#106 – How to Choose the Best Social Media Platforms for Business

Autopilot Your Business

There are so many social media platforms…Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat! Each one behaves differently. Some allow you to put a link in a post and some do not. Some rely on hashtags more than others. If you try and do the same post across all you will fail because each one has it’s own “language” you need to speak. And to make things even more complicated a different demographic hangs out on each for different reasons. What is a business to do?! That is exactly what this episode is about. We will help you choose the best social media platforms for your business.

Sinking in Social Media Overwhelm? Our DTI members aren’t because they get advice on what to do (and not to do). Become a DTI member here.

In this episode:

01:40 – Why we are so excited about social media
03:30 – Beware of a website you don’t have control over
06:10 – Heather’s favourite new social media automation tool
09:30 – Google+: Is it worth it?
10:53 – Facebook is still #1
18:20 – Is it getting harder for the average “Joe” to run ads on Facebook?
20:40 – Our take on YouTube
25:32 – How Instagram is different from most of the other social platforms
29:34 – Twitter as a tool for Influential reach
32:55 – LinkedIn as a publishing platform
34:58 – Target women? You might want to consider Pinterest
38:40 – Is Snapchat worth using?

DOWNLOAD THE TRANSCRIPTION HERE

TRANSCRIPTION

Andrew: On today’s podcast, we’re talking about how to choose the right social media platforms for your business. Hey everybody, this is Andrew McCauley, welcome back to podcast #106. Today we’re going to dig in to social media. We haven’t dug into social media for a little while so we thought let’s dig in and talk about what platforms we should be using for your business. We got lots of interesting things to share with you.

Of course, Heather Porter is on the podcast. Hello H.

Heather: Hey Andrew. Hello everybody, it’s so cool to be hanging out with you guys. I love this topic — social media. And I’ve been totally engrossed in it lately and so we have lots of fresh stats, ideas, trends, really groovy things you’re going to love. It’s gonna help you use this stuff in your business.

Andrew: Let me ask you — Why have you got really into it lately? I mean it’s only been around for ten years. You and I have been dealing with it for so long. But is it time for your to get excited about it?

Heather: It’s so time. I have two reasons for you. As our listeners know, Andrew and I speak regularly in all sorts of places and I am very, very grateful I was invited to do an online TV show for a platform called Business Blueprint and it is a 24/7 small business live streaming platform and they’re on Apple TV and everything. I have my own show that’s launching around March. It’s called “That Social Media Show.” So I dove literally back in for a good solid month recently, looking at automation tools, looking at stats, looking at really what’s going on and I got really excited again about social media and I want to share it.

Andrew: Yay! I’ve been digging into it a lot more deeper. You know, not just crossing the platforms and checking stuff out but I’ve really been digging in and using it as a super, super tool. And as you have been, I have been speaking about it too. I’ve just done a LinkedIn presentation a few weeks ago. I’m doing another one on Facebook and Facebook for Business in the next week.

The thing about social media is that it’s constantly changing and I don’t think we’ll be out of topics to talk about because it’s always doing us a favor by giving us new information which means we’ve got to keep up with it and that’s why this podcast is here. So you can keep up with it via us.

Heather: Andrew have you learned anything since we last spoke?

Andrew: Oh yeah. I’ve learned lots of things. You know what, I’m going to slap an old horse here. I just got off the phone from a — I wouldn’t say a client — but a person in a bit of need. They wanted a new website built and the reason they want that built is because their current website looks beautiful and very, very sexy but it doesn’t do anything. It was built on a platform that has no ability to be marketed. This platform here — I don’t know much about the platform; I’m going to have trouble even remembering what the platform is — but it’s similar to those Wix or Weebly sort of things where you don’t really get much access to do anything.

She is pretty upset about the fact that she’s spent about thousands and thousands of dollars on the site. It looks good but she can’t do anything about it. She can’t capture leads on it; she can’t write blog posts on it. It just goes back to that whole thing about doing your homework before you spend money on buying stuff that you think is the right thing.

