At Xcite Digital we were very interested to come across some recent research by E-Power Marketing comparing the effectiveness of top social media platforms.  The major platforms were analysed against the following criteria:

– Customer Interaction
– Brand Marketing
– Traffic
– SEO

Each platform was given a score between 1 to 5, where 1 is Poor and 5 is Excellent.   The results are fascinating!

Ranked by overall score, the best platforms seem to be Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn:

Pinterest scored highly because of its ability to convey the idea behind the brand by enabling consumers to engage with lifestyle pins that go over and above marketing messages. Facebook is the second most trafficked website in the world and is particularly effective for attention-catching content such as images, fun facts and “how to” tips. Twitter’s main strength is engaging your audience in real time, whereas LinkedIn provides visible networks and relationships so that target audiences can easily be determined.

However, the value of this research is that it highlights the specific strengths of the individual social media platforms as well as their overall ranking. So, for example, if you were planning a social media marketing campaign where customer INTERACTION was the main emphasis, then your choice of platform may be more along the lines below:

Facebook and Twitter are still in the top set, but have now been joined by Google+, Foursquare and YouTube – all of which are geared towards sharing content interactively, and all of which therefore scored highly on Interaction as opposed to some of the other criteria.

The overall message emanating from this research is to choose your social media platform(s) specifically for each creative marketing campaign. Different platforms will be appropriate for different needs at different times. Armed with this knowledge, your digital marketing strategy will continue to move forward rather than stagnating.