10 Types of Social Media and How Each Can Benefit Your Business
Are you one of those tech-savvy business owners exposed to social media and desiring to get recognition by enhancing your digital presence?
Well, there are many things you need to keep in mind while carrying out social media marketing, knowledge of the different types of social media is one of them.
Here are the ten types of social media and the ways they can benefit your business. All you need to do is execute the process of social media marketing devotedly.
Blogging Networks
Blogging networks can be the best places to write and express all outstanding facts about your business. If it's a small business and you manage the brand all by yourself, try to write all the alluring points about your brand. Hiring a marketing team can be an easier job, but you need to invest quite a lot in it.
Blogging networks can provide you with some outstanding business benefits like:
Audience engagement: If you publish regular blogs about your brand on the blogging networks, expect more audience to know about it. Attaching your website's link is a must in your blogs so the audience can visit your website. The chances of sales always rise if there is enough audience visit on your website.
Looking at the competitors: No matter which product you deal with, you can always observe your competitors' blog writing and publishing style. This can act as a reference source and help you develop a unique style to create a blog.
Once you find a unique way to present a blog, you can see more audience viewing it. However, giving a specific product to the right target audience is very important.
E-shopping networks
The E-shopping network is the place where you can expect to find several individuals who are frequent shoppers. The primary habit of these shoppers is to share their best shopping experiences on the e-shopping social networks.
Most clever shoppers always refer to the social networks of e-shopping to find a trendy product or a brand. Making a presence on such a platform can be the best you can do as a business person yourself.
The main business benefits are given here in details:
Brand positioning: The social networks (media) for e-shopping can be the right place for you to position your brand. The results of brand positioning will depend on the approach you follow to promote your product.
The more you make your product relatable to the target audience, the more you can expect sales to come in. Always consider it as a promotional strategy.
Availability of channels: You can get several channels on social media platforms for e-shopping. These channels can help you sell your products conveniently. Moreover, you can get more audience engagement as these channels can promote your brand (or product) on their behalf.
However, if you are dealing with a unique product and have not been sold earlier in the market, make sure to go for copyright and add a trademark to it before launching on the e-shopping social networks. Initially, you can choose the free channels but can invest later on paid media to quickly churn greater profits.
Social networks for Customer Reviews
As per the social networks for uploading the customer reviews, most of them deal with the lifestyle sections like food, fashion, and traveling. You can get a huge target audience there. The best part of this type of social media platform is that you can not only launch your brand and services but also the communication with the audience become lucid.
Here are the business benefits of customer review platforms (social media):
Educate the audience: On social media for customer reviews, you can take the initiative to let the customer know about the service or product you deal with.
For example, if you run a restaurant, you can let people know about the cuisines that are available at your place. Similarly, if your business belongs to the tourism industry, you can present the conveniences and comforts you give them. You can also publish the destinations and their itineraries.
Convince the customers: Like social networking sites, the platforms for consumer reviews allow you to influence the target audience and then convert them into the leads and finally the customers.
Handle issues with customers: In business, it is obvious to have dissatisfied customers. You can resolve their problems tactically on social media in no time. This can save your business from developing a bad reputation in the digital world.
Social Networks
Social networks are one of the most used types of social media. A huge heterogeneous mass is present on the leading social networking sites. Generally, all business people carry out social media marketing on social networking sites.
The most alluring characteristic of social networking sites is that it allows the marketer to publish a creative post about the brand and attract random prospects.
Here are a few business benefits that you can get from social networking sites:
Carrying out market research: Targeting the audience on the basis of their behaviour on social networking sites is much easier. So, you can imagine how these things can benefit your business.
Customer communication: Customer communication can be carried out excellently when it comes to social networking sites. You can communicate with a wider audience more swiftly on social media networks.
Generating lead: The pace of lead generation is the highest on any social networking site if the marketing is done with full dedication.
Share Economy Social Platforms
While running a modern business, you might face certain situations where the best thing to do is to collaborate. It directly relates to the business sector, and as a businessperson, you can look for other entities that can collaborate with you.
The business benefits that you can get from marketing on the sharing economy social media platform are:
Business support: As it is evident by the name, you can get the best business support from the most genuine sources (other business entities) in terms of the economy. If you have started a business recently, make sure you are present in the 'share economy' platforms. It can help you in case of the services.