Heather: Websites are such a painful thing for so many people, aren’t they? Two people I recently spoken to saying things like one person spent $35,000 on a website; another person spent like in the 20’s and it’s a static grocer site that they can’t even update and it’s just… That’s not what a website should be any more. A website needs to be a conversation piece where it’s really dynamic. It’s hard isn’t it, because people feel like they’re held ransom.

Andrew: Yes. That’s exactly what she said. She said, “I can’t change a thing, I have to spend money to even call him. He won’t do a thing. A friend of mine told me there was spelling mistakes. I know it’s going to cost me $100 to fix up a spelling mistake.” And I just sort of — what do you do? It’s like argh. This is happening everywhere.

So either people go and bite the bullet and they spend money on a site or they just leave their old site from 2004 sitting there which sort of starts breaking down with the advent of Flash disappearing and all these new technologies — mobile for instance. People start to suffer and their reputation starts to suffer; their brand starts to suffer. Or their wallet starts to suffer and it’s all because they haven’t made a good decision in the first place.

Heather: Yes. I guess case in point with that is, guys, if you’re being held for ransom get away from it. Get help; get a new platform; get whatever you can to have control back over what you’re doing.

Andrew: Yes. That’s just me. How about you? What did you learn over the last few weeks?

Heather: I’ve been testing a new tool. It’s called Edgar. Have you heard of it Andrew? I’m sure you have.

Andrew: I’ve met Edgar, yes.

Heather: Edgar. It’s a social media automation tool. I thought, well since I’m going to be talking about social media a lot lately I should test a few things that’s going out there. So I’ve tested Buffer app and Hootsuite and now it’s Edgar. And you know what? It’s cool. Have you been in it yet?

Andrew: Yes. We actually did an article with the girl that created Edgar.

Heather: Yes, we did.

Andrew: — and I have had a little play, but I wanted to play a little bit more. But now that you’re into it I’m really excited I think we might have to get it.

Heather: So what I like about it — Let’s see what are the things I like? — First of all it does have the bulk uploader, which Hootsuite does, which allows you to do a CSV spreadsheet. And secondly it has an RSS feed adder.

What does that actually mean? Here’s what it means — we’ve talked about this in a previous episode — but basically you have an RSS reader, like a Mr. Reader or Feedly where you can literally have all of the different websites you follow load into one place including your own blog if you want and then you can save the articles you like the most in another tool called Pocket. Now Pocket — we’ll probably talk about this later, maybe another episode — but Pocket, basically when you have your free account you have an RSS feed; it’s just a feed, it’s like a URL where all your stuff goes into. You can paste that into Edgar. That means that basically what happens is all these cool posts that you’re following from other people’s blogs go into your Edgar account and then you can approve them, edit them and then schedule them from one place. Pretty cool.

It does that and it auto-creates content, so you have categories you can basically say, “Cool, I have my own blog post,” or “I have an inspirational quote,” or whatever and it will just rotate them through for you when you get busy and you forget to put stuff in yourself.

Andrew: So this is a big point about Edgar and this is what I like about Edgar is that — as opposed to Hootsuite or Buffer, once Buffer or Hootsuite posts your stuff out it won’t repost the same thing again because it’s done. It’s been in the queue; it’s been fired off and is done, whereas Edgar will rotate your boxes of information so that you’re not running out of content.

Heather: Exactly. So that’s a big ol’ plug for Edgar.

Andrew: It is a big ol’ plug for Edgar and let me ask you this because you’ve been doing that more than me recently — how many, what social media accounts can you use Edgar with?

Heather: LinkedIn, Facebook profile or page, Twitter. I think those are the ones.

Andrew: Google+?

Heather: No.

Andrew: No?

Heather: Not that I even saw. You know what Andrew, I’ve so gone away from Google+ that I didn’t even look to see, to be honest. Because I’m into the social media accounts we’re going to talk about right now. There’s six of them and those are the six that I’ve been using. So those are what I’m focusing on.

Andrew: Cool.

Heather: Uh-oh. Is that a no-no? Google+ — you’re still into it?

Andrew: No, no. Unfortunately I’ve drifted away from it. I’m not finding the love there either. Although I still know that there’s some important stuff there so I’ll make sure that — just an FYI — we’re posting our content to Google+ so it gets indexed by Google. But I’m not going in and actively partaking in the platform.

