I've been commissioned to work for an online marketing specialist to convert her Facebook Live Streams into blogs to publish on her website. Below you can find an example of a recent topic.
How To Pick Your Social Media Platform
Welcome back to my regular blog! If you’ve found yourself here for the first time then you’ll quickly realise this is the home of my marketing ramblings. You’ll discover my passion for online marketing, social media, content creation, lead generation and everything in between. Hopefully I’ll be sharing some tips that you’ll find useful to add in a little spark to your own online marketing. If you’d like to chat more in-depth about a project you have then you’ll find my contact details here – (LINK) – but for now, let’s crack on with this week’s topic….
WHICH PLATFORM DO I CHOOSE?!
I’m continuing on with the theme I’ve picked for this month which radiates around creating core pieces of content - how you discover that content, how you plan it out, how you connect it all together and for this blog I want to chat about how you pick the best platform to publish that content on.
So, what’s the point of creating content? The reason why businesses are on social media is for current customers to keep up with what’s happening in the company and for potential customers to be able to find them and see what they have to offer. There’s endless opportunities for connections out there, new customers are searching for a solution / product / service on a daily basis, so it’s about a making sure you’re in the right place at the right time!
However, please don’t be mistaken, this is a long game to be played. There are no magic quick fixes when it comes to marketing and especially so nowadays, there is no “one size fits all” remedy to business promotions. Which means getting the basics right for your company and your target market is crucial. People are aware they have lots of choice so it may take several touch points with your business before they reach out, there are very few incidents when people take one look and think “I’m buying that” or “I’m booking that”, it could take six or seven touch points, although I’ve heard of it taking up to twenty if you’re starting out from a cold customer scenario – so keep all of this in mind and don’t be discouraged.
This all means that exposure and building up a trust factor with your target audience is a key tactic towards your success. How do you do all this? One of the main ways is to build yourself up as an authority within your industry, a guru of your field. This may mean you need to do some extra research but it’s well worth it because it will encourage people to turn to you and what your business has to offer them.
Keeping all the above in mind, we then need to narrow down where your audience hangs out… and therefore where you should. Are they TikTok converts? Are they LinkedIn Pros? Do they hang out on Facebook or maybe they are Insta-Team.( I’ve created a quick quiz to help you narrow down, you’ll find a link below). Aside from your target audience’s favourite platform, think about what yours is too. If you are baffled by TikTok and can’t think of anything worse than tackling Twitters fast pace and character limit, attempting to jam that into your marketing plan will probably end in failure. Whereas if you know your audience hangs out on Instagram and Facebook but you prefer Instagram – stick to just that! Don’t set yourself up for failure at the first hurdle, there’s plenty of ways to make a campaign work on just one platform, and once you’ve grasped that you can always add things in at a later date when you feel confident to.
Consistency is King in any form of marketing, doing anything half hearted, irregularly or without conviction is a waste of your time and resources, so make sure you’re happy with what you’re planning to do. Marketing should be exciting, it’s the promise of something new, it’s the fuel in your business engine and should definitely make you feel a rush rather than a bang to the head by repeated slamming of the brakes!
Once you’ve picked your platform, or maybe you’ve picked two, stick with that until you’re really well established in using them. Trying to conquer multiple social media platforms all at the same time is impossible to do well without an army of helpers. Picking just one platform and doing it brilliantly is so much better than signing up to five and posting once in a blue moon to one or two followers and getting no engagement because no one is checking your stuff as they hadn’t heard from you in months.
Focusing on your chosen platform you can then begin to shape the content around what will work best for you on there. You can aim to have one core piece published every week or perhaps you can only realistically manage once a fortnight – whatever is right for you and whatever you can do consistently is the correct plan of attack. Be honest with yourself when you’re creating your campaign, don’t let your ideas runaway with themselves if you know you’re already too busy to post every day at 3pm, twice every Sunday and do three Facebook lives as well as a giveaway – when in fact it’ll be a push to post once a week and do one live stream.
Picking the format of your core piece of content is up next – it could be a blog, video, or perhaps a podcast. Think about what you’d prefer to be doing, do you love writing? Or would you just end up staring at a blank screen for hours on end trying to conjure up an introduction? If you want to keep things super simple a blog is a great option, you can write a piece, upload it, add some images and then share that to your social media. It requires less technical knowhow, it has endless possibilities but it can take up a little more time.
Would you prefer to record a video? They don’t always have to feature yourself, it could be something behind the scenes with you narrating as I know lots of people come out in hives at the thought of being in front of a camera! YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the world after Google and video content accounts for 80% of internet traffic, so there are literally billions of consumers of this type of media. People love the ease of video content (we’re all lazy from time to time) and making a video to use as your content can be just as quick and easy. It’s also much more successful to build business to consumer trust within this format, with that personal connection to your audience they feel like they know you more than they would via the written word, and in today’s world where face-to-face meetings might be less of a norm, video will become a crucial part of any company’s marketing.
Or perhaps you’re one of the growing crowd that loves to listen to podcasts and would like to create your own. The beauty of a podcast is that they are super accessible, you can listen as you’re driving to work, as you walk the dog, while you’re watching the kids play sports, before you go to bed etc. The point being your listeners don’t have to fully commit a piece of their day to hear you out, they can intertwine you within their other daily tasks, making it more likely they’ll listen to the entire podcast rather than just a snippet of a video online.
Podcasts are really easy to set up, you can create episode themes, you could have guests and you could create your own jingles for example. There are endless possibilities and it’s a great way of establishing yourself as an expert in your field, someone that people would turn to when they need tips and advice.
So, that’s the three main formats of content and I’ll let you go away and digest all that – if you’d like to chat around these topics or anything else marketing related I’ve just set a new avenue where I can help you. Fancy a Virtual Cuppa? It’s a 15 minute natter with me where we can try and come up with a solution to get you a clear vision on where you’re heading or give you a bitesize lowdown on how a platform you want to tackle works – head to the below link to find out more!
Hopefully you’ve found the above helpful - if you’d like to tune into my weekly live chats on Facebook then please head over to my page – (LINK) – I would love to have you join me.
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