Which social media platform is right for my business?
Social media can be an invaluable tool for activity centres and experience businesses looking to build awareness and encourage bookings. But with so many platforms to choose from, it can be hard to know where to focus your energy.
Whilst the likes of TikTok and Snapchat are capturing a younger audience, three platforms still reign supreme when it comes to popularity - Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. We believe that every experience business should consider these platforms first and foremost when starting out on social media, so we’ve focused on them in this article.
Find out more about how social media can benefit your business.
Benefits
Facebook is the world’s largest social media platform, and is hugely popular across most age groups, particularly millennial and above. It supports a variety of content, including written posts, imagery, video, and links to external websites.
A Facebook business page allows you to build an integrated online persona for your business. You can make essential information like contact details, operating hours, and website links easily accessible to your audience.
A business page is also a great way to build a sense of community around your business. Users can comment on your posts, tag friends, and share your content, boosting your marketing efforts. On Facebook you can also create private groups connected to your business page, where you can invite members or interest groups to build a stronger community and share information.
Limitations
It’s difficult to organically reach new customers via a Facebook business page, "as the platform does not naturally make you visible to new audiences or offer a search option so people can find you easily. To be discovered by new people you need to pay to boost your posts or your page. If your main goal is to reach new audiences, however, the costs of boosting a post’s reach and getting paid engagement are usually low, adaptive, and easy to turn on and off.
Facebook is also not growing as much in popularity with users under 25 compared to other platforms, which means it might be harder to reach a younger audience via the platform.
Bottom line: Great for building a community, not the best for reaching new audiences.
Benefits
Instagram puts visual content first. Travel and outdoor experiences are amongst the most popular topics for sharing on the platform. It’s good for reaching new audiences due to the emphasis it puts on discovery and organic search.
It’s important to share visually engaging and inspiring photos in order to attract new customers on Instagram. With a little practice, it’s easy to take and edit excellent photos with nothing but a smartphone - to find out more, take a look at our article on using images to inspire and engage.
Instagram is also a good platform to use to interact with customers. Try to engage with your customers and encourage them to share and tag your business in their posts. This way you can share their content. By liking and commenting on your customers’ posts as well as similar posts from other users you can reach new audiences and inspire new bookings.
Advertising on Instagram is slightly cheaper than Facebook.
Limitations
One limitation with Instagram for businesses is that it only allows you to display one external link on your profile, and you cannot use external links in regular posts. This makes it difficult to get people viewing your Instagram page to click through to your website or booking platform. Services like linkin.bio or linktr.ee can help you get around this, but it is a limitation compared to other platforms.
Instagram generally has a younger audience than Facebook, which may affect your decision depending on your business. In fact, approximately 90% of Instagram users are under the age of 35.
Bottom line: Instagram is a great way to reach a younger audience, but you’ll need to invest some time into creating great content.
Benefits
Twitter works best for short, snappy content due to its 280 character limit. It supports images, videos, and links. Followers can like and share your content as ‘retweets’.
Twitter is designed for conversation and interaction, so it’s a great platform if you have a lot to say, and want to engage directly with your audience. You can reach an extremely wide audience by discussing different topics. Over time, you can effectively communicate your brand ethos and personality.
Limitations
Twitter’s focus on conversation and interaction can be a limitation for busy centres who don’t have time to be producing a lot of content. It’s also a very time-sensitive platform, so if you don’t tweet at the right time, your content could fail to make an impact.
Bottom line: If you’re up for getting stuck in, Twitter could generate a lot of buzz for your business. It’s a time-intensive platform that requires regular attention.
Which should I pick?
Ultimately, it’s up to you where you start your social media journey as a business. Different platforms will yield different results. For example, our largest audience is on Twitter, whilst our posts tend to get the most engagement on Instagram, and we tend to use Facebook for paid outreach and keeping our partner community of businesses informed.
However you choose to start your social media journey, remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day - and neither is a good social media account. If you want to develop a healthy social media presence that generates bookings for your business, it’s worth investing some time in creating great content. Find out how in our next article on the subject.
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5 benefits of social media for experience business