Heather: Well there you go. So what should we partake in? I have six. I have six that I’ve looked at and I’ve collated the platforms that are actually making businesses grow, meaning sales and leads. So…

Andrew: Let’s dig into these six. This is interesting because we had six about three years ago and they’re not the same six any more, right?

Heather: They’ve slightly changed. You’re right, they have slightly changed and we even have a bonus one we’ll quickly throw in there at the end — #7 that we’re keeping an eye on.

Andrew: Cool.

Heather: So let’s get started. So the first one — which social media accounts do you need in your business? The first one is… Oh, by the way, as we go through these guys they’re in the order of the most active monthly users. So we’re going to list them from the most active, most used down to the least used. So you just know the power of these.

The first one of course is Facebook. And Andrew, what is Facebook?

Andrew: Hah, what is Facebook? If you need me to answer that question then you’re probably on the wrong podcast. However, Facebook is a platform that is still growing albeit slowly now in the US and Australia I believe but it is starting to grow even further in Asia and Europe. There is some changes going on on Facebook and it’s definitely a pay to play sort of scenario for business pages these days. Or it’s a helluva lot of work to do it organically which means you’re not paying with money but you’re paying with time. Basically you need to set your business up with a Facebook page; you’ll need that in order to run ads; you can’t run an ad to a profile; you need to run an ad via your Facebook page.

Heather: The other thing is, too, is it gives you all these amazing analytics through Facebook Insights so you can actually see who your fans are, the demographics of them, which posts are working for you. All that’s in the page. Really, if you’re in business, you need a page. Simple as that.

Andrew: It really is. I was talking to someone just the other day and they’re like, “Can’t I just put all this through my profile?” And the answer is don’t waste your time. Don’t waste your time building friends and a following on a profile because the day will come when you want to spend money on ads and you can’t do it.

Heather: Yes. Very good point. Now I want to talk about some interesting stats because I think when you hear numbers, this is the part that can be kind of amazing and intimidating as well. Facebook has now become the largest country population-wise with 1.5 billion monthly active users. OMG.

Andrew: That’s pretty crazy. So 1.5 billion active users. Do you know how many, off the top of your head, are mobile users?

Heather: A lot. How’s that for an answer?

Andrew: You know, I think it’s nearly a billion. I think I read recently it’s a billion monthly users are using Facebook on their mobile device.

Heather: I would say most. Because I just think about where I see people using it including myself. I use it in the morning when I’m getting up and I’m in bed and I’m checking on my phone, I kind of go through my emails and my apps. And I use it at night on the couch pretty much.

Andrew: I want to ask you a question. Have you increased or decreased your Facebook usage in the last year.

Heather: I’ve stayed the same, actually. What about you?

Andrew: Definitely decreased. I really have purposely… I have purpose minutes for it. You know, I go in and I’m doing something; I’m looking for something. If I can’t sleep and I just want to do brainless stuff, I’ll flip through a news feed. But honestly, I don’t spend too much time in there as far as personal stuff goes any more.

Heather: Look, I’ve always spent about thirty minutes a day on all my social media for a while now. And I’m one of those people that, like you, I won’t go down wormholes unless I’m totally bored or I’m sitting out on my hammock and I’m like, “Oh, let’s just go down a wormhole.”

Andrew: I looked at Facebook today. I answered a question on Messenger and that’s it; I didn’t have time for the other stuff; I just simply did not want to waste my time doing that. It’s good for reasons but like most people, I don’t want to get stuck down a rabbit hole.

Heather: It brings a good point because I know some of you guys know this and some of you listening are actually members — Shout out members, yay. — We have Digital Traffic Institute which is our online training program and we have a private Facebook group and we’re always in there. I think for me, my usage of Facebook would be — always going in there, checking and supporting our members and then just on my business pages, having a quick check and looking at if anybody’s talking to me and engaging with them. But as far other stuff and just mindless un-strategically-linked stuff that’s what I’m now not doing.

Andrew: I did mean to say I am going to DTI group every day to check that too.

