Agencies and freelancers usually don't have the resources to be active on all social media platforms. So priorities have to be set. In this article, I'll give you a series of questions to help you decide: Where is your effort really worthwhile?
There are more than enough social media platforms. The big question is: where should you invest your time and effort above all else? If you ask yourself this question, then you are already on the right track. Because one thing is clear: as long as you're not working for a global corporation with a seemingly endless budget, you should limit yourself.
Invest your resources in a few presences (or even just one) rather than trying to be everywhere. Otherwise, there will hardly be enough energy left for these three important pieces of advice:
- Be active and interact - don't just show yourself as a "sender". You will only be able to do this if you plan enough time.
- Take into account the special features of the network and know the expectations of the users there. You need to develop a feeling for what works and is well received and what is not.
- Focus primarily on the functions that make the respective offer special and experiment a lot.
Basic considerations for your decision
So you have to decide what you want to focus on and what you might even leave out completely. Fortunately, there are a number of questions that you can use to narrow down your selection:
Who do you want to reach?
The first question to ask yourself is: Who is your target group? Who do you want to reach with your activities on social networks? A major distinguishing feature of social networks is which population groups can be found there. This applies to the age structure as well as to interests or life situations.
Some offers are aimed at young people who use it to pass the time (example: TikTok). Others are aimed at people who are in professional life and use the network mostly for these reasons (example: LinkedIn or Xing). This should match your products or services, as well as your customer base.
What do you want to achieve?
Your objective is also key. Not every offer is suitable for increasing your sales, for example. Some are better for content marketing, see my article Content marketing for agencies & freelancers: what really matters. Or for making your brand better known - see content distribution.
Facebook or Instagram, for example, don't like it at all when you try to send users to a page outside of their offerings. Posts like this simply don't perform well. Instagram is also still stingy with clickable links. Twitter, on the other hand, has no problem with this at all.
How would you like to achieve this?
The networks also differ greatly in the media formats that are used. TikTok is geared entirely towards short-format videos, Twitter towards all kinds of information snippets and Pinterest mainly towards photos and graphics.
Can you and do you want to produce in-depth videos for YouTube? Or would you rather make sure that your useful content on your own website gets more readers? Because your website is incredibly important as a basis, as I explain here. And of course: How can you best reach your intended target group? Which formats do they prefer?
Find out the behavior of your target groups
What is even possible?
In my opinion, this is a question that is not asked often enough: Do the users on this social network even want to be addressed by companies? And if so, how? Facebook and others often make it very difficult for companies and brands to be seen at all - at least without paying. Sven Scheuerle shows you how to use Facebook Ads to boost interest in his guide for beginners and in his article on Facebook KPIs.
In such a case, you could consider using yourself or your employees as "brand ambassadors". This is also known as a "corporate influencer". However, this is a topic in its own right and goes too far for this article, so here is a suitable source on the subject.
What suits you and your offers?
My very personal view, which you are welcome to disagree with in the comments: A company has a personality that it should also stand by on the social web. Daimler, for example, is a globally active, very serious company. Fritz Kola is not. Both should act accordingly.
Of course, a company like Daimler will present itself as younger when recruiting young talent than when it comes to B2B business. Within certain limits, that certainly makes sense. But in principle, everything Daimler does should match its basic image. Otherwise it is untrustworthy and quickly comes across as artificial or even embarrassing.
The same applies to you as a freelancer or for your agency: you will have a certain client group that you address in a certain way. If your clients are mainly public authorities, it will look different than if you are creating portfolio pages for musicians. The following question should therefore also play a role when selecting social networks: Do I fit in here with my style, my offers, my image? Or would I have to bend too much?
A final thought on this point: there are always successful social media profiles that deliberately and very consistently violate the conventions of a network. I am thinking here, for example, of the claim that Instagram is not made for long texts. However, the National Geographic team does not miss the opportunity to write a detailed background story for each of its beautiful photos. It's simply part of the company.
In this respect, once you have understood how a social network "ticks", you can also break the unwritten rules. And that can be quite successful. Try out both variants and measure your success.
How quickly do you want to reach your goal?
In general, you will need a lot of patience with all social media platforms. Quick, viral successes are possible, but they are the exception. Some offers have the advantage that they are designed for long-term success.
YouTube and Pinterest, for example, are sites that are more of a search engine and only secondarily act as a social media network. The advantage here is: Your content can still be found months and years later and bring you new users and attention. The disadvantage is that you sometimes have to wait a long time for success to materialize.
Where is your competition active and what do they do?
Another point that you should definitely consider: What are others in your industry or your direct competitors actually doing? You can get ideas and suggestions here. However, you should always question what you find there. Because:
1. it may well be that your biggest competitor has no idea what they are doing on the social web. You should not automatically assume that they have made a better decision than you. Or that they have more information.
2. you will never be able to see exactly how successful your competitors' social media activities really are from the outside. This is because the figures you are shown will generally be irrelevant. For example, you won't be able to see how much business is being generated. This is another reason why I only list it here at the end.
How you should definitely not make your decision
Anyone who follows the relevant media relating to online marketing, e-business etc. quickly gets the impression that the field is constantly undergoing radical change and that there are always new platforms and formats.
To a certain extent, that's true. I'm thinking here of the "story" feature that has conquered large parts of the social web from Snapchat. Another example is the TikTok phenomenon. But firstly, there are fewer major innovations like this than some media suggest. And secondly, you don't need to jump on every new hype to be successful.
If you are targeting a young, experimental target group, then you naturally want to be involved in everything that is "hot" at the moment. Everyone else, on the other hand, should always go through the questions listed above first. It is therefore not a sufficient reason for your decision that a social network is currently being discussed a lot or that "everyone" is currently trying out function XY. If you would like to test it: Go for it! You learn best and most by trying things out. But don't immediately neglect your existing profiles and activities.
The general rule here is: Media and consultants don't like to talk about the fact that new offers and features don't automatically work better than what you're already doing. Even the good old email is still successful today! However, this statement is not very exciting and does not bring in very many clicks or consulting orders...
What about the "range"?
Some of you may have noticed that I haven't used the term "reach" at all. Isn't it crucial that Facebook is so much bigger than Pinterest? No, it's actually not. Or at least not in the way it is commonly discussed. Because the following applies: if you as a store owner find exactly your (willing-to-buy!) target group on Pinterest, for example, then you will reach much more there than on Facebook.
As already mentioned above under the topic of "competition", the number of fans or likes you have is also irrelevant at the end of the day. What is much more important is whether you achieve the goals you set yourself. A profile with 500 followers can be much more successful behind the scenes than one with 5,000 followers. The number of followers, likes and comments is a result of good work, but not the goal. As I described in my article on content KPIs, it's not that easy to find the right metrics for the success of your content. But it's worth it.
Another point: In social networks with a large number of users, you may have to fight a lot harder to be noticed at all. Or you have to spend money on it. This is because you are also competing for attention with a correspondingly large number of other companies. If you have a Facebook page, you may be familiar with the frustrating view of the actual reach of individual posts.
Even if you have thousands of fans and followers there, it won't do you much good if you only appear on one percent of them. On smaller social networks, on the other hand, it can be easier to make a name for yourself and get noticed. This also applies to your agency or your websites.
My conclusion
I hope this article has given you some interesting ideas for rethinking your social media strategy. And perhaps it has become clear that, on the one hand, you should of course keep up to date with what's new and hot on the social web. On the other hand, it is important to use your own resources in a targeted manner.
You should also always make your own experiences and gather your own insights. What works for others doesn't necessarily have to work for you, your offers and your target group. You may also discover something during your experiments that your competitors have not yet noticed.
