A person looking on their phone with the words, "best social media platforms for businesses pt: 2"

Last month, Link Right Media delved into the best social media platforms for businesses to promote growth, increase brand awareness, and engage with their customers. In part 1 of this series, we took a close look at Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

While these three platforms continue to reign supreme and provide unique opportunities for local businesses, other platforms are gaining traction.

LinkedIn, Youtube, and Pinterest are geared to provide a stronger opportunity to not only connect with your customers, but also with leading experts in your industry. This type of engagement can solidify your position as an authority in your field and nurture trust between you and your customers.

Here is more information on these three incredible platforms.

1. Connecting With LinkedIn for Local Businesses

Unlike other social media platforms that have a wide variety of professional and personal uses, LinkedIn has set itself apart by being exclusively for professional connections. In particular, LinkedIn has changed the way that individuals look for, find, and get jobs, as well as how businesses interact with other industry professionals.

LinkedIn is a great place to invest in training for your employees, share content that your business or other leading industry professionals have created, reach out to potential new hires, collaborate with other businesses, or just share knowledge. 

One important consideration when using LinkedIn is that if you are looking to specifically find new customers, you may want to consider using a different platform. LinkedIn was created to find business partners rather than increase your sales by connecting you with customers. The exception is if your business is marketed towards other businesses.

In the United States alone, LinkedIn has over 65 million active users. Worldwide, this number reaches 740 million users across 200 countries. No matter what country a business is from, though, LinkedIn makes networking easier. Featuring everything from sharing and commenting on content to private messaging between businesses, LinkedIn makes communication between businesses from states or countries away possible.

Using LinkedIn to Strengthen Your Local DFW Service Business

As mentioned earlier, LinkedIn is not designed for connecting with new or older customers or promoting eCommerce sites. Instead, LinkedIn is geared more towards strengthening businesses by promoting connections with other like-minded industry professionals. This makes it extremely helpful for freelancers, home businesses, and small businesses. Creating a LinkedIn business page can help you grow your business’s network while showing off your brand and voice. Show off unique projects, share industry-related news, and connect with both businesses and individual users.

Unlike other social media platforms, LinkedIn doesn’t need to be used all the time to make an impact. Posting once or twice a week and connecting with other businesses when possible is a fantastic way to keep your business in the loop and strengthen your network.

2. Putting Your Business Out There With Youtube

With over 2 billion active users, YouTube is the king of sharing content and information in video format. People use YouTube for a wide variety of reasons: entertainment, learning new information, getting ideas for new projects, simple tutorials for hair and makeup, etc.

With so many people actively using YouTube throughout the day, it is a highly valuable tool for businesses. Creating a YouTube channel for your business will allow you to create tutorials that can be used as support for your blogs, show your products or services in action, or give a personal account of your business and projects your team is working on. 

Videos are an engaging way to reach your customer base and show off the unique personality of your business and your team. One of YouTube’s biggest strengths is that it can be used in collaboration with other marketing strategies. Whether you are sharing videos on your other social media platforms, such as Facebook, or using your videos in collaboration with your website, YouTube creates an all-new experience for your customers. 

How to Gain Views

It might seem daunting to get views for the videos that you create and publish on Youtube. With a whole world of content creators, competition is steep. So how do you make sure your video gains the attention it needs to help your business grow and impact your customers?

One of the best ways is to embed your YouTube videos on your website. Since your website’s blogs and web pages should be already geared towards local SEO, your YouTube videos can only help increase your blog/webpage’s rankings and give your customers a new way to engage with the information being given to them.

It is equally important to link your website in your video descriptions so that viewers can find a way back to your business. You can also share your videos on social media platforms and once again, promote those platforms on your videos. Connecting all these platforms will create a clean and easy-to-use user experience that will promote interest and excitement in your business.

3. Creating Interest on Pinterest

If your business sells products or services that can be easily captured in photos, such as pool companies, roofing, or landscaping, then Pinterest can be a very handy tool. 

Going live in 2010, Pinterest quickly gained a following, and today has more than 459 million active users. While most of the users are women between the ages of 25 and 54, the gap of men using Pinterest is quickly closing. One of Pinterest’s most redeeming qualities is that it’s user base is interested in spending money.

Most people on Pinterest are looking for new ideas for their hobbies such as arts and crafts, design tips for their indoor and outdoor spaces, or information. With this in mind, it is important to note that Pinterest often has a $4.30 return for every $1 spent on advertising. This makes it a great platform for eCommerce and construction businesses.

How To Create a Successful Board

Like Facebook and Twitter, Pinterest moves fast. For your content to be seen, it is important to have a consistent posting schedule, beautiful and creative pictures, and an evolving strategy to keep your content fresh. 

With Pinterest, you can also link your content back to your website and use it in collaboration with blogs or even Youtube videos. If your website has an eCommerce site, you can also set your pins up to lead directly to the product being shown. This allows users to buy the product that they are interested in without the hassle of opening another tab or browser window to search for the product in question.

Keeping up with a social media campaign while trying to run your business can be stressful and taxing. You want your focus to be on your everyday business activities and social media postings can take a lot of time to plan and create.

Link Right Media can create a successful social media campaign for your business and connect you directly with your customers. Show off your branding and your voice without having to take focus from your daily business operations. Contact our team today for more information and ask us about our web development and SEO services!

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