Heather: I know you are. I know you are. That’s just a given between you and I. That’s a given. Do you know also in Facebook, it’s interesting what’s happening. There’s a trend now with the younger generation was kind of going away from it and now they’re going back to it but they’re using it in different ways. So they’re obviously using Facebook Messenger, which is a different app, but they’re still actually using it to communicate and there’s a bit of a trend for people in their 20s to use it again. But also upward growth people 50s-plus so those are two of the biggest growing markets. 20s and then 50+ at this point.

Andrew: I think apps are a big growth segment for everyone. LinkedIn has got seven or eight official apps. We’ll talk about that possibly later. But they’ve got the Messenger app which is the stand-alone app which they made everyone use. So you can’t use Messenger on the normal app. You have to go through the Messenger app now. So everybody has to use that. So apps are a big play in this game these days.

Heather: That’s the mobile usage. Absolutely.

There’s more women than men on Facebook. What is really cool about it from the business perspective is it’s really easy to run ads and get fast results. What that means is that it’s really good for getting leads; sending people to landing pages and getting leads into your own database, but also staying in touch with prospects.

What I mean by that is because Facebook is easy to run ads it also has an area in there called “re-targeting” which means, you can set ads to basically show up for people that are in your funnel based on where they’re at in your funnel or based on if they’ve hit certain pages on your website, blog posts, sales page, things like that. So you’re not only able to run ads to get leads but you’re able to continually follow up with your prospects with ads where they are in the customer journey with you. Which is cool.

A lot of people will go, “Yeah, I didn’t get any sales off Facebook,” and then they stop using it and the reason probably why is because you’re trying to sell stuff to cold traffic, whereas your best use of time would be to get leads in and then use the ads to sell to follow up with warm leads.

Andrew: So if these people out there who are trying to sell or create Facebook ads because they’ve heard that’s what you’ve got to do and they’re running them directly to something that they’re selling, it’s not going to be as effective as getting people to sign up for something free and then following them later.

Heather: Yes. Conversations. More conversational. Unless you’re in e-commerce and you’re like a well-known e-commerce brand and you put little specials up maybe selling an individual items.

Andrew: Let me ask you one more question then, on this, because — I’m sure we’ll go into, we’ll do an entire podcast about this. With ads, let me ask you this — Do you think that because they’re — and they just introduced more options this week for re-targeting demographics and that sort of stuff — Do you think it’s getting harder and harder for average Joe to make a decision on what he needs to run an ad to? Because there are so many choices and options when you run an ad?

Heather: Yes and no. I think there’s always noise in everything that we do. If you’re just the average Joe getting started, I think the first best bet would be to focus on leads and you really only need two things for that. You have to have a web page and you can get a landing page using like lead pages or insta-pages or entre-pages — there’s a lot of platforms out there — and then use the option that’s basically clicks to website. I’m saying that because yes, there’s one that says conversions as well but that starts to get kind of confusing for the average Joe. So if you’re just getting started, clicks to website — because that’s what you’re doing; you’re sending people to a website or web page.

Andrew: So, just a little side trumpet here. Part of that Digital Traffic Institute program is that we actually go through people’s ads for you. If you are somebody who’s running an ad and you’re thinking this ad’s not working and you’re not sure why it’s not working and not getting conversions, come and jump in Digital Traffic Institute we do this every two weeks. We do live calls; we bring up people’s ads so if you’ve got an issue with an ad we’ll look at it in front of everybody; we’ll show everyone around what you’re doing. Then we’ll offer you some suggestions on how you can improve that ad. Because a lot of the time you can do a search on how to do ads or find out how to do ads but what’s wrong with your ad? What’s wrong with your specific web page or landing page? So we’ll go through that sort of stuff. So if that’s of interest to you and you’re thinking you really want help with this, Digital Traffic Institute is probably a good place for you. Just thought I’d chuck that in there.

Heather: Totally. Well said, because this stuff can be confusing to navigate. Want to move on to the next one?

Andrew: Yes. Let’s go on to the next one.

Heather: Before I say that though, I think the question is this — In business do you need Facebook? Well, what do you think, if it’s the largest country in the world? It’s a huge yes for that.

