LOS ANGELES — There are more opportunities than ever before for laundry businesses to connect with their current and potential customers through social media, but it’s important to invest the time and effort correctly to make sure your message is reaching them where and how they are most comfortable.
Patty Ross, a social media expert, brand manager and business marketing advisor at Golden State Marketing here in Los Angeles, offered this advice during “Social Media Marketing Strategies for Your Small Business,” a webinar hosted by the Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE).
In Part 1 of this article, we explored some of the reasons why business owners shouldn’t ignore their social media game. In Part 2, we looked at some common mistakes business owners make when trying to engage customers through social media. Today, we’ll conclude by examining some of the most popular platforms and how to take the best advantage of them.
THE SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS
Before offering information about the platforms that are available, Ross again urged leaders to determine who they are targeting with these efforts.
“When you’re deciding where to go on social media, you have to pay attention to where your ideal audience is,” she says. “If you’re one of those who says, ‘I can help people from birth to 109,’ that’ll be kind of hard to target your social media and messaging.”
Who uses/follows social media? According to Ross, Gen Z (ages 12-27 in 2024) has 56.4 million social media users, millennials (28-43) has 68.5 million (making it the largest group), Gen X (44-59) has 51.8 million and the baby boomer generation (60-78) has 36.9 million.
She shared platform information gathered from SocialPilot, a social platform management software company.
Facebook — As of first quarter 2024, it has 3.06 billion monthly active users. The average user spends 35 minutes a day there. More than 70% of users view local business pages on the platform at least once a week.
“Facebook is the top dog here,” Ross says. “It’s not going away.”
She suggests that posting once a day is optimal, with three times a week being a bare minimum. Tuesdays between 9 a.m. and noon is the best period to post, but users should pay attention to their own statistics. “Try 9 a.m., then try a little later in the afternoon. See when your engagement changes.”
But take care to not post too much. Citing data from Hubspot, Ross says pages with less than 10,000 fans experienced a 50% drop in engagement per post if they posted more than once a day.
“Some of you might be posting twice a month,” she says, “so don’t freak out. Work your way up. Get consistent.”
Instagram — It has more than 2 billion monthly active users. The average person spends 30 minutes a day there, and about 200 million businesses use it to promote their services and products.
“On Instagram, there are different types of content,” Ross says. “You could do posts and carousels and stories and reels — their video content — or go live. You should experiment with the different content types. Mix it up. See what works for you. It’s about posting quality content.”
Data shows that the best times to post on Instagram are weekdays between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m.
As for posting frequency, Ross says once or twice a day is optimal, with a minimum of three times a week. Again, consistency is key: “Don’t do the quick succession or disappear for weeks at a time, because that will affect the algorithm.”
X (formerly Twitter) — As of Q1 2024, X has 611 million monthly active users, and the average user spends 15.4 hours a month on the platform. Posts with a GIF image gain 55% more engagement than those without.
“Most social media platforms have a closer to 50/50 breakdown when it comes to men and women,” Ross says, “but (this) has a 63% male to 37% female split, so it’s almost double for males.”
Demographically, 38.5% of its user base are ages 28-34, 20.7% are 35-49, 17.1% are 18-24 and 17.1% are 50-plus. The best time to post there, based on the stats, is noon to 1 p.m. on weekdays.
Pinterest — It has more than 518 million monthly active users, and people watch close to 1 billion videos a day on the platform. Women make up 70% of the users. Pinterest sends 33% more referral traffic to shopping sites than Facebook. Approximately 78% of Pinterest users say brand content on the platform is useful.
Top categories are home design, women’s fashion, health and fitness, weddings, party, travel, and food and drink. The best times to pin, data suggests, are after work hours, between 8 and 11 p.m. on the weekend.
TikTok — It has 1.582 billion monthly active users, and the U.S. has the largest audience of 150 million, with users there spending at least 53.8 minutes daily on the platform.
One data point that might be of particular interest to laundry owners is that TikTok users are twice as likely as users of traditional social platforms to recommend a product or service they’ve discovered on the app and 1.5 times more successful at convincing others to try the product or service.
YouTube — There are more than 2.5 billion monthly active users as of April 2024. In January, YouTube accounted for 8.6% of total TV usage, surpassing other streaming platforms such as Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime Video. More than 70% of viewers say that YouTube makes them more aware of new brands.
The best times to post on YouTube, Ross has found, are noon to 4 p.m. during workdays and 9 to 11 a.m. on weekends. Thursday and Friday are the best days to post because Saturday and Sunday draw the most views.
There’s also a new facet to YouTube that might be of interest: shorts.
“If you’re not familiar, YouTube Shorts (videos lasting a minute or less) was launched around 2021, and competes with TikTok and Instagram reels,” Ross says. “So short content is out there, and you do get more engagement with it. People love consuming short videos.”
LinkedIn — It has more than 1 billion users across 200 countries, and a LinkedIn user spends an average of 7:38 on the site. Businesses that post weekly have twice the engagement rates than those that don’t, and organizations with complete information get 30% more weekly views on the platform.
LinkedIn is much more a business-to-business (B2B) platform than the others mentioned, Ross says. Data shows that the platform is used by 93% of B2B content marketers for organic social marketing, and 70% of marketers say LinkedIn delivers the highest organic results.
The best times to post, data suggests, are 11 a.m. on Mondays, 6 to 8 a.m. on Tuesdays, noon on Wednesdays, 2 p.m. on Thursdays, 8 a.m. on Fridays, 4 to 5 a.m. on Saturdays, and 6 a.m. on Sundays.
GROWING A SOCIAL MEDIA FOLLOWING
In closing, Ross offered a list of things to consider when growing a company’s social media following:
- Be regular and consistent — create a calendar that makes posting a routine
- Speak to your market
- Have a clear brand “voice” and brand identity
- Provide quality content
- Include social media “Follow” buttons everywhere possible
- Follow influencers and share their content
- Remind your email subscribers about your social accounts
- Respond to your followers
- Use hashtags where appropriate
- Make it easy for others to share your content
- Use your stats to identify popular posts and topics
“Make sure you’re keeping up with the trends that are going on out there, and have a plan to grow and have a plan to evolve on it as well,” she says. “It’s not about just posting. Things change, consumer habits change and the platforms change. So, keep all that in mind.”
