Which social media platform should I post on and why? This is the question I get all the time. It's a question that's not going to go away because you get more and more and more social media platforms to choose from and social media becomes such a big part of marketing. I wish there was one answer I could give you and say, today this is the platform to be on but it's not that simple. What I can do for you though is walk you through a few questions to ask yourself to help you funnel all the social media platforms down to a few that you can be really active in and that works for your  style, your business style, your client style, all that. 

Let's get started with what I consider the top social media platforms at the time and which one you should consider. The ones I think of are Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Yes, YouTube. 

YouTube is becoming a platform where people are talking a lot back and forth and that's where the social comes from. It's that social piece. And YouTube I can only see getting bigger and bigger and bigger. YouTube can be considered as one of your social media platforms. You might have noticed I left off two big ones. Twitter and Pinterest. Pinterest used to be one of the top profiles and now it's been going down. Pinterest is really good if you are image based, so if you're an artist, a landscaper, furniture designer, that kind of thing, You can use Pinterest as a way to get organic SEO of your website and images because Pinterest does a lot of Google searching with their images so having things out and having your images there is a great organic SEO, but it's not a social piece. I don't see as much social going on within the Pinterest realm.Twitter, I've never been a fan of. If you have big customer service that's going to be contacting you on Twitter like Southwest, then you can use Twitter but it's more as a customer service tool than a social back and forth tool. If your ideal clients are on Twitter you can consider it but if your ideal client is on Twitter following their sports team it doesn't mean their to going to follow you  You really have to look and see if your ideal clients are going to be on that platform and willing to follow you. If your a news outlet or magazine, then maybe. It's just something to consider based on who your audience is but if you want to normally work with, Twitter is not a good choice.  

Out of the top 5, how do you pick which one? Or do you do all of them? I don't suggest doing all of them because if you spend a little effort on all of them you're only going to get a little result. Social media platforms like you to be engaged. They like you to be all in. To get the full maximum result and good results from it you have to be involved in it. Which is why I put a platform that you enjoy and that fits you most important over a platform that fits your ideal clientele. I know that sounds weird, but you're going to get it, okay, so hang in with me for a second. If you're in a platform you enjoy, you're more likely to be in it which means you're more likely to comment, you're more likely to like, you're more likely to respond to messages. 

If you would pick up your phone and open TikTok, TikTok should get a few extra bonus points as a platform your business should be in. The same with LinkedIn or Facebook. So if there's a platform that you yourself enjoy, give it a few bonus points as one that you might consider to be the platform for your business. 

The second thing with that is content you like to create. If you are a video person and videos are your jam, then going on YouTube or TikTok might be your platform. If you're long form writing and image person then forcing yourself to do video is not going to go well  and you're not going to do content consistently and that's a big thing with these platforms is you need a lot of content and to continuously create helpful, useful content. If you're not enjoying that type of content creation, you're not going to do it, it's not going to last long, it's going to be a headache, you're not going to like it. Choosing one that you like to be in that platform and like to create content in that way is a great way to start. 

Next, you want to make sure at least your clientele or referral partners are on that platform so if it's way off in space it's not going to work. But most of our prospects are in multiple platforms. You do want to find a platform that your prospects aren't just on, but they're interacting on, which means they're on it enough to scroll down and see your stuff. They're not just going on and posting because if they're just logging in and posting, they're not going to see your stuff. You want one that they are interacting in as well.  

Now how do you find out which one that is. There's a lot of Google searches you can do. I don't suggest that and the reason why is I think they don't take into account a lot of psychographic and demographics that they should. If they say we mostly have males this age in that your prospect, it doesn't say if it's a certain income level, certain area, If they're St Louis based, if they're here, or what. You want to look at who your best clients are and ask them or look and see where they're interacting because where they're  interacting is we're going to find more of them  You can do the same with your referral partners. Mixing between the two what you like to do and where you're at so you actually use it, and where your prospects and referral parters are at, that's a very important mix and that should start funneling down some of these social media profile types.   

The next you want to look at is which profile types actually feed into others because you want to pick 1-3. Start with 1, then add another, add a third, and as you add these you want ones that your content can easily flow through and what I mean by that is if I do a YouTube video, I can post it on Facebook easily. Facebook does penalize you a little bit for an outside link. I have a video on that. I'll post it down below if you're interested. Facebook will penalize you a little bit for the outside link but it's worth it and people still see it so that's an easy flow. YouTube does not go into Instagram easy at all. If I want to be on Instagram, I want to be on YouTube, and I want to be on TikTok, TikTok to Instagram might be a better fit than YouTube to Instagram. You want to also look at that. What naturally flows from one to the other. 

Another thing you want to think about is what type of content creator are you. I'm a plan. I have my content planned out and I have it scheduled into platforms. That is who I am. I'm not as good with that quick on-the-spot content. Some people love the on-the-spot content and can't plan to save their life That's another thing to think about when you're doing content. Are you someone who can do content that spreads out so you can post it to LinkedIn and YouTube and Facebook and have it scheduled, or are you someone who likes that quick content and want to do something more like Instagram stories, TikTok that kind of thing. Those content will only be up there for a short time and leave vs. standing content so some people will pick a mix of both. That all goes into your social media strategy and is something that I really dig down with with clients and you can do for yourself and planning out how all those parts fit together. Time is money. You want to create content that you can get the most value of and it's not just a one-time one profile type of thing. When it comes to scheduling you want to be careful as well because places like Facebook will penalize you if you use something like Buffer or HootSuite to post content. Facebook has its own scheduler that they'd like you to use. You want to keep that in mind if you're a scheduler type of person. 

I talked a lot about what type of person you are. It is important if you're going to continue something long-term like a social media strategy to have things that naturally fit into your life. I did a video on if you have to wake up at 5AM to be successful. It touches on this so I'm going to put a link to that as well. Because if you're in that space trying to say well I'm told I need to do this but I feel better doing this then that might be a video to watch to give you some peace of mind and give you a place to come from on what works for you. I'm almost to the 10-minute mark so I want to wrap up real quickly. If you do find yourself wanting to post all these different platforms and you have a team that's helping you post and that kind of thing, the big thing you want to watch out for is making sure that you reply to comments, acknowledge comments, and you reply to messages. That's one of the biggest downfalls I've seen. 

Social media is a place where customer service happens a lot and it's going to happen a lot more. You want to make sure you're in profiles where you can manage your customer service and do really well at it. There are programs out there that will pull in all your comments and all of your messages into one sorted place so you can easily reply to them. If you're interested in that let me know. It's also really good for sells teams. If you want to have multiple people manage communication streams and you want to go back and see what was said. There's certain things out there to help you when you get to that point  But most of my clients are at the point where they just want to get content out there and they want to be the expert, they want to track clients and doing that really picking one to maybe three profiles programs platforms that you can really sink your teeth into is more important than trying to spread yourself thin on all of them.  

Platforms come and go so pick ones that you can really put your investment in. Things like MySpace were here, now they're gone. Things like Snapchat just aren't really as good for business. Just because something's hot and is the thing right now doesn't mean it's worth your time investment your money investment and possibly your advertising investment. There is something called first-mover advantage which is if you use a platform first and all your audience is there, then you can get some benefit. That's something to think about, but that's a whole other story. We're at the 10 minutes so I'm going to go and I hope that gives you a little bit of a way to decide which social media platform you're going to be involved in and how to make it successful for you.