Selecting which social networks your company will be on is one of the most important decisions your marketing team will make. Choose wisely and you'll reach the right customers, generate leads, and build relationships. Choose poorly and say goodbye to a huge chunk of time, resources, and work you can never get back. 
To get this decision right, companies need to know their buyer personas what social platforms they interact on. Therefore, let's begin with the first element of how to pick social media platforms: understanding your customer.
Fine-Tune Your Buyer Personas
First and foremost, marketing organizations need to continually update their buyer personas. These personas hold the key to your social media platform decision-making: what are the basic demographics of your customer base? Age, education level, marital status? What products do they like? What are they looking for in products? What sales techniques work best for them? The list goes on. By taking stock of your buyer personas you can then cross-reference your customer base with the demographic trends across various social media networks. This brings us to step number two: knowing they types of users on each network.
Facebook Remains Dominant, Although Users Are Branching Out
Social media networks are constantly in flux. For example, Facebook recently noted that American teenagers, aged 13-14, have drastically reduce their usage on the site in favor of hipper platforms like Snapchat and Twitter. If 13-14 year old Americans are your target audience, this is development should affect your decision-making. However, Facebook still remains the dominant social media platform. Here's the percentage of online adults who use the following social media networks in 2013 compared to 2012, according to a recent Pew Research Survey:
- Facebook: 71 percent, up from 67 percent in 2012.
- LinkedIn: 22 percent, up from 20 percent.
- Pinterest: 21 percent, up from 15 percent.
- Twitter: 18 percent, up from 16 percent.
- Instagram: 17 percent, up from 13 percent.
User Demographics Across the Major Social Media Networks
There's no shortage of compelling research that neatly generalizes the types of individuals who use social networks as well as each network's primary purpose. Therefore, at the risk of resorting to stereotypes, marketing managers should consider the following network-specific data points:
Facebook — With over one billion active users, odds are most of your customers and prospects are on Facebook. The network is optimal for communicating with prospects in a non-obtrusive way via ads that appear in user fees or by posting blogs, helpful content, and photos on your company's timeline. If your business can consistently post compelling content, a Facebook presence is a no-brainer: users share 2.5 billion of piece of content on a daily basis.
Twitter — With 560 million active users, Twitter continues to grow in reach and popularity. The network famously allows Tweets that cannot exceed 140 characters, which makes it a good platform for brands who are able to create concise and memorable copy. That said, it's easy for your Tweets to get lost in the noise; we suggest brands fully optimize the power of hashtags so their messages can be delivered to the right audience.
LinkedIn — This platform is well-suited for professionally-oriented firms looking to generate leads. With over 240 million active users, LinkedIn's user base is relatively old: close to 80 percent of users are over the age of 35. Not surprisingly, users are generally more affluent than those on other networks.
Pinterest — Of the network's 70 million active users, a resounding 68 percent are female. As a result, it's an ideal platform for visually-oriented services that appeal to this demographic: fashion, cooking, do-it-yourself arts and crafts, motherhood and babies, design, etc. Users are relatively affluent; data notes that a majority of Pinterest users earn between $50-75,000 a year have some college experience.
Instagram — This social sharing site, which has 150 million users, now allows users to post 15 second videos. It's a primarily youth-oriented platform — the most followed entity on Instagram is MTV — and successful businesses post compelling pictures that build their brand and create an experience for users.
Google+ — This platform boasts 400 million active users, which is slightly misleading as anyone with a Gmail account automatically has some sort of Google+ presence. The network is growing quickly, adding close to 100,000 new users every day, although most businesses are still taking a "wait and see" approach from an inbound marketing standpoint.
Of course, most marketing managers reading this article have experience on most, if not all of these networks. In addition many have their own advice around how to pick social media platforms. Therefore, we'd like your feedback: which network has proved the most valuable to your brand? Why? Do you have plans to divert resources to a certain network at the expense of another?
Does your social media presence effectively reflect your brand? Download our Brand Audit ebook and find out.
