A Breakdown of Every Major Social Media Platform for Business Owners How every social media platform can play a big part in expanding your brand.
By Torrey Tayenaka Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
A study from QUOTED reveals the average time spent on social media in North America is 2 hours and 6 minutes. Adults spend 2 hours and 55 minutes on their cell phones a day. It goes without saying that if you are not utilizing social media platforms for your business, there is major leverage that is being missed out on.
Harness the power of social media
Below is a breakdown of each of the major five social media platforms and how they should be used for your business.
This was originally a platform for sharing pictures, but it has evolved into nearly the top social media platform. The majority of users on Instagram are between 16 and 24, and the users' attention spans are extremely low. The first type of content that you should be publishing on Instagram are very high-quality pictures from photo shoots, family photos, team photos, etc.
Related: How to Use Social Media to Market to Consumers At Home
The second type of content that you should be posting on Instagram is video content. Now there are a lot of things to consider when filming, editing and planning an Instagram video. You have to make sure that the video starts with a hook that will make the viewer enticed to keep watching after 3 seconds of listening. The video has to be up to date with Instagram's formats. Currently, the formats are if the video is under a minute in length then the video format ideally should be 4:5 format with a 1:1 format thumbnail at the first frame of the video. This formatting will allow the video to look perfect on your Instagram profile and takes up the full screen when people are scrolling through their main feed. If the video is over a minute in length, it can be posted on IGTV which comes with many different formatting challenges. Ideally, this piece of content should be in 9:16 format with the first 20 seconds of the video in a 4:5 frame and finally with a 1:1 format thumbnail. This will allow the video to look perfect on your Instagram profile, main feed and IGTV channel.
It's understandable that these are a lot of things to take into consideration for editing a proper Instagram post, which is why people hire full-service social media agencies like @vaynermedia to help. But it is something that anyone can do themselves if they are willing to invest a little time and attention.
Related: Instagram's Redesigned Shopping Hub Goes Live in the U.S.
TikTok
This platform has become an absolute beast over the past couple of years and the content output from content creators has been exponentially increasing. The number one way to get viewers and followers on this platform is by posting consistent content along with TikTok's trends that can be found on the Tik Tok trending page. Now, most people think that this content involves childish stuff that will devalue their brand but quite simply those are ones that are not willing to think outside of the box for their content. Personal and business brands should be finding unique ways to give value in their industry that coincide with the Tik Tok trend, and give real value about world events, money and wealth in a TikTok-friendly format.
LinkedIn began as just a place to have an online resume, but it has evolved into a platform as big and similar to Facebook. LinkedIn is a major place that every business professional should be with a profile and should be posting content as much as possible! The type of content that should be posting is written and video content of short lessons learned, updates to your job/profession, mentor advice, knowledge of upgrading your life and anything brings a connection to you and your business.
Related: Why It's Smart to Focus Social Media on Strategic Growth Instead of Going Viral
YouTube
This platform has become the biggest social media platform since it's beginning in 2005 and since it's owned by Google now it will most likely be around the longest. It's the platform that has completely taken over TV. And with Google behind it, video is becoming the most powerful search engine result. This is why the most important aspect of YouTube videos is SEO (Search Engine Optimization.) There is so much content that is published on YouTube daily that it's much more than good quality content that will get you views and subscribers. In fact, it has become customary that the content posted on YouTube is always of the highest caliber. The important aspect of creating a YouTube video is to reverse engineer your content from filming to publishing. You should be creating every video with the YouTube title at the top of your mind. The YouTube title should be very strategic and targeting search-friendly titles that will gain a lot of search traffic over the long term. The title of the video should be about major problems in your industry that people are constantly searching for. When creating the video, you will always need to have someone edit your videos to ensure the highest quality possible, with simple things like a branded intro and outro. The video needs to have a hook, like other social media platforms. The hook for YouTube videos involves the thumbnail, the first 15 seconds of your video, and your title. These three components of the hook will single-handedly determine the performance of your YouTube video.
Twitter is like a massive unfiltered news outlet. A lot of very political influencers are heavily on Twitter because it's an easy way to publish updates and give their thoughts on situations with a simple Tweet. Analyzing one business that does very unique Twitter marketing to bring in business is @wendys. In every Tweet and reply, they are very cheeky, funny and straightforward, which is exactly what the Twitter audience is looking for.
