With the ever-growing number of social media platforms available in the world today it’s easy for us to get lost and confused like a scared puppy that’s run away from home. We see so much out there and we want to chase it all, but we don’t really know how to use it or what the benefits are. Then if we catch it, we don’t really know what to do with it.
I’m coaching a friend and when discussing all the social media platforms he told me he felt “overwhelmed” attempting to figure them all out. I concur, it has taken me a few years to accumulate the knowledge I have and he’s trying to squeeze it into a weekend.
What I want to attack in this mini-series known as Social Strategery is the burning question that comes up so often: “What is the best social media platform for my business?”
Why Social Media
I have extensive experience in traditional & guerrilla marketing as well as sales, but over the past 2 years I’ve noticed that without an understanding of social media those skills aren’t as useful as they once were. More and more people are relying on social media for their information instead of the phone book or even Craigslist.
So how do we find customers on social media? How do we engage with them? And most importantly, what do we do when we find them? I’ll cover all these topics and more in this series on social media over the coming holiday weeks so we can take this information into the new year with a better understanding of how to leverage social media to grow our businesses.
Have them all, but don’t spend time on them all
I hear this question often posed on podcasts interviewing social media experts and people that have much more extensive experience than I do. I get irritated when nobody is willing to go out on a limb or make bold statements in these interviews about what platforms to choose. I didn’t realize how difficult that question was until I began writing this…
Here is my personal philosophy: Have them all, but don’t spend time on them all. Notice I didn’t say “use them all,” we’ll be using them, but we’ll use them efficiently. We can only dedicate so much time to social media in our personal and professional lives. That being said, we don’t have time to ‘personalize’ a message to each social platform (yes, the messages need to be different) and still have time to think at the end of the day. However, if we pick 2 or 3 of the best social media platforms for our business and we focus our efforts, we will see great results.
So does that mean we should delete our Tumblr account because we don’t use it that often? No. I am a big advocate of being able to be found anywhere on the internet and social space [see below]. I learned this from my friend James that has taught me a great deal about connecting our social accounts to our websites, thank you sir! The more our names are out there, the more of a chance we have to be found. If we are only on Twitter and we don’t have a Facebook account, than the people that only use Facebook are not ever going to know what that we even exist.
The goal of social
Is not to get people to stay on social media with you, it’s to get them back on ‘our turf’ aka our website, our landing pages, our brick and mortar stores. When we get people on ‘our turf” we are then able to focus them in on what we want; to sign up for our email list, buy a product, or bookmark our website. When people stay on social media, it’s more difficult to get them to focus on what we are trying to get them to do.
Think of social media platforms as different parties where people are interacting, each with their own unique themes. The goal of social media should be to get them to leave that party and come to ours aka our website or store.
This cannot be walking into the party and announcing with a bullhorn, “We are the greatest, come back to our party now for discounts on X!” as many people do. People will laugh at us and look the other way. However if we come in and talk to a few people and engage in conversations, make some compliments, tell a few jokes, and then tell people that they can get discounts on X at our party, we are much more likely to get them to come with.
As you can imagine, it’s impossible to make sincere, honest, meaningful connections across all forms of social media every day. So we need to pick the platform(s) that are best for us and focus on them while leaking messages to the other platforms when we can so the accounts aren’t dormant. I’ll go into more detail about choosing which ones to focus on as well how to use the other platforms without wasting time.
How to do all this
First, sign up for as many social accounts as you know about. We want to own the same name on each platform so we’re easier to find. Once we sign up for each, make them all same name or as close to the same name as possible. I would advise using the same email and password on each so it’s easy to login. Here is a list of my accounts on each platform I recommend having, these are each of my real accounts so you can see a real example.
StumbleUpon.com/stumbler/mikemccann3
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/mike-mccann/32/511/966/
FourSquare.com (I don’t use this, but it’s very important for brick and mortar businesses)
And my email account is mikemccann3[at]gmail[dot]com. As you can see, almost everything matches with the exception of LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube. Facebook and YouTube are difficult to change because I’m not the only Mike McCann in the world and LinkedIn requires a paid profile upgrade to change. I really hope nobody guesses my password now…
The next step is choosing which of the social platforms are best for us. Choosing the right platform, an outline of the top social networks, and communication through each are all soon to come. I’ll be breaking down different social platforms by relevance in more detail over the coming days. This will shed more light on each platform and help us choose which one is right for us and our business.
If you don’t already know your platform, and even if you do, sign up for each of these and get the ball rolling. The worst thing that can happen is you sign up and the account sits. The best thing that that can happen is you gain more traction/customers, so what do you have to lose?
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If you have a favorite social media that is not listed here (yes, there are many more) please let me know what it is and share this article on it so I can add it to my list.
Connect with me on Twitter, I’d love to hear what you have going on.
P.S. 16 Days till Christmas!
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