The basic use of social media is to connect with other people. With the help of social media, we stay in touch with our friends, update with current news and events and we share moments of our life instantly. With latest technology and internet, the use of social media has become very easy and user-friendly.

We as individuals have now better understanding to shift our use of social media to our business or clients. If we are missing the use of social media in our businesses, then we are missing an effective, fast and low-cost way to reach huge audience. Below we shall discuss how social media can help our business to connect, grow and engage.

About 45% of earth’s population i.e. around 3.4 billion people use social media. What does it mean? It means that there lot of people our business can reach as compared to traditional methods. Over 50% people say that they use social media to discover and research new products. If an average person spends two hours per day on social media; there are lot of chances that our business will be visible.

Social media can prove excellent support tool and customer service for our business. The clients can ask questions in real-term through variety of social media channels. Businesses can respond quickly to customer’s concerns and this could be a win-win situation both for businesses and clients.

It is important to note that social media doesn’t work like traditional marketing methods. In traditional methods, the goal is always to increase the sales. The goal of social media is also to increase sales but it works lot more that it. It is about connecting with customers, growing audience, building relationships and driving engagement. Thus it would be much easier to convert followers to customers.

It is important to note that selection of proper social media channel is necessary for propagation of our business. It social network is inactive, it can affect badly our businesses. So below we shall discuss which social media networks network we can use and how they can generate revenue for our businesses.

Facebook is one of the oldest and mostly used social media application. It has 2.23 billion monthly active users from every corner of the world; thus it is considered as far-reaching platform. There are lot of options for business which Facebook offers like paid post promotion, professional pages and native advertising. Facebook has users of all ages out of which 53% are female. If your client operates in foreign market, Facebook is great tool. Unlike other networks, it is used all over the world. It is also useful for clients who work in niche markets. There are groups in Facebook where people of same interest interact with each other and build relationship. However, there is biggest challenge on Facebook that it has low organic reach. If you are not boosting your posts spending money, they will have low reach.

This social media giant has 1.9 billion monthly active users, so it can’t be overlooked. It has users of all ages out of which 63% are male. YouTube is great tool for business if we have skills in producing video content; as only video contents is posted on YouTube. If your physical product has great features, it can be easily marketed by YouTube. If client faces any problem in the product, you can produce video tutorial to solve the issues. However, the challenge with YouTube is that it needs lot of time and resources. It you don’t have skills to create good video, then it wouldn’t work for you.

Instagram is quickly getting popular with over 1 billion active users. However the primary audience of Instagram are teens and Millennials. Its primary users are aged 18 – 29 out of which 68% are female. If your product is unique to women, this is perfect tool to promote your business. In order to get success on Instagram, you should have skills to produce high quality images and videos. The biggest challenge with Instagram is that it requires creativity. Images should be unique and stand out.

LinkedIn is purely business-oriented with 590 million monthly active users. It is great way to connect with other businesses and clients. Its primary users are aged 25 – 55, of which 56% are male. If your business landscape is B2B, it is great tool. It is excellent tool for lead generation. Unless other platforms, it mainly relies on text based updates. The biggest challenge with LinkedIn is that users are not as active as they are on another platform.

With 326 million monthly active users, Twitter is among popular social networks. Its primary users are aged 18 -29, of which 53% are male. Twitter is also text based with limitation of 280 characters per post. It is great network, if your audiences are teenagers or Millennials. It is excellent tool for quick news, public relations and connecting with others. When there is breaking news of any type, its hashtag is trending on twitter. The biggest challenge with twitter is that there are so many posts which are posted every minute and they have short lifespan. If your business is to post once a week, this network is not for you.

There are also other great tools like Pinterest, Snapchat and Google My Business which are also effective in marketing of our businesses.