How to Choose the Right Social Media Channel

A few weeks ago, we covered “How to Get 1001 Blog Subscribers in 30 Days and Convert Them into Loyal Customers.”

To be honest, you need a reliable and affordable way of channeling prospects to your business… but you have to have a good site design to begin with.

I’m going to assume you have found your market and your niche.

You can’t sell ice to an Eskimo… you can try, but you’ll go broke.

Assuming you have the niche and market… You need the right ‘fly catchers’.

Otherwise, you will just be wasting your hard earned money on traffic solutions that lead nowhere.

If you haven’t completed the initial prep phase for your blog or website, you should go back to our original article on “How to Get 1001 Blog Subscribers in 30 Days and Convert Them into Loyal Customers.”

If you missed it, you can click the links below to read it:?
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

As I mentioned before… don’t skip priming your website with the proper fly catchers… otherwise you are just pouring money down the drain.

When you are ready, it’s time to drive traffic to your site.

Here’s the real shocker… One traffic source does NOT fit all.

Which Traffic Channel is the best for your site?

Once your site and offer are ready, you need to find a reliable source of traffic that CONVERTS.

One of the most common questions I get from clients is “Where should I advertise?”

To be honest, you should instead ask yourself “Where is your market shopping, reading, visiting?”

You’ll need to research your target prospect in order to find the publications they read, sites they visit, and hobby sites they enjoy… and even know the apps they install on their mobile devices (because you can advertise inside of those too).

I don’t care how good your ads are… if you aren’t connecting with your target prospects your results will stink. If you are a video-based page then you want to create/put out content that will grab your audience’s attention so they stay on your page and connect with you. You can click here to buy video through websites like newsflare.com, or search online and see what is available so you can deliver on what you are promoting.

That’s why it is so important to spend the right amount of time researching your targets.

Getting to Know Your Market

Each social media platform will have its own unique mix of users… not all are the same. For example, physicians tend to use social networking platforms like Sermo to connect with their peers and gain more insights into what’s happening in the medical community. Similarly, LinkedIn allows you to connect with experts and professional organizations within your industry. If you are part of appealing to a ‘young’ audience, then you may turn to platforms like Instagram and TikTok which can engage with younger users. In doing so you may want to check out how to buy TikTok followers to help with media visibility, especially if you are just starting to build on your online presence.

So before we pick the right social media channel, we need to understand what our specific needs are, as well as our customers and targets. Plan the process well ahead of implementing it. Get a free todo list and analyze the market to understand what content needs to be created when it should be posted and in what format.

The first step in finding your target prospect is to discover their age, gender, and income.

Demographics from current and past customers can also be used to help select the right social media channel… customers are the most reliable data you can get.

Speaking to customers is the best way to get to know your target prospect and market.

Surveys are another good way to gather demographic information.. a lot of marketers are running surveys immediately after a purchase.

Clearly, the best way to gather reliable data is through existing CUSTOMERS. However, there will be times when you are starting a new business and you won’t have any customers.

If you don’t have any customers… then site visitors will work well for us.

The easiest way to get demographic data for site visitors is by using Alexa.com to research your own website or that of your competitors. Further, gather data from websites your target prospect may visit.

Just for fun, let’s look at our own Superb.net website and see if we can gather some demographic data. We can use Alexa.com for this:

Once you click the ‘find’ button, you will be presented with quite a bit of information.

The information we want to know is located at the bottom of the next page… and here are the nuggets we want:

A good chunk of visitors to Superb.net are male… and the education data shows that most have not attended college. However, when you group ‘College’ and ‘Graduate School’ together, those stack up nicely and are significant.

Of course, Superb.net has also surveyed customers and knows their target prospects and customers very well.

If you know your target inside and out, you probably know the answers to the data points below… if you don’t, it’s time to put in some legwork and figure this demographic info out:

Gender
Income
Education
Hobbies
TV shows they watch
Books they read
Websites they visit

Once you have your demographic data, you can then use that information to select the right channels.

Using Demographics to Select Your Social Media Channels

Let’s take a look at Pinterest., Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Each social media channel will have unique demographics… and perhaps, overlap.

First, let’s look at the demographics for Pinterest (http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/01/09/demographics-of-key-social-networking-platforms-2/):

Used by 28% of adult internet users/22% of entire adult population.
“Some 28% of online adults use Pinterest, up from the 21% who did so in August 2013. Women continue to dominate the site, as they did in 2013: fully 42% of online women are Pinterest users, compared with just 13% of men (although men did see a significant increase in usership from 8% in 2013). While Pinterest remains popular among younger users, there was an 11-point increase between 2013 and 2014 in the proportion of those 50 and older who use the site. Other demographic groups that saw a notable increase in usership include whites, those living in the lowest- and highest-income households, those with at least some college experience, and suburban and rural residents.” ~ Pew Research Center

Looks like females outnumber males in a BIG WAY on Pinterest.

Pinterest would be fantastic for selling crafts, clothing, shoes, make up, interior design ideas, and furniture.

Basically, anything females are interested in.

Let’s now look at Facebook… the GIANT in the room:

Used by 71% of adult internet users/58% of entire adult population.
“Fully 71% of online American adults use Facebook, a proportion unchanged from August 2013. Usage among seniors continues to increase. Some 56% of internet users ages 65 and older now use Facebook, up from 45% who did so in late 2013 and 35% who did so in late 2012. Women are also particularly likely to use Facebook compared with men, a trend that continues from prior years.” ~ Pew Research Center

And even better, Facebook has some AMAZING targeting tools inside of their ad management control panel… it’s point-and-click easy. Just select the demographics your target prospects are interested in. You can’t get any easier.

Facebook with its large reach and impressive demographic sorting for marketers allows ANYONE to easily use it to promote their business or website.

And YouTube is very similar to Facebook. Over 1 billion people visit YouTube every month.

Now let’s look at Twitter…

Used by 23% of adult internet users/19% of entire adult population
“Some 23% of online adults currently use Twitter, a statistically significant increase compared with the 18% who did so in August 2013. Twitter is particularly popular among those under 50 and the college-educated. Compared with late 2013, the service has seen significant increases among a number of demographic groups: men, whites, those ages 65 and older, those who live in households with an annual household income of $50,000 or more, college graduates, and urbanites.” ~ Pew Research Center

Twitter seems to be primarily by younger markets or a highly techie market. It seems to be used by more affluent white males as well. Twitter would be a good place to market electronic gadgets, golf, and maybe even stock tips.

On LinkedIn… one can assume this is a networking site for professionals. You could target those who job hop with perhaps information products that teach people how to interview and get jobs.

You get the idea here.

You need to know the demographics of your target prospect to fit the right social media channel to your marketing.

This is very basic, but most people don’t do the research required… and they fail.

I’ve created a ‘Cheat Sheet’ so you can easily narrow your channels down.

Social Media Cheat Sheet