Andrew: Most of the time. It also depends on your target market too. Right? If your target market isn’t on Facebook — and you need to do some research on this — then maybe that’s not the best use of your time. Most of the people, we’re finding, is that there is that a lot of their target market on Facebook somewhere.

Heather: Yes. And the reason why is you get this easy demographics and get leads and it’s pretty groovy.

YouTube. This is the second largest social media platform that’s out there right now as far as monthly active users. What would you call YouTube, Andrew?

Andrew: I would call —

Heather: How would you say what it’s used for?

Andrew: Video, video, video. Everything video, pretty much. But the cool thing is you can have… It is a community. You can have interaction between people commenting on your videos and that sort of stuff. You can get subscribers. You can even send out emails, get emails sent out to people when you upload new videos and that sort of stuff. We’re hearing a lot — and I’m not sure what stats you’ve got to throw around in a minute — but we are hearing a lot of talk that Facebook has overtaken YouTube as the number one video place.

Heather: Not yet.

Andrew: Realistically, the fact is that Facebook are counting auto-starts or — what do you call it? — auto-roll? — when you scroll through a Facebook feed and the video auto-starts, they’re counting that as a view. Whereas YouTube only counts views after a certain amount of seconds and you’ve got to click on the start button for it to play. So Facebook are claiming they have more views than YouTube right now so I’m a little bit dubious about that point but nevertheless YouTube is still massive.

Heather: Yes. If you think about that point, which is a good point, if they count that as a view and I’m scrolling through my time feed and all those videos are auto-playing I actually don’t watch most of them. So it’s counting stats — it’s basically inflated its view stats hugely because of that reason.

But that’s a good question because I did research that and YouTube by far is still getting way more video views than Facebook. You know what else it is? It’s the second largest search engine past Google. So it’s basically where people are going beyond Google to type words in like “how to.” People love to go there and learn stuff. Like there’s a little girl that learned how to become a pro — I always forget the name of… this shows my age — there’s a new dance. It’s not beat box or whatever, anyway, it’s a new sort of dance that’s like a break-dancing sort of style — “dub” — Dub-dance or dub-something?

Andrew: Dub-step?

Heather: Anyway — Dub-step. Thank you. It was going to come sooner or later. She’s self-taught dub-step by going to YouTube and learning just from random videos on there how to become a dub-stepper. My partner’s two boys that are 13 and 15 — they are obsessed with skateboarding — they learned primarily how to skateboard by watching pro-skateboarders’ tutorial videos.

Andrew: My nephew I saw yesterday — he was in front of YouTube watching Michael Jackson and practicing his Michael Jackson moves.

Heather: See? Yes. So it’s huge. And you know what else is interesting about this? This is what I loved. Is that it has over one billion users — that’s one-third of the people on line are actively using it every month. Crazy.

Andrew: Alright. What else we got? Looking at the time, I’m thinking wow, the time is flying again.

Heather: I know. Again. A couple more stats on that I want you to be aware of, guys. It reaches more — YouTube that is — it reaches more 18- to 49-year-olds than any cable network in the States.

Andrew: Hmm. Big.

Heather: Just let that sink in for a moment. So what is it good for? It’s really good for any business that has something to teach if you’re in the expert space. It’s great for demos; it’s great for tutorials; it’s a way for you to reach out and show off what you do through education first and people will watch it there and build a rapport with you and then come back into your website and hopefully opt-in to your email list and be on your email list from there. So what do you think about people needing it in their business? What do you say, Andrew, for most businesses?

Andrew: Definitely video is where it’s going. Everything is turning into video this year. Whether it’s recorded video or streaming video, you need a place to house — and we’ll talk about streaming video soon, I’m guessing — but you need a place to put your video. It’s a great storage place; it doesn’t cost any money to store it there and there are eyeballs. If you’re looking and if you tag it and label your video correctly, people will find it. The cool thing about YouTube is that you can embed video that you put into YouTube onto your own site. In fact, you can embed anyone’s video from YouTube onto your own site, too. So if that helps you with your content then that’s a great thing to do.

Heather: Love it. Alright. Anything else on YouTube or shall I move on?

