3 Tips for Picking the Right Social Media Platform for Your Affiliate Business

A solid social media presence can provide many valuable benefits. However, a lot of businesses fail to harness the power of social media, or waste time using the ‘wrong’ platform for their needs.

Fortunately, it is possible to choose the ‘right’ social media platform. The right choice is the one that works best for your business, and it can result in increased audience engagement, expanded reach, and even improved sales.

In this post, we’ll discuss the benefits of picking the best social platform for your business. We’ll give you three tips for doing so, and show you how to implement each tip immediately. Let’s get started!

Why Picking the Best Social Media Platform Is Important

The best social media platform will depend upon your business and your goals. Choosing your platform carefully is important for two main reasons:

1. It enables you to expand your reach. The right platform will have the right people: those who are interested in your business. You can drive more traffic, as well as expand your reach through shares, follows, and likes.
2. It ensures the best use of your resources. The right platform will enable you to use your resources (time and money) wisely. This will translate to better results, such as increased web traffic and improved sales.

Often, businesses use as many social media platforms as possible. However, this approach can result in a poor return on your investment. It also requires greater resources, and makes consistency in terms of publishing content more challenging.

3 Tips for Picking the Right Social Media Platform for Your Affiliate Business

This task can seem daunting, but if you use these three tips to determine the best social media platform for your marketing business, you'll be well on your way.

1. Use Audience Demographics to Refine Your Goals

Audience demographics are characteristics that describe the majority of your website visitors. They include age and gender, for example, and also more specific information such as job, income, family life, personality, location, and more.

Demographics are helpful when picking the best social media platform for two main reasons: they can tell you where your audience is most likely to hang out, and can give you insight into the type of content your audience prefers.

There are two key steps to using audience demographics when searching for the best social media platform:

1. Collect user data with Google Analytics. In this situation, the most helpful information will be ‘acquisition' (where your website visitors are coming from) and ‘behavior' (how your visitors act on your site). For example, if many visitors come from or share content to a specific platform, you can use this information to narrow down your search.
2. Apply this data to known social media demographics. Compare the user data you've collected with the demographics of social media platforms to find out which best matches your audience. You can also use general demographics (such as age, location, and gender) to refine your platform search.

Selecting the best platform isn’t exactly a science. Using statistically-obtained data to direct your search, however, will help you improve your campaign's returns.

2. Align Your Choice With Your Business Goals

Your choices and actions should align with your business’ goals. Choosing a social media platform is no different. The right choice is the one that enables you to complete your goals, so it's smart to incorporate your business goals into your social media search.

How you do so will depend on the goals you’ve set out for your business. However, there are three general steps you can follow to select the best platform for your business:

1. Select a main goal. Ask yourself what you hope to achieve with your social media account (e.g. build traffic or expand your reach), and go from there.
2. Set an action plan for achieving the goal. For example, building traffic would mean creating ‘clickable’ content that leads to your site, while expanding your reach would mean creating shareable content.
3. Find where your actions will best fit. If shareable content is your goal, Facebook and Pinterest are solid choices. However, Twitter is great for driving traffic, and Instagram can expand your reach.

With a main goal and action plan now laid out, it’s time to consider one last element of your search: resource limitations. Let’s take a closer look.

3. Lay Out and Understand Your Resource Limits

Unlimited resources would be great, but that's not a reality for most business owners. It’s beneficial to have a clear understanding of your time, money, and commitment limitations when selecting your platform.

Of course, you want to spend your time and money wisely. With defined limits, you can do so by ensuring that you’ve chosen the best platform for your business goals and available resources.

To get started, here are two steps to take:

1. Uncover your limits. This means understanding how much time and money you can spend, and how much effort you can put into your social media campaign.
2. Find the platform that best aligns. For example, Facebook may work well with 1–2 posts per day, while Twitter responds best with 10–15 and Pinterest with 5–10. Consider your time budget as well as your spending limits; choose the platform with best Return on Investment (ROI) if money is limited.

Remember – you don't have to sacrifice a strong social media presence if your resources are limited. Instead, make smart decisions based upon the reality of your business' limitations. By focusing your resources on the best social media platform, you'll get the best results.

Conclusion

To expand your reach and improve your brand presence, you need to look beyond your own website and engage your audience on social media. For best results, take the time to choose the best social media platform for your affiliate business.

In the above post, we’ve outlined the three best tips for picking the ‘right’ platform for your business. To quickly recap, they are:

1. Use audience demographics to refine your goals.
2. Align your choice with your business goals.
3. Lay out and understand your resource limits.

Do you have any questions about how to pick the best social media platform for your affiliate marketing business? Let us know in the comments section below!

If you liked this post, be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn! And don't forget to subscribe in the box below.

Affiliate Link Disclosure