When it comes to social media planning, you may feel confused and discouraged. If you are new to marketing in general, learning the benefits and drawbacks of digital platforms is challenging. Every martial arts school is different, and so is every social media platform. To succeed at social media marketing, you must consider that there is no one-size-fits-all answer. Instead, each platform needs content specifically tailored to its strengths.
Here is Xplor Recreation’s quick guide to learning which platform is best for your dojo, and which ones you may want to bypass.
Facebook has certainly evolved since its early days, and now this platform is the first place many marketers go to when they need to start a new campaign.
Strengths Of FacebookFacebook’s pages now have countless options to highlight your services and provide information on your school. Not just that, but Facebook pioneered groups, where you can encourage members to join and send them direct updates. With Facebook, you can also share photos, videos, polls, ask questions, and engage with your community in countless other ways. Having an active Facebook page also helps authenticate your school, as it largely remains one of the places that prospects look first to learn more about your brand. |
Weaknesses Of FacebookIn recent years, Facebook has built a scaled, impressive business machine with countless integrations and possibilities. Now, Facebook is much more of an advertising tool than it is a social networking tool. Its altered algorithm favours the content of friends and families over business pages, making it harder for your content to be seen organically. With that said, Facebook has made it quite simple to boost your posts, and you don’t have to spend very much to get your content seen. |
Facebook used to be a great organic content marketing machine but has now become a big advertising player in the media landscape. If you are interested in paid advertising on Facebook, it’s still worth operating a Facebook page and building an audience, as these insights will help you target more specific people.
Starting just barely 10 years ago, Instagram is now a powerhouse of a social media marketing tool for businesses. Between posts and stories, there are many ways you can engage with your community.
Strengths Of InstagramVisual content works best on Instagram. If you are in the habit of taking photos at your school or filming videos, we recommend incorporating Instagram posts and stories into your marketing plan. All you need your smartphone to create photos and videos that will captivate your students. |
Weaknesses Of InstagramUnfortunately, there aren’t as many opportunities on Instagram as other platforms to link to other websites. Hyperlinks don’t work on Instagram posts, and only verified users or users with more 10,000 followers can share links on their stories. Even with this limitation, users have gotten creative and have utilized the website link on the main profile page to generate traffic to the website. To get around this, there are many free services which offer users a free URL, which they can use as a landing page to link from. |
Instagram is a wonderful place to share visual content, and the evolution of the story feature has only strengthened its tool as a video marketing platform. With that in mind, if have many links to external platforms to share, it may be harder to do that on Instagram.
Starting in 2006, Twitter originated as a platform for users to share their everyday thoughts. Now, Twitter has become synonymous with live events and what’s happening now, to the point that people have created the verb ‘live-tweeting’ to reflect that.
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Strengths Of Twitter Twitter is a great place for visibility, and if you are active in trending hashtags, your content can quickly gain traction. It is also a great customer service platform for companies. |
Weaknesses Of Twitter However, Twitter is also a fast-paced environment, and you often have to post three times to keep up with the stream of new tweets each moment. Just like Facebook, Twitter has made algorithm changes which put tweets that friends and family have engaged with ahead of chronological timeline posts. |
Often, the best way to generate engagement on Twitter is to participate in hashtags and use it to have genuine conversations with your clients rather than sell. However, if you are more interested in setting up tweets and leaving them to self-publish, it may be difficult to cut through the noise. Twitter is best used actively and often.
This video giant may not be the sole form of television in the 21st century, but it was instrumental in the shift to consumers opting for streaming content over cable or satellite TV. As of December 2019, YouTube has about 2 billion monthly users, and 15% of that traffic comes from the United States.
Strengths Of YouTubeThe best use of YouTube is for video marketing, of course. It helps to imagine YouTube as a video extension of Google. How often do you use Google to search for the answer to a problem you are having? Countless people are doing that to find video tutorials on YouTube, on topics ranging from car problems to sewing how-to videos, and more. Google ranks YouTube videos over other video platforms because it owns YouTube, so if you have a video on a topic many people are searching for, it can help your visibility. |
Weaknesses Of YouTubeThe greatest strength of YouTube is also wrapped up in the biggest feature about it that makes it inaccessible to many people: it is a video platform. While it doesn’t take as much as you think to create quality video content, it still requires time and effort to create them. Not to mention, it takes courage to get in front of a camera when that is something you may not be used to. |
If you are committed to executing a marketing plan for your school, then video marketing—and by extension, YouTube—are an important pillar to consider for that plan.
A brand-new player in the realm of social media marketing, TikTok started as a lip-syncing app called Musical.ly. Today, it hosts hours and hours of short-form videos, the majority of which is organically distributed. About 41% of TikTok users are between the ages of 16 and 24, so if you have many younger students, it may be the right platform to market on.
Strengths Of TikTokUnlike many other social media platforms, the overwhelming majority of content on TikTok is organic. TikTok is also fertile ground for short how-to video tutorials, with content creators growing mass followings sharing music, cooking, fitness, and even nature videos. Not just that, but it also favours showing content from users that are close by, so the videos you post would likely be seen by users within a radius of your school. |
Weaknesses Of TikTokBecause TikTok is such a new platform, it’s difficult to speculate on how effective it is as a marketing tool. The way the algorithm behaves now is subject to change, and business owners may have to pivot to get their content seen. |
TikTok could be a fantastic tool to use alongside Instagram for creating short tutorial videos to promote your school.