Andrew: Let’s go. Move on.

Heather: Alright. The third biggest one, which probably was not on our radar — you were saying there were some that have changed, this is one that’s changed I bet — Instagram.

Andrew: Hmm. Instagram.

Heather: Third biggest. How would you describe Instagram, because it’s a bit different than the others.

Andrew: Yes. It’s Twitter with pictures. It’s a little different. It’s basically the ability to share a short video or an image with people that follow you and it’s now owned by Facebook. So you can now run ads in Instagram. Instagram’s opened up their ad platform last year or earlier than that and now you can run ads to it. So I’m seeing a few ads on Instagram. I’m getting into Instagram a lot more. I’m using it and running it and I’m finding that it’s very responsive.

Here’s the biggest drawback — I don’t think it’s a drawback, it’s just an issue for businesses — is that you can post an image on Instagram; you can use hashtags which are very Instagram-ish so people can find you; so can find relevant themes on their Instagram search boxes, but you can not put a URL in your image to direct people back to your website. So you need to rely on the URL that you have in your bio to get people to go back to your website. Basically, Instagram is all about building engagement, building that connection and community so that people get to know, like and trust you and if they want to know more about what you’re doing then your images and your bio will tell them where to go.

Heather: Yes. And the other interesting thing about it is it’s all engaged. You use an app, so you can’t use a desktop computer to put your photos in there. It’s all app based.

Andrew: You can like photos and you can search through photos on desktop but you can not upload photos. You need to use an app and if anyone’s controlling multiple Instagram accounts — so you might have a personal one and a business one — the sucky thing is you’ve got to log in and log out.

Heather: Yeah.

Andrew: But I have heard — rumor has it that they are bringing in the ability to switch accounts from the one app.

Heather: That will be heaven when that happens. So, stats. 400 million people, active users monthly, sharing over 80 million photos a day. Huge. Mostly used by 18 to 29 year olds, mostly urban in cities and a lot of them are Uni or college students which makes sense because definitely younger generation and it’s really good for obviously beauty brands, clothes, health products, e-commerce. Good Instagram profiles have lots of lifestyle shots and I know a few businesses in e-commerce that grew their entire business using Instagram with lifestyle shots and every now and again a plug of the product. So very good for that.

What would you say as far as businesses go? Who do you think needs it?

Andrew: Anybody that’s got a pretty business. Pretty business meaning they can showcase good imagery. If you’re an accountant you may have to be a little bit creative in what you’re showing to get people excited about what you’re doing. Whereas if you’re a hotel or a restaurant or a travel agent or a travel guide, you can draw on so many cool things and pictures from your workplace that you can use as imagery. When you’re a fitness trainer you could use all sorts of things from your gym and the people that come to your gym so there’s all sorts of things you could use there. But if your business is concentrating on something that’s not as pretty or exciting, then you need to get a little bit more creative in what you’re posting on Instagram.

Heather: Very well said. Instagram — being it’s the third-largest out there, it reaches the younger demographic, if you’re going for that, consider it.

Next up — I know you like this one and I like this one as well — Twitter.

Andrew: Twitter. Twitter, yes. Twitter is rapidly changing and it’s in the midst of more change going on right now since its old CEO and founder has come back into the program. Twitter — I’m really liking Twitter for influential reach. I’m finding influences; it’s a great place for me to reach out and connect with people that I wouldn’t ordinarily wouldn’t be able to get in contact with. This is the beauty of social media is that you can reach these people who — You know, ten years ago, if you wanted to say, reach out to the keynote speaker of a massive seminar, I’d either have to run down to the front of the stage when he’s finishing and try and battle some security guards to get to them, or now you could just reach out to Twitter and say — I like what you did or like what you’re doing and they’ll reach back to you. It’s brought the world so much closer.

Heather: Totally, I like it for that reason as well. It does have 320 million active monthly users. Still right up there in the big boys. But this is the stat that I quite liked about it — The people that use Twitter are mostly under 40. So they’re a slightly younger demographic and they’re in cities. So they’re of a more educated group with a higher disposable income. So like you were saying, it’s great for influence or marketing. It’s also great for market research because it’s so incredibly fast and timely where you can get real time information which is why so many businesses that are growing use it as a customer service tool. Because it’s a real-time thing where you could say — hey, our software program just went down we’re totally aware of it.

