You’ve heard of the phrase “don’t put all your eggs in one basket”. Today I am taking that quote and applying it to social media. Any succesful social media strategy includes more than one platform. The purpose is to know where your customers are and how to get to them, because I can guarantee you they are not all on the same platform.
I know you are asking, “So do I have to do them all?” The answer is no! It would take up all your time and energy to do every platform and to do it successfully. It would be a terrible waste of your time. You can try, but don’t say I didn’t warn you!
In developing your social media strategy, the first step is to find out where your customers are. Are they 20-somethings who tweet all day long? Business professionals who are looking to network? Stay-at-home moms who are on Facebook and Pinterest all day? Once you figure that out your target demgraphic, the next step is to develop a strategy that works for you.
Rarely will a small to medium sized business truly need to be on every platform. Take moms for example. Many of them work from home and have lots of other stay-at-home mom friends. They spend most of their time on platforms like Facebook and Pinterest. If you mention Twitter to them, they might look at you like you’ve started speaking a foreign language. If they are your target market, then you need to look at how to better reach them on those two platforms.
Those of us in the social media industry are on all platforms since it is the nature of our job, however we can guarantee you each of us has a favorite platform that gives us the best response. I personally get the best results from Twitter.
When you try to do them all, you will not achieve the maximum results you would if you were focusing on where the majority of your customers are spending their time.
Here are some great social media strategy tips:
- After you figure out which platforms your target market is using, see what your competitors are doing. That will give you a key on how to start your campaign.
- Work with a social media consultant or social media manager to put together a successful plan that will engage your followers. You want to build relationships to turn them into paying and long-lasting customers.
- Once your plan is in action, make sure you are responding to every post, comment, message and question – both positive and negative. 85% of posts go unanswered by businesses. You wouldn’t want to be ignored in person, so don’t ignore your community online.
If you find that a certain platform isn’t working out so well after you’ve been on it for a few months, there is no harm in trying something new. You might find a new group of followers in a totally unexpected location. Similarly, if you are working on two platforms and want to branch out and try a third or even a fourth platform, go for it! If it doesn’t work out, you still have your two strong platforms in action. Remember, each platform has it’s advantages and disadvantages and not all of them work the same way. So before you toss it out of your basket, make sure you tried your best.
Are you putting all your social media eggs in one basket or are you using a multi-platform strategy? If you are still trying to figure out if you should even add social media to your marketing plan, please give us a call so we can tell you all about the benefits of social media marketing.
