why-you-should-be-using-multiple-social-media-platforms

Why You Should Be Using Multiple Social Media Platforms

Social media is a great way for legal firms to engage with current and potential customers, but the question is: how can its potential be maximised? Above all, it is a great way to use multiple social media platforms to get your message to reach a larger audience.

Nowadays, the overwhelming majority of the UK population is online and this is even more true for those of working age. The widespread use of the internet resulted in extensive social media engagement.

This landscape has changed as more platforms have emerged and, amid strong competition for usage, many sites have fallen from the wayside. The graveyard of social media includes the likes of Vine, DailyBooth and Virtual Tourist.

Several social media platforms are particularly prominent in the UK. These include Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, Twitter and Instagram.

The question for any firm with an online presence is whether they should engage with these sites?  And if so, which ones?


The importance of social media

The answer to the first question is unquestionably yes. Having your own business website and embracing digital is fine. Also, it certainly needs to be well-designed, carry lots of important and relevant information and, most importantly of all, act as a channel through which clients and potential clients can make contact. However, none of that is much use if nobody sees it.

A social media page can help attract traffic to your site in the first place. It provides an extra outlet to publish news, views and other information, as well as offering a new and highly accessible way to interact with your potential and actual clients.

Understanding the Buyer’s Journey

These two factors mean that in marketing terms, it initially impacts on the first two parts of the buyer journey: the awareness stage, when the potential customer first discovers that your company and services exist, followed by the consideration stage, where repeated exposure to this knowledge is needed to help persuade them to take up what is on offer.

Furthermore, once someone does become a client, using multiple social media platforms can be a great way of attracting further business. It offers another means to stay in touch with them, promote special offers and provide an extra contact point for new customers.

Since one of the best marketing tools any firm has is the satisfied customer who wants to recommend your services to their friends and family, a social media presence offers a chance for them to send a link to others via their own accounts.

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Why go for multiple social media platforms?

Some firms are rather neglectful about social media. They may have a page on Twitter or Facebook but pay little attention to it and make no major effort to maximise its potential.

However, even if one page is given lots of attention, that alone will only get you so far. Only using one platform will constrain the kind of mediums you can use, as well as the audience you can reach.

For example, if you only have Instagram, your content will be mainly visual, with less scope for text. If you don’t use a video-sharing platform like YouTube, you will pass up the perfect setting for providing longer video content. If you aren’t using Twitter, you will miss out on the ideal platform for sending short, sweet and simple messages with attached links. Digital Agency Network listed some effective marketing strategies for Twitter that you can use to get more followers on the platform.

Find the best social media channels for your business

Depending on your target market, you may find that some sites are not much use for your services and you will be best off putting more content on some sites than others. However, it is still true that by using multiple platforms you can reach more of your audience.

After all, according to the Digital 2019 Report from WeAreSocial and Hootsuite, not only do 45 million Britons (67 per cent of the population) use social media, but the numbers suggest considerable overlaps.

For instance, of those 45 million, around 35-40 million actively use Facebook, while 37.1 million use YouTube. Add in 27 million LinkedIn profiles, 24 million Instagram accounts and an estimated 13-14 million Twitter users and it is clear there are millions of multiple account users.

This means those devising buyer personas for marketing purposes can never simply describe the archetypal customer as someone who uses just one particular social media platform. That alone is reason enough to aim to place content on more than one of them.


Tailor your content accordingly

Having established that it is useful and effective to have content on different social media platforms, you can start to build a comprehensive social media strategy. This will have two elements. Firstly, you can consider how you might best reach your target audience and plan to produce the content accordingly, be it blogs, adverts, videos or images.

Secondly, you can seek to use the most appropriate platform for each of these, which will, in turn, enable you to avoid targeting sites that are of little use to you.  This is important because you don’t want to waste time and effort producing the wrong kind of content for mediums that will not be used heavily by your target market.  

Define your target persona

Having noted that the buyer persona is unlikely to be the user of just one kind of social media, it is still worth working out in this context which platforms fit it best. This is one of the best ways to work out which sites to use, as there are notable differences in terms of usage by different demographics. For instance, Instagram would be a good platform for a firm whose target persona was young and female.

It is also worth noting that demographics change. For example, it is well known that the typical Facebook user has been getting gradually older, with low levels of usage by under-18s. That means it has a largely adult, working-age audience that will fit the personas of legal services clients.





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