It seems like tons of businesses are embracing social media and creating Facebook and Twitter pages, but does your business really
need one?
Based on a study of Facebook and Twitter users, your business could be wasting it’s valuable time pursuing this kind of marketing. The first step to determing this is to review the demographics shown here. Ask yourself, “is my product or service geared towards customers with these demographic profiles?” Findings show that the largest number users of these social media applications are between the ages of 18-25 for Facebook and 26-34 for Twitter. Is this YOUR target market? Also, take into consideration, gender, education, and income when making this decision.
If you are a brokerage firm, real estate company, law firm, construction company or , drug company, for example – you probably don’t need a social media account. The question here is, who is going to “follow” or “like” you? Are these people logging in often enough to see what you have to say? Do they even really care what you have to say? Twitter and Facebook can be great for brands like Starbucks, Budweiser, Apple, Microsoft, Target, or restaurants (local and national).
Women are also the largest number of users of these platforms from 52% to 54%. This demographic is likely to have children and will most likely “follow” or “like” brands related to children, mommy, and family products. Many of these companies offer coupons, special deals, announcements of new products and tips. These types of companies that CAN benefit from a social media account. We also know if you are a celebrity that it is worthwhile to have social media as a part of your marketing and brand campaigns. People want to know what you are doing.
As for social media and individual, everyday user accounts – generally only friends will “follow” or “friend” you. These types of users are completely different in nature because they log in or check their accounts from their PC’s or their mobile devices or a regular basis, just to see what is going on in their social circles.
In summary, unless your target market includes types of users shown in the graphs here, then you probably don’t need a Facebook or Twitter account for business. Also, think about what you have to say to your followers. Is the information interesting, helpful, are you offering specials and incentives?
On the positive end of the spectrum, both of these social media platforms can help in your search engine rankings and can lead viewers to your site. If you want to reach your customers and increase your search engine rankings as well as traffic, maybe your business should try a blog instead. With blogs you can write more content than with Twitter, you can offer white papers, case studies, links to other articles of interest, tips and so much more. The other nice thing is that readers of your blog can sign up to be notified via e-mail each time your post something new. They then receive an e-mail regarding your new post. There are plenty of free blog services that are very easy to use, such as WordPress.com and Blogger.com. Try one of these instead of Twitter and Facebook and see if they work better for your business.