Social Media has become omnipresent, compelling people to feel that they too need to be everywhere! Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter and TikTok lead the pack of Social Media channels demanding your attention.
As a business, what do you do? Do you need to be on them all and if not, what one or ones do you choose? Whether talking to other people or online, you are bound to be bombarded with suggestions that lead you to believe that you need to be on them all! As you investigate you start to realise how much time maintaining a presence on each channel will require.
Dive deep into your research and you will start to realise that as each platform has matured, your ability to get real traction has become increasingly difficult. Most platforms have matured and the drive to monetarize them sees organic growth become increasingly challenging. To get real cut through, requires you to spend a considerable amount of time on a platform connecting with other people and creating high quality posts. Putting a post up regularly on each platform, just isn’t enough if you want to grow your audience. If you are just wanting a presence, then that is okay, but to get real value, requires a lot of work. Do you really have that time?
There is software out there designed to make it easier to share content across platforms, however with the mature nature of those platforms, potentially, assuming you want real cut-through, they could undermine your ability to achieve that goal. How? By you being more removed from the platform, you are less likely to spend actual time on the platform and miss opportunities to link posts to others within the platform and engage in conversations on the platform.
What does all this mean? If you want a presence on the various platforms but are not bothered about growing a big following, then fine, use available software to make it easier and post on the various platforms. That said, be aware that some platforms like Instagram and TikTok require their own unique posts, which means a lot more work.
Speaking from experience, I decided I wanted a presence on Instagram accepting that I did not have the time to try to really build an audience. I found just trying to do regular posts on Instagram was onerous and I ended up giving up for the time being.
If you feel that a presence on social media is important for your business and you want to get the greatest value out of that presence, then choose the most relevant platform and focus on it. Don’t try and cover multiple channels as you will end up spending an extraordinary amount of time on it to get any value.
If there is one thing that small business owners tend to be short of, then that is time. You would be better focusing on other elements of your business than spending all your time trying to maintain a presence on all social media. Use your time wisely and don’t fall into the social media trap!
Speaking of traps – don’t fall into the vanity metrics trap either! Ultimately success will come from having an engaged audience rather than the biggest audience!
Other related articles:
https://msofmarketing.com/getting-your-social-media-posting-right/
https://msofmarketing.com/dont-be-fooled-by-social-media-metrics/
