“Over 53% of the world’s population is on social media.”

The way the world connects changed with the introduction of the internet. We took it a step further when we found new ways to engage and interact through social media. Today, social media is everywhere. People use social media to maintain contact with friends and family, share updates, self-educate and learn new things, and even keep up with daily local and global news.

It seems like a new social media application and tool pops up every day. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, people of all ages and demographics raced to social media platforms to stay connected, informed, and entertained. This means that your business must be visible on social media to have an impact. 

However, social media can quickly go from an everyday pastime to an overwhelming task for business owners. The questions of “which platforms do I use?” “what should I post and how often?” or “what is the magic formula to social media success?” can be stressful for businesses small and large. 

While there is no “magic formula” to take your business to social media stardom, social media marketing does come with its best practices. At Laing Media, we’ve worked with brands from startups to Fortune 500 companies to crack the code on maintaining visibility and authenticity with their target audiences on social media. 

Meet Your Audience Where They Are 

It may be tempting to go ahead and set up social media accounts on every application available on your mobile device. However, it is more strategic to go directly to where your audience is to make the most impact. 

Over 53% of the world’s population is on social media, and half a billion people joined social media in the last year alone (thanks, COVID!). But it is impossible to be everywhere at once. We took a look at the breakdowns of each platform to help identify where your core audience is posting, liking, and sharing their favorite content.

• Facebook: With over 2 billion active monthly users, the largest age group on this platform is between the ages of 25-34. There is an average of 56% male and 44% female users on this platform. 
• Instagram: The platform that rose to fame for its solely picture-focused content has evolved and so has its audience. With 1 billion active monthly users, 33% of users are between 25-43 years old and 57% are female. 
• LinkedIn: This is the social network that has established a reputation as a business-focused platform with the largest percentage of users between 46-55 years old with a 51% male and 49% female audience. 
• Pinterest: The digital vision board application has over 400+ million active monthly users with over 70% of their audience is female and between the ages of 30-49. 
• Tiktok: The social media network that took the world by storm during the COVID-19 has over 100 million monthly users with a hyper-focused Gen-Z audience between the ages of 18-24
• Snapchat: The original leader in ephemeral content, this platform has the largest range in age of users between 13-34 years old. 

Quality Over Quantity 

Once you have decided where your target audience is and which platforms to focus your attention, the next steps are to strategize your content both for your feed and your social media marketing campaigns to provide the type of content your audience is seeking. When it comes to posting on social media, the best approach is to focus on the quality of your content over the quantity. 

The algorithms for each social media platform are constantly changing by the minute. This means that making sure your social media content is visible to the right audience can become tricky. Think about the psychology of your consumers and/or target audience and focus on providing content of value for them. A quality post will likely receive higher engagement over several consecutive posts that do not entertain, educate, or inspire your audience to continue following your accounts. 

Laing Media’s Leading Social Media Marketing

At Laing Media, we have been involved in helping business owners engage audiences through social media for decades. We remain on the pulse of what is happening on social and the changes that happen daily to ensure that our clients remain visible and relevant in the digital age.

With an effective social media marketing strategy, you can build loyal brand advocates from everyday social media users. Our job is to understand your target audience to help create the content that impacts and remains evergreen as the social media landscape continues to change.