When embarking on your social media campaign, it is tempting to set your business up on as many platforms as possible. Surely maximum platforms equal maximum exposure? Before you set up your fifth social media profile, stop! As a marketing agency, this is one of the first things we would advise our clients not to do.

Doing one platform well is always better than doing five badly. But how can you go about choosing the best social media platforms for your business?

Asking yourself these four questions will help you to work out which social media platforms will help your business to grow and thrive.

What social media platforms do your audience use?

The most important factor in choosing which social media platforms are best for your business is your audience. Where do your potential customers like to spend their time online? If your customers tend to use Instagram, then LinkedIn won’t help you to reach them.

Spend some time working out what type of people are in your audience. It can be helpful to create ‘buyer personas’. This is a detailed description of an individual who represents your target audience. It’s a fictional person who fits the description of your ideal customer.

Depending on your industry, it might be that you have a few different types of people that you want to target. In this case, you can create yourself a nice group of fictional people to help you define your audiences.

Which social media platforms work best for your business’ industry?

Different social media channels lend themselves to certain types of content. For example, TikTok and YouTube are of course video-based. Meanwhile, LinkedIn and Facebook are rather multimedia, allowing you to share text, images and videos. Some platforms also have extra features like eCommerce that you might want to make use of.

Do some market research to see what types of content perform well in your industry, and factor this into your decision. Ask yourself:

• Could my products or services benefit from visuals? Though B2B marketing might not seem suited to visuals, things like infographics or videos can be highly useful for certain industries. As a marketing agency, we have found TikTok effective in driving lead conversion.
• Which channels are my competitors using? And more importantly, are these channels working well for them, or is there a platform that would be more successful?
• What type of content is most successful on each channel? Once you know what types of content you want to focus on, knowing the answer to this will help you to maximise engagement.

What are your marketing goals?

Decide what you want to achieve through your social media marketing. This is important as certain platforms will be better suited to certain goals. Here are some examples of marketing goals and what platforms might help you achieve them:

• Networking with potential clients: For B2B companies, LinkedIn is perfectly suited to building your network.
• Improving customer relations: Twitter can be useful for fixing relationships with unhappy customers, as customers can directly tweet you, opening up a direct conversation.
• Community building: creating hashtag challenges on Instagram can encourage your customers to interact with each other.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, and social media platforms can have several uses in your marketing goals.

What resources do you have?

While quality is more important than quantity, you should consider how many social media channels you need to achieve your marketing goals, and how much time you need to invest in a given platform.

For example, it may be difficult to increase brand awareness using only one channel. Meanwhile, if you don’t have the time to respond to direct messages, mentions, and comments, then it might be tricky to improve customer relations.

This isn’t to say that you can’t succeed on social media with a small team and budget. You absolutely can. But to do so, you need to set realistic goals and work out exactly what you have the time and skills to do.

If you have limited resources, then targeting one channel will ensure that you are able to focus on putting out the best quality content possible.

If you feel that you are lacking the skill set to create content, then it can be worth investing in help from a marketing agency. At Little Seed Group, we specialise in helping small businesses and charities to blossom. Whether it’s a one-off consultancy or social media management that you’re after, we’ve got your back.

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