Social media is all about getting your company and image in front of your audience so you can develop loyal customers who really know your brand. There’s an old saying, “more is better” which may work in other mediums, but in social media it’s more like, “the perfect amount is just right.”
There is such a thing as overdoing it. In fact, LinkedIn had to settle a lawsuit recently because of all the unwanted emails they send out — people just don’t like to be annoyed. This isn’t exactly the same as you and your small business as I doubt you’re sending millions of emails to your clients and audience, but the idea is there.
Luckily, we here at FEAD have been in the social game for some time now and we’ve developed some philosophies to help guide you as you walk that delicate line.
Be Where Your Audience Is and Nowhere Else
One of the first things you can do to run the risk of overexposing your audience is simply being in too many places. Do you own a art gallery? Your audience is probably on Instagram and Tumblr… so shouldn’t you be as well? And similarly, you probably don’t need to be on LinkedIn where there aren’t many artists.
Some questions you can ask yourself to help figure out where you need to be: What are your business goals? What are your goals on social media? What kind of audience to you attract? Where are they? If you can answer these questions you’re one step closer to a succinct social image.
Every social media platform is different, and there are a lot of them to choose from with different uses, but here are the top 8 social media platforms and a short description of the user and the kind of experiences , pick 3 and only 3 where your audience resides most of the time:
- Facebook – The biggest social media channel. Any social media strategy is going to include Facebook. The ability of users to leave messages with your businesses makes it a great platform to integrate into your customer service.
- Twitter – The second biggest platform, Twitter is a micro-blog. This is the place to disseminate and consume information. When things go viral it’s usually here through their complex and comprehensive system of hashtags.
- Instagram – A visual platform, this is a more personal place for people to share everyday experiences. Also an artist’s dream. Discoverability is huge on Instagram.
- LinkedIn – For business professionals, LinkedIn is the place to find talent and create a comprehensive profile of your company.
- Google+ – A newer platform, Google+ will help with your google ranking.
- YouTube – This doesn’t seem like a social media channel in the traditional sense, but with millions of users and it’s ability to boost your google ranking it’s a prime place to be if you can leverage videos for your business.
- Pinterest – A female dominated platform, if you are in the retail sector this can be great to build into your sales funnel.
- Tumblr – A hub for artists, this visual blogging platform is the preferred social media channel for younger creatives like Taylor Swift.
I know I said pick 3, but that’s not a hard and fast rule. If you can really handle being on 4 platforms that’s alright, just make sure it’s the right platform for your business and you’re not inundating your audience.
Narrow and Deep, not Wide and Shallow
This is a phrase I picked up in college about choosing topics for term papers, but I think it perfectly applies to the kind of philosophy you should have about your social media strategy. In college the idea was that you didn’t want to pick research topics where you wrote vaguely on a number of ideas, but rather deeply on a single idea.
In social media it’s the same kind of idea: you don’t want to half-ass managing a lot of social media platforms, you want to master a few… and for us the magic number is 3. We’ve found that you’re not really going to optimize your social media strategy unless you stick to 3 platforms that you can really execute well. The idea is to be a really good at a few platforms instead of mediocre at a lot of platforms. The buzzword is “niche” — niche, niche, niche!
Exposure Exhaustion
We touched on this a bit in the introduction, but we can’t stress how important this is. This is inundating your followers with an excessive amount of content that they’re not really interested in. This is a huuuuuge turnoff.
Have you ever heard the phrase, “you can never have too much of a good thing?” Well… it’s not true. Your audience will get real sick of you real quick if you overexpose them to your brand. This isn’t to say you should be sparing about how much you’re on social media, but rather you should have a healthy mixture of self-promotion and engagement. Be an active member of the community and they’ll welcome you with open arms. Abuse their presence and they’ll shun you.
Managing Your Social Media Accounts
Does this delicate balance feel overwhelming? It can be — and the trouble it that it’s not always an exact science. We’ve been working around social media long enough that this kind of careful tiptoeing is second nature to us. At FEAD we specialize in that kind of thing: social media, seo, and content… it’s sort of what we do best. Feel free to contact us and we can help figure out what kind of social media you need and how best to support your business.