Focus On The Platforms Your Audience Prefers

Social media is the fastest way to cast a wide net to catch the attention of potential customers and create a community. There are more social media platforms than any one entrepreneur can tackle effectively - even if they had all day to devote to being social.

When you began your business, you likely got great advice to narrow your niche and focus on a target audience. These are the ideal clients and customers who want what you have to offer. Furthermore, you should have been told to market to this ideal audience and focus on their needs, their wants, and solving their problems. If you agreed and followed that advice, then you have a pretty good idea of who you want to engage and where they hang out.

Learning about all the various social media platforms can be overwhelming. You probably wonder how you’ll ever find the time to deal with them all. But, the thing is, you shouldn’t deal with them all, at least not until you can afford to outsource more. Instead, focus on the platforms your audience prefers.

Knowing where your audience hangs out is the key to building a social media presence that maximizes your time and marketing budget. Once you know where your customers naturally hang out, you can simply master those specific platforms and dominate the market.

The best way to figure it out is to ask yourself a few questions.

• What are my objectives? – Do you want to spread brand awareness, share interesting content, engage with people through live video, or something else? Knowing the goal can get you just a little closer to understanding which social media platform you should use.

• Who is your target audience? – This is the first thing to determine before you even create a product or one bit of content to share, therefore, if you’re choosing social platforms you should already know the answer to this.

• What social media platform is your target audience using? – When you know your audience, you’ll also know which social platforms they’re using, for what, and whether your content will work with them or not.

• Who are your competitors? – Might seem like a strange question but it’s imperative that you know who your competition is. You only need to know the top two or three competitors of yours so that you can find out how they’re doing things and fill in the gaps.

• What social media platform are your competitors using? – Sign up for your competition’s newsletters, follow them on every platform they’re on. Which platform gets the most engagement? That’s the one you want to choose.

• What type of content are you creating? —This is an important factor. If you’re creating visual content it can go almost anywhere today, but if you’re creating mostly text-based content such as blog posts, white papers, eBooks, and so forth then there is a chance that the more visual social media platforms won’t work as well for you.

• How much time do you have to devote to social media marketing? – This is the last question only because it’s one of the most important. If you only have an hour or two a week, you’re going to want to limit your social media platform usage to just one. You can go ahead and make profiles of the others so that you can grab your name and branding but for now focus on just the main one in terms of promoting.

Depending on your business, you may want to master one of these main social media platforms:

• Facebook

• Instagram

• Pinterest

• Snapchat

• Twitter

• Youtube

• LinkedIn

Picking a platform is all about engagement and captivating your target audience. Engagement can take many forms. Consider these options:

Pictures- Best for Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest

Video- Best for Youtube or Facebook live

Audio- Best for Youtube, can be linked through other platforms as well

Short stories- Best for Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat

Links to blogs- Best for Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter

One-to-one connection- Best for Facebook, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Twitter

Once you answer these questions and research the social media platforms you should be able to choose which one(s) that you want to focus on. When you choose, ensure that you’re putting your all into it. Create an amazing profile, share, engage, and be social.

Once you have decided on one to three primary platforms, you can test them out to see which ones give you the most engagement. If you aren’t getting results, it may be time to switch platforms - or abandon one altogether.

It’s easy to learn how to maximize the platforms through tutorials or training tools. Youtube is an excellent place to review and train yourself on the most effective ways to use the tools. You can also find blogs and downloadable content to help you master any platform.

Take the time to build relationships, and your efforts will pay off in big ways by sending more targeted traffic to your website and offerings than you probably thought possible. Social media marketing generates loads of traffic, but only if you keep in mind the point of social media which is to be social.

Being visible on social media isn’t as daunting when you know who you are marketing to and where they hang out. Finding a social media platform that meets your needs, gets you noticed, and brings you sales is just a few posts, tweets, and pins away.

Just us to learn more in my Facebook Audit Bootcamp!

Let’s keep in touch, Shay aka A. Calamity

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