By Vicki Bendure
This article is a part of the September/October 2018, Volume 30, Number 5, Audiology Today issue.
Often clients ask how much time they should be committing to social media for their business. The answer is that it depends. It depends on your existing demographic audience, as well as your potential target audience.
The four best social media platforms for building a business (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn) vary in their users' ages. According to 2014 statistics on the blog Jetscram, the majority of Facebook users are 33 to 54 years old. Twitter and Instagram attract younger audiences, with the majority of users from 18 to 29 years old. LinkedIn, known primarily as a business platform, has a broader demographic reach, with 27 percent of all LinkedIn users ages 30 to 49 and 24 percent of users aged 50 to 64.
We haven’t listed YouTube here as a primary platform, but it is essential in getting larger open rates for other platforms. The more video, the greater chance someone will watch and share your content. So, if you’re going to engage in Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn, it’s a good idea to set up a YouTube channel. You don’t have to be as rigorous about regular posting to YouTube. Instead, you can use it as a mechanism to post video that you’ll pull into your other social media platforms as you have it.
Social media is about content and time. If you don’t have the time to commit to creating and pulling good content, don’t do it. Ideally, you should post at least three times a week. Getting the greatest engagement is dictated by content and timing. What day and time of the week you post makes a difference for each social platform. Since LinkedIn is primarily a business platform, weekday posting provides the opportunity for the greatest engagement. There have been multiple studies as to best timing.
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