Lesser investments: You need to make much lesser investments in running a business as you might not be investing in the delivery directly. For example, if you run a restaurant, you can collaborate with a taxi service to take care of your delivery.
However, to get this opportunity to collaborate, you must be present in the 'share economy' social media platform. Other professionals like a pet sitter or nanny can benefit from the same type of social media.
Interest-Based Networks
If you deal with the service or product for a specific mass of people who shows interest in it, then the interest-based networks are for you. As a social media platform, choosing the interest-based network can help you select the appropriate audience.
It is now time to check the business benefits:
Getting leads quickly: You can get leads easily as you choose the right community to execute your social media marketing while choosing the internet-based network. For example: If you are into the furniture business, your presence on Houzz can help you find the leads. Similarly, if you are an author, GoodReads can be the best platform for you to choose.
Getting repute: When you choose a social media platform based on your product or service, you can earn a good reputation in the market. People who are already there can relate to your work and may become your customers.
Build cultural awareness: Apart from brand awareness, interest-based social media can help you build cultural awareness among the viewers. This can be another business benefit as you can make your identity.
Image Sharing Social Sites
The image-sharing social sites are now the trendiest social media platforms present in the market. It is mainly famous among the youngsters as they look for the photos rather than the written content.
Moreover, most of the Image-sharing social sites give the users a chance to produce video clips and present them on their platforms. As a brand, you can create a video clip and upload it on the forum too. The only thing you need to make sure that the product is relatable to the target audience.
The business benefits of image-sharing social sites are as follows:
Audience engagement: You can easily engage the audience with your posts on image-sharing social media as they can contain information and a touch of entertainment. Always remember that infotainment actively plays a role in attracting leads to your social media page and finally to your website.
Create product awareness: Nowadays, the leading image-sharing platforms of social media like Instagram provide people with some of the best features like Reel and Guide features. This can be used for product awareness.
Furthermore, as you create product awareness, it will be easier for you to communicate with the customer. The best you can do on the image-sharing platform is to feature your customers and even random leads to develop their bonding with the brand.
Networks for Bookmarking
Making a digital presence of the business can be a time-consuming process. It can be one giant maze where finding the right audience base can be a difficult task. In such a situation, bookmarking social networking sites can be the best for you to communicate with the customers and show them the products.
The business benefits are although quite obvious, here it follows:
Highly effective network: The bookmarking channels' networks can be very strong, and it can yield you several channels with the support of which running a business can be effortless for you.
Increasing traffic on the site: You can increase the traffic on the website with the help of bookmarking social media accounts as you can easily add links to the content. Moreover, you can get collaborators too.
Brand awareness: Like most other social media types, you can improve your brand awareness of bookmarking platforms of esteem like Pinterest and Flipboard.
Self-broadcasting Network
All social media types enable self-broadcasting. However, there are platforms like Youtube, where you can upload self-made audiovisual content. Youtube is nothing but a self-broadcasting social media platform. To make a glittering impression on Youtube, you need to be precise about what you present to your customers and how you present it.
The business benefits of the self-broadcasting network are diverse. Some of them are mentioned here:
Improved audience engagement: If you are presenting a brand with audiovisual content, you can expect many prospects to get attracted and approach you with an intent to make a purchase
Earning through social media: By publishing videos on the self- broadcasting networks, you can find the number of views and subscribers increase with time. A reputed platform can give you a decent sum of money for the content you publish there. You can consider it to be an extra profit.
Online Discussion Platforms
Online discussion platforms are the best type of social media to project yourself as the brand owner. As per the business benefits, you can do the following things:
Informing the customers: You can tell the customers about different products you deal with and how they can be relevant to their lives.
Convincing the customers: You can convince the customers about the best product in the market and tactically promote your products while resolving their queries. This can improve sales.
Final Words
All these ten types of social media platforms present on the internet can benefit your business in one way another. However, it might be difficult for you to go into that depth of social media marketing.
Moreover, hiring a marketing team such as big can lead you to high expenses. Instead, you can choose five or six types of social media platforms and market your product there.