There are many social channels out there, and many are rolling out new features on a weekly basis. It can be difficult to keep up with new social trends for businesses. With so many different platforms, it is hard to figure out which ones are worth your companies time and effort. It is also difficult to perfect your strategy on each channel.
The question is, how much time do you want to spend creating content, posting updates, and engaging with users, and on what platforms does this even make sense? You can’t perfect every platform, but you can find the right ones that mesh with your business. In this blog, we will break down which channels make sense for your business, and how to create the right strategy to do so.
Here are a few questions to consider.
1. Where Is Your Targeted Audience ?
At first, you may think you need to join social networks based on which ones are the newest, but really, you should focus on where your targeted audience is spending most of their time. It doesn’t make sense to spend time creating content on a social platform when your audience isn’t there to receive the message.
Take a look at Sprout Social’s Social Listening tool to get an analysis of where your audience is talking. You will be able to dive into gender, age and location data for your current social audiences. This is going to help you figure out which channels make the most sense for your business based on your audience. Demographic data is key here, rather than focusing on trends.
2. Where Are Your Competitors Hanging Out ?
Taking a look at where your competitors are posting will help you not only gauge industry activity and understand what social platforms are working, but also let you see the type of content your audience is engaging with.
Take a look at your competitor’s social strategy, and analyze what content is working and what is not on each channel. This will give you an answer as to where you should post, along with what channels you should avoid posting on. BuzzSumo has a great tool that allows you to see your competitor’s top-performing posts, along with showing you the content that best engages users. This can be very valuable to your business and can save you a great amount of time and effort.
3. How Many Channels Can You Efficiently Work On ?
After looking at where your audience and competitors are spending most of their time, you now want to take a look at how many platforms your company can handle. Maybe your audience is on all of the top social platforms, but do you have the right tools and enough resources to be constantly making updates on all of them? If you already have accounts on all of the top platforms, take a look and see what posts are resonating well with your audience on which platforms, and continue to post there.
Let’s say you’re a B2B company that has a strong presence on LinkedIn and are bringing in a good clientele from this platform alone. Your audience is also spending time on Facebook, but you don’t see much traction there. Just because your audience is on a certain platform, doesn’t mean you need to put a large focus there. Continue to focus on what platform is working best for your business. You can continue to post on those channels your audience is on, but put more effort behind what’s working versus what is not.
Final Thoughts
As we continue to see more and more social media platforms rolling out, along with new features, your business should be ready to understand and research each platform. You never know, when the next big social media platform rolls out, it could be a big hit for your business. Always stay on top of updates, and make sure your strategy meshes well with those platforms.