Which social media platform?

Andy: Social media use in on the rise, so you have to get yourself onto all the platforms, right? Only if you want to spend hours of your time chasing your tail… I’m Andy Le Roy

Louise: And I’m Louise Poole, and we’re giving you the insights that elevate you as an expert in your field

Elevating Experts!

Andy: Roughly 80% of Australians use social media as at January 2021, compared to about 58% in 2015, so it makes good sense to include social media as a part of your marketing strategy.

Louise: Not all social media platforms are created equal, though, so it’s a good idea to have a bit of a wander through them to see which ones will give you the best bang for buck for your brand

Andy: We’re not necessarily talking about advertising here, although each platform does offer an opportunity to buy targeted advertising. Where the money is for us here is in building an engaged community and trust in your brand through the best of what the platform has to offer.

Louise: Visually speaking, you can’t go past Instagram. The best performing accounts on the platform feature beautifully shot images to support the message they are promoting. While you night find the occasional meme on the platform, it’s really about connecting on a visual level, so if your product is particularly photogenic, use Insta as a great way to hook the attention of followers and engage your like-minded community.

Andy: Facebook is definitely worth mentioning as the biggest social media network, and has become a regular haunt for people of all ages. It’s a place where people go to hang out and interact with groups or find out about businesses and has a range of ways for you to communicate with your audience, so offers a bit more flexibility to suit your style of communication when building your community.

Louise: There’s a social media platform I’ve long loved, but feel like people look over really easily. Pinterest is another platform where sharable visual content is supreme, but to keep you Pinterest fans interested, your content needs to related to whatever they will find on your web site. It’s the place people go to for easily digestible expertise and is a really easy way to get more out of your content by repurposing it into sharable pins that bring people back to your web site.

Andy: Now I have to admit, I’ve always been a bit unsure about this next one because it had all the hallmarks of those functions I always dreaded as a manager… networking! But LinkedIn is an excellent place to be, particularly if your product or service is suited to the business market. Come and say hi to us on LinkedIn and join our community there – it’s just one of the places we’re walking our social media talk, and the people couldn’t be more supportive, which is what a good social network should be, right?

Louise: Right. And don’t forget the video based platforms of Youtube and TikTok. There are those who would scoff at the value of short videos that don’t even feature somebody famous, but they’re missing the point entirely. Again, these platforms are about building engaged communities but this time, it’s around people who absorb information best with videos. Check out some of the videos where people are preserving and teaching others about their cultural traditions. These are powerful outlets not to be overlooked!

Andy: And you don’t necessarily have to shoot different versions for different platforms.

Louise: That’s true – our Instagram Reels fit equally as well as a TikTok because of their length, and if we were to make a longer Youtube feature, we could also break that down for use on the other platforms, but it all takes time, so you really want to do a bit of research first to see what similar businesses to yours are doing, and which platforms will give you the most engagement.

Andy: You might decide to give them all a crack if you love making videos, or from another angle, if your products and services are all business to business, LinkedIn is probably going to be your best friend.

Louise: Before we head back to our content making tools, Andy, let’s quickly go over the main takeaways

Andy: Great idea, Louise! And I’m going to start off by saying that all social media platforms are not created equal, so spend some time on each one to see what’s going on there

Louise: And you don’t have to be on all of them. Have a think about your target audience and the voice of your brand, then think about which platform is going to suit best

Andy: In fact, it’s probably better if you choose two that appeal to you the most and start from there. Some are great for driving people back to your website, others are great for those business to business leads

Louise: As always, it’s important to choose the platforms where you can most easily connect with your target market using your brand’s voice. Next time on Elevating Experts, pushing through those moments of paralysing indecision.

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Current social media trends: https://www.statista.com/statistics/680201/australia-social-media-penetration/#:~:text=In%20January%202021%2C%20almost%2080,just%2058%20percent%20in%202015.&text=Facebook%20was%20the%20most%20popular,and%20six%20percent%20used%20Snapchat.