Or for example, you know who’s using it in Australia is the electrical companies like the gas and electric. I was sitting here in my neighborhood and all the power went out so I went on Twitter and they were tweeting that they knew about the power outage and knew what was going on. Very cool.

Andrew: I’ve used that a number of times recently. A&Z bank in Australia, I used it and they got fixed up things straight away for me. PayPal did the same for us when we had some issues last year and they fixed up — we had a problem that was going for three months I think, six or eight weeks — and they fixed it up within 25 minutes. I don’t know if you remember that, it was awesome.

Heather: I do.

Andrew: I even had an issue with LinkedIn two weeks ago. I couldn’t log in to my LinkedIn account so I go into Twitter; I found a LinkedIn account — the Twitter LinkedIn account for service — and they fixed me up within twenty minutes as well. So there’s are some really good ways to get in contact.

But I use Twitter — it’s my main news source too, by the way. If I want to find out what’s going on in the world I look at Twitter.

Heather: Same. With the trending, you can sort what’s going on in the States. Let’s see what’s trending in the States, or California or Sydney in Australia.

Andrew: Totally, yes. Exactly.

Heather: I love it. You know for Twitter for business like we were just saying, reaching out to the influencers market research, but also you now have ads in there as well so you can use Twitter as a tool to build leads so you can get people back into your business which is pretty cool.

Andrew: Yes.

Heather: So moving on, we have two more to cover and the next big boy on the list is LinkedIn.

Andrew: Mm-hmm. LinkedIn. Great for B2B professional networks, great for connecting with people that don’t want to show you photos of what they had for lunch. But more importantly about relevant business ideas and topics that they want to share with people that share the same interests.

Heather: It’s no longer just about a glamorous CV or resume; nor also about finding and posting jobs. It’s now a full-blown publishing platform where if you’re doing blogging on there it’s a great idea. You don’t have to do just status updates but full-on blog posts. So if you have a — ten steps to do this on your website, you could pull out one of those steps, put it into LinkedIn as a post and send people back to your website.

Andrew: I would even say that LinkedIn now has more focus on its publishing platform than it does with its connecting people segment. That’s what I feel for it right now.

Heather: It’s the portal of experts, isn’t it? It’s B2B; it’s finding consultants; it’s teaching and education without the inspirational woo-woo sort of images like Facebook can tend to have.

Andrew: Yes.

Heather: It does have 100 million active monthly users. Many of the people on there are university graduates and higher income earners, which makes sense, doesn’t it? Because they’re professionals. So do you need it? Yes. I think if you’re in the consultant space, you’re a coach, you’re in the B2B space and you’re reaching out to get in with CEO’s and expand your professional network it’s a fantastic tool.

Andrew: What did you say? 100 million active users per month?

Heather: Active. I only listed active on my stats because I think that’s the important stat to look at. Because we want people that are in there and reading your content and there are so many people that have profiles that have never come back. I know that to be a fact because you’ll see people who will have their last job update from ten years ago — well not that long.

Alright, the last one on the list is Pinterest. It has a very similar active monthly user base as LinkedIn which is around 100 million users as well. The best way I describe Pinterest when I tell people is it’s basically like a wish-board or a wish-list or a vision board. You basically go on and you build what you want your future to look like with Pin-boards. That’s how I describe it. So it’s like you’re shopping for your future of what you want to be.

What would you say?

Andrew: Pinterest is a great place to search for ideas. If you’re looking for ideas — and it doesn’t matter what you’re looking for — but Pinterest, you’ll be surprised at what sort of ideas can be thrown up at you with the search feature on Pinterest. Once again, a bit like the Instagram, if you’ve got a very picturesque sort of business then Pinterest could be a good place for you to put your imagery up there. The cool thing about it is that you can… What I like about it is you can actually put your links there back to your website or your web pages so people can go back there or people can share your pins and put it on their own boards or share them on other boards. And that still contains your link. So if you’ve put your image on another board that’s very populated or very highly used and somebody wants to click on that and find out where that image came from you get the accreditation and coming back to your website.

