Not sure what the best social media platform is for you? If you’re overwhelmed by social media networks and choosing between them, then you’re in the right place.
In this post, I’m sharing some key ways to narrow down the best social media platform (or platforms!) for you and your business – so you can start to spend more time where you need to be… and get results.
BY DONNA MORITZ | PUBLISHED 12 AUGUST, 2018
I get asked all the time about where the best social media platform is for members of my community. Is it Instagram? Is it Pinterest? Facebook? YouTube? LinkedIn? Twitter?
The list goes on and as social networks grow and come and go, it’s harder than ever to work out where to focus your time.
I can’t say that I can give you a definitive answer, but I can give you some tools, tests and approaches to help you narrow down the best social media platform or platforms for your business.
A Word on Core Content
We need to talk about this first before talking about social media platforms. By Core Content I mean podcasts, blogs or video channels.
These are typically your major content creation platforms and are super important. For me, It’s blogging. For someone else it might be podcasting. For others, it’s video content.
Either way, you should be focusing on at least one of these core content mediums from which you create your primary content.
For the purposes of this post, I’m focusing on social media platforms vs core content. We’re going to look at how you can choose which social media platforms you’ll focus on in order to share and engage with people around your core content. Make sense?
Then we will take a look at a few ways to leverage those platforms for results! Let’s get started…
3 Ways to Find Your Sweet Spot (and the Best Social Media Platform for You)
You don’t have to use all of these tips at the same time. I recommend that you start with one, and go from there. Usually you will end up using more than one strategy, as they work together well.
1. Survey Your Audience
More than ever, it’s important to survey your audience to find out what they need and how you can help them. This is the best way to create the core content (and social media content) that makes the biggest impact and gets the biggest engagement and results.
You can survey your audience via your email list, social media or even someone else’s list in terms of asking another audience to complete a survey. Once you know what your audience is struggling with them and what they need help with, you can create content that solves those problems, inspires them and helps them.
Some tips to get started:
- Ask about their single biggest challenge – ie What is your single biggest challenge when it comes to X? Narrow it down to one topic if you can.
- Use their language – if you receive longer, more detailed responses, notice the language they use. Use the phrases, questions, terminology your audience uses in your social media posts or longer form content. If you “speak their language”, it helps to create content that engages them.
- Take advantage of polls on social media – using Instagram Story Polls, Twitter Polls or Facebook Polls can be a quick way to get some feedback from your audience.
2. Find Your Sweet Spot
This is about finding out the “sweet spot” that tells you where you should be focusing your time and on which platform. It’s where the following 3 things meet:
- Where your audience hangs out. Is it Facebook? Instagram? Pinterest? LinkedIn? Twitter? Snapchat? … somewhere else?
- Where you like to hang out. What platforms feel “easy” and fun for you and your team?
- The type of content that suits the places you + your audience like to hang out. Do you have the bandwidth to create that content? Is it video? Audio? Text? or a mix? Is it Images? … What type of content is?
Put simply, find out where you, your audience and the content meet! That’s your sweet spot.
Then think about who in your team can create the content for the key platform and audience you are looking to help or service. You may have to play around with ideas but usually there is a good fit between the three key areas.
Now you have your sweet spot for your social video strategy.
As an example, one of the platforms where my audience is hanging out and where I love to hang out is Pinterest. And I love creating visuals so it’s a good fit.
On Instagram, however, my audience is on Instagram Stories and I LOVE to consume and create Instagram Stories. It’s a perfect type of video for me. So again, it’s a nice sweet spot.
What about you?
3. Focus in
If you focus on one platform for a period of weeks or months, the following and engagement (and traffic) on that platform will grow.
So.. When you decide on your sweet spot, give it some focused attention. Make it your “focus platform” for a set period of time and you might be surprised about how it grows.
You can still post content on other platforms… nothing needs to change there. But you’ll spend a little more time and give a little more love to your “Focus Platform”. We’re going to take Alexander Graham Bell’s advice:
The sun’s rays do not burn a hole until they are brought into focus – Alexander Graham Bell.
There have been various reasons for me changing focus platforms over recent years, but there’s always one that I am focusing on for a few months (at least) at a time. Sometimes it’s about where I am enjoying posting, sometimes it’s my audience, sometimes it’s about what is working well. Sometimes it’s more than one of these factors at once.
This I do know: Every time I’ve had a focus platform for more than a few months, it’s grown more quickly in terms of reach, engagement and traffic to my website.
Leveraging Your Best Social Media Platform
Now that you’ve surveyed your audience, chosen your best social media platform and focused in on that “sweet spot” platform, there are a few things you can do to leverage it:
1. Get Consistent
Ahhh that old advice keeps repeating right? That’s because it’s good advice! Consistency breeds results.
For example, if you focus in on Pinterest, try to pin content regularly (ie daily). The same goes for Instagram, Facebook or any focus platform you choose.
If you’re stuck for what to post, consider these ideas:
- Write out a list of FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) or SAQs (Should Ask Questions) – SAQs are the questions you often find yourself answering, even though you audience doesn’t think to ask them in the first place. You’ll find nuggets of gold that will help you to create content for your focus social media platform (and other platforms too!).
- Create content around the results of any audience survey you conduct – even if it was just to poll your audience on one of the social media platforms.
- Pick a time for regular posting. Depending on the platform it could be daily or weekly or even hourly.
- Batch your content ahead of time. This gives you the best chance of being consistent and having content ready to go.
- Repurpose your content – look back at your core content and see where you can break it down into smaller social media posts, GIFs, memes or short videos.
Posting content consistently helps you to stand out as an expert on the topic you are posting on. It’s worth it!
2. Get Creative
Think differently about your content so that it’s easier to create.
Let’s take video for example…
If you are creating video, don’t just think of it in terms of face-to-camera videos. This is especially important if you don’t LOVE creating video. Try different things. Create short snippet videos, or use templates on tools like Wave to create videos easily and quickly.
You can also create other types of videos like Reverse Video, Stop Motion videos, GIFs, hyperlapse videos, screencasts, testimonials and more! Instagram has many of these built into the platform itself so everything you need is IN Instagram, including the fun Boomerang tool.
There are many different ways you can create video depending on your budget – if you get creative and think outside of the box.
See how this works? Think outside of the square to make content creation on your focus platform much easier!
3. Find Your Best Storytellers
Don’t put all the pressure on yourself to be a storyteller – you have other options (and people) to help you. The reality is that you might have some great storytellers around you to help!
Maybe it’s your CEO.
Maybe it’s someone in your marketing or social media team.
Maybe it’s your husband…. or wife… or one of your teenagers!
Think laterally. If someone is savvy with Instagram or Video or any medium… nurture it and involve them.
It could even be one of your customers! Ask them for permission to tell their story as it relates to your brand. It could even be your brand partners or influencers or brand advocates too.
When you get creative and look outside of yourself for storytellers, you’ll find gold! And of course you might well be the most fabulous storyteller in your business. If that’s the case, by all means, …go for it!
There you have it – when you use some of these strategies to find your best social media platform (and the content to create for it) you’ll find it easier to create stellar content that gets results.
Over To You
Do you know what the best social media platform for your business is? Which of these tips will you try first?
Donna is a Visual Content Strategist and founder of Socially Sorted, listed by Forbes as a “Top 5 Social Media Blog You Need to Know About”. Donna helps brands leverage the power of visual storytelling and content strategy in their business. Her content has been featured in publications such as Forbes, Inc. & Entrepreneur and she is a speaker and trainer on visual content for the marketing and tourism industries internationally.
