get people’s attention and to generate high-quality sales leads. According to Dmitriy Kachin from Chatfuel, the response rate on Facebook Messenger is incredibly high at the moment.

5. Re-engage potential customers

One thing you might be wondering is this: how do I get people to talk to me on Facebook Messenger in the first place?
Facebook ads.

There are two types of Facebook Messenger ads you could use. The first type, click-to-Messenger ads, allows you to direct people from the Facebook News Feed to a Messenger conversation with you. The second type, sponsored messages, allows you to initiate a Messenger conversation with anyone who has messaged your Facebook Page before.

A great way to use these Facebook Messenger ads is to re-engage potential customers, such as people who have visited your pricing page but didn’t purchase your product or people who have asked you questions via Facebook Messenger before.