Heather: Which is amazing because mostly Pinterest is women. There’s definitely more and more men using it but it’s mostly women, younger demographic with the highest disposable income of any of the other social media platforms. So it’s where women go like we said to paint the perfect future of — say they were getting married, they would have different bridal boards for their reception, for their dress, for their flowers. So they’re keeping track of what they want with a buying mindset, basically.

Andrew: I think the biggest referrer of social traffic still is Pinterest, by the way. From —

Heather: It is, you’re right.

Andrew: — There is more photo traffic from Pinterest than any other of the social platforms.

Heather: Yes. That’s back into the mindset people are in there to better themselves; they are happy to spend some cash. It’s great for retail, beauty, health, the expert space.

I think what I should say, Andrew, is which businesses would you say it would not work for?

Andrew: For Pinterest?

Heather: Yes.

Andrew: Let’s see. Good question. I’ve seen all types of businesses on there.

Heather: Me too.

Andrew: I’ve seen everything on there. I’d need to look at how that actually is working. Just because they’re on there doesn’t mean it’s working. So I’d have to check it out but I would say it’s like anything — Test it and see; if your market is on there and using it then stick with it and if it’s not, then don’t waste your time.

Heather: I think I would say just by how I know it to work is that if you’re in a service-based business you would struggle more than if you were selling something — whether that’s an info product or a package on line, even if you have services, if it were packaged into a certain packaged product — but more higher end consultants where you have to go apply and then it’s a custom package and all that. That’s just my own insight but I don’t know how easy it would be to translate into Pinterest.

Andrew: It’s one of those things you want to test.

Heather: For sure.

As we start to wrap up there’s one more that’s definitely on the rise and it’s very hot right now and that is called Snapchat.

Andrew: Snapchat is —

Heather: It’s no longer a sexteen platform for youth where they’re sending their naughty images back and forth. It’s definitely being used more for —

Andrew: You can still do that.

Heather: Yes, you can.

Andrew: But you’re right. I think it’s almost gone mainstream now and we’re seeing a lot more businesses using for different things. I’m actually jumping on it a little bit more than I ever have just to get the understanding of it and see how it works. It takes a little bit of getting used to but I’m playing on it a little bit more. How about you?

Heather: Yes. I am too. I am following a few people. I guess the thing now is if you create a profile in Snapchat you can have people just follow you and so you can actually put an image or — they’re really quick too, they’re like that short Instagram, was it ten seconds, fifteen seconds for a video?

Andrew: Super quick, yes.

Heather: — So you put that up there and then anybody that’s following you on Snapchat can go back into their app and then they can actually click on your profile and see anything that you’ve uploaded since the last time they logged in. It’s more of a general broadcasting platform as well as between individuals as well.

Andrew: Yes. I know a lot of younger kids are on it and I’m trying to connect with those people that I know like my nieces who are on it and just seeing how they use it. It’s fascinating to see how they like to use it as well.

Heather: I got a lesson from a 15-year-old boy on how to draw on it and use the different bit tools available to me for sure. Go to the youth when it comes to these new things coming up.

Andrew: That’s it.

Heather: Alright, well that’s it for the social accounts that I think anybody in business should be looking at and considering just because of the sheer mass and size of people in numbers using them. No matter what business you’re in we’ve something here or at least a couple that you could get started or use better.

Andrew: We haven’t even touched on the live streaming stuff yet either so that’s another one for another day.

Heather: Exactly.

Alright, I think that’s a wrap almost.

Andrew: That’s a wrap. Yes I think it is. Alright peeps. Great to have our chat about social media. I think we’re going to dig into a little bit more social next time too to really give people some deeper insights.

Heather: Yes. We’ll start diving a little deeper into each of these different platforms we’ve talked about so you know exactly what to do, what tools are out there, how to automate all that good, good stuff that will grow your business.

Andrew: It’s good to talk to you and we’ll see you on the next one.

Heather: Chat soon, guys.

The post #106 – How to Choose the Best Social Media Platforms for Business appeared first on Autopilot Your Business.