Nowadays, there are more and more options to share content. As a brand, the challenge is to understand the specificities of each channel and its audience to share the right information in the right way.
In this article, you will find some comprehensive keys as well as some tips and insights to understand each of those social media channels, their audiences, and the best content to create for each. Take a look and maybe you will find the right social media for your brand strategy.
Instagram was launched in October 2010 and is owned by Facebook since 2012. In 2019, the platform claimed 1 billion monthly active users and 500 million daily active users. 11% of Instagram audience is based in the USA. The largest age category is 18-24 and 52% of Instagram users are women.
One of the brands doing particularly well on Instagram is Tiffany & Co. The luxury brand has over 11.5 million followers and posts every day made-for-social content as well as some behind-the-scenes to connect with consumers. Tiffany makes sure to always showcase its signature colour to enhance their strong brand image.
Snapchat
The first version of Snapchat was released in September 2011. 90% of Snapchat users are between 13-24 years old and 70% of the overall Snapchat users are female. According to a company update from January 2020, 3 billion of photos and videos are created every day on the platform.
Snapchat used to be quite complicated for brands to adopt due to the short lifetime of the content uploaded on the platform. To solve the issue, Snapchat launched brand profiles. Now brands can get their own profiles on the platform where users can find permanent content. For the launch, the company partnered with big names such as Louis Vuitton and L’Oréal.
TikTok
TikTok is the most recent of the three channels as it was launched in September 2016 by the Chinese company ByteDance. At the end of 2019, the app counted with more than 1 billion users all over the world. However, if TikTok knows a growing success at the beginning of 2020 due to the lockdown in most countries, the channel is not yet as popular as Snapchat or Instagram. Additionally, countries such as India already banned the platform as there were concerns about how China is using the data collected by the app.
One of the brands doing great on TikTok is Levi’s. The fashion label was one of the first brands using shoppable ads which allow users to shop the products directly through links on TikTok. During the pandemic, these social efforts allowed Levi’s to continue selling even if the stores were closed. For the campaign, Levi’s partnered with TikTokers to create sponsored videos with a “shop now” button at the bottom.
Which Social Media for your Brand Strategy? Why to choose what?
Audience
First, it is very important to understand the audience of each media as well as who are you trying to reach. For most of the platforms mentioned in this article, the main users are female and between 18-24 years old. If you are targeting 50 years old men, these might not be your preferred channels. “Traditional” social media channels such as Facebook remain very efficient for some audiences. Business social media platforms like LinkedIn are also a good way to promote your company/product and are often underestimated.
For us at Cherrydeck, Instagram has proven to be the best social media for our business. As the image-driven social media platform that it is, it fits well with our creative audience and allows us to reach photographers and visual artists where they spend their time the most and often post their work.
Content
Second, you need to create relevant content. Each of the platforms has their own specificities. If you can create different formats on Instagram and Snapchat, TikTok only allows videos. This is something you should consider when deciding which content to post and where to post it. You might see better results when using vertical short videos for Snapchat, Instagram Stories, and TikTok, and square content for the Instagram feed. Although it might seem a lot of work at first if you want to be present in all of these mediums, keep in mind that the same piece of content can be cropped and re-edited to drive better performance in each of the channels.
When it comes to content creation, you can also decide whether you want to create content for your brand or ask influencers to do the content creation, share it in their communities, and repost instead. Even being the most recent platform, one of TikTok’s biggest advantages is the influencers’ (or TikTokers as they called themselves) very good reach and often surprising creativity.
At Cherrydeck, we like to repost our members work and share the talented creatives we have in our community. This helps us to reward our users and at the same time attracts new members to join our business.
Engagement
But creating great content is not enough, you also need to engage with the community you are communicating with on those platforms. Make no wrong assumptions, this is usually what is going to take most of your time. That is why, if you have a small team, it might be better to focus on one channel rather than being on all of them the wrong way.
In our case, we decided to focus on Instagram and have a smaller participation in other social media platforms. This way, we have been able to exponentially grow the channel that works for us the best, instead of having an average presence in the different mediums.
What should you keep in mind?
To summarise, here are the three main keys when it comes to social media for your brand strategy:
- Define carefully who you want to reach and understand the audience of each channel
- Create the right content for each medium, having into account its specificities
- Engage with your audience to build your community and grow your account
Last but not least, we would like to remind you to be careful with the information you share in each of the platforms. As a company, you might have some sensitive data you don’t want to share with the world. Make sure to read all the conditions when using social media. The reach you are going to gain might not be worth a security outreach.
Do you need someone to create made-for-social content? Discover all our creatives here or get in touch with the team to be guided through the process!
If you need specific support on how to use the referred social media platforms, visit their support pages dedicated to businesses.
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