Which Social Media Platforms should I use?

Social media is a good way to market your business but don't assume its free. Done right, social media takes a lot of time. There are different types of social media which are set out below. At Cow-Shed we focus on LinkedIn and Instagram as this is where we find most of our customers are (based on our personas), but its a good idea to be aware of all the options and to think about your customers and where you are likely to find them before making up your mind about channels.

Facebook, Twitter LinkedIn are social networking platforms that allow you to interact with other people or businesses on the platform.

Facebook is a good community networking platform, allowing you to post updates about your business and interact with other people's posts. The Instant Messaging application linked to Facebook is a popular way for people to contact businesses and Facebook reviews useful for users. Facebook allows you to create business pages linked to your personal page where you can summarise your business, link to your website and respond to customers comments and messages.

LinkedIn focusses on career-related networking and is a good way to keep in contact with people you have worked with. As with Facebook, you can have a personal and a business profile on LinkedIn.

Twitter also allows you to create a business or individual profile - we find business profiles useful to share information and to tag customers or retweet positive messages. Conversations can take place via tweets or direct messages.

All 3 platforms allow hashtags to help get posts noticed. Sometimes it can be hard to get engagement outside your immediate followers without paid promotions.

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Photo sharing platforms include Instagram and Pinterest.

Instagram is also a community networking platform but one that focusses on sharing photos and videos with a caption and hashtags. Its very easy to use and users are very engaged - many spend at least an hour a day browsing content and interacting. Over 70% of US businesses are on Instagram.

Pinterest is used to share images which can link directly to websites - it is popular with businesses who want to sell products.  

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Video sharing platforms include YouTube and Vimeo. YouTube is excellent for SEO, but Vimeo has a stronger community.

Snapchat and TikTok also allow users to share photos and videos and are highly interactive. Their audiences are large (over 100 million US monthly users for TikTok) but are mostly Get-Z.

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Blogging platforms include Reddit and Medium and are useful to get discussions going. Many businesses also blog on their company websites, which can be useful for SEO.