Social media marketing has somewhat leveled the playing field for businesses. You no longer need an exorbitant advertising budget in order to compete with the big guys. But while it may not cost you a fortune, using social media to promote your business does require a considerable investment of time. It’s not as simple as opening a Twitter account, posting a bunch of special offers and watching the sales roll in.

It’s a fact. People don’t like to be marketed to. They don’t like to see advertising campaigns on their social media feeds. In order to be successful and get the most out of social marketing, you have to, well, be social. You have to put in the time and effort to be real, not just an as-posting machine. And you have to understand the benefits and drawbacks of different social networks. Some are better for some things, while other sites might be better suited for others. Which one is better for business? Google Plus? Facebook? Twitter? LinkedIn? Pinterest?
Twitter: Users on here are more likely to be accessing it from a mobile device. Therefore, you can kind of consider it the choice for on the go customers. An added benefit? Research shows that users are slightly more interested in seeing tweets from business than seeing posts on Facebook from businesses.

Facebook: Facebook users are typically more active than on other platforms. It’s estimated that more than 15 percent of their time online is spent on Facebook.

LinkedIn: Users here are normally professionals and older than users elsewhere. They’re normally well-educated. Many B2B companies are on LinkedIn. Most won’t spend more than four hours per week on the site, though.

YouTube: We talk a lot about the popularity of video on our interactive video page. There’s one thing we have to say here: Recent study shows that YouTube far outperforms other social media platforms when it comes to sales. It’s better for both introducing products and sales conversions.