Did you know that over half of the world’s population is active on social media? Facebook is the most popular social media platform, with 2.74 billion users accessing their profiles at least once a month. So if everyone is there, should your social media strategy include it? Not necessarily.
I work for a very large B2B technology company, which makes over $2 billion in revenue a year, and yet they do not have a Facebook page. Why? I suspect it’s because IT and cybersecurity decision-makers don’t spend a lot of time there, or if they do, they are probably looking at memes and cute baby pictures and don’t want to think about work.
Most businesses feel like they have no choice but to be on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Instagram and may entirely dismiss smaller, more niche platforms which could, in some occasions, be better suited for their audiences.
Take Twitch as an example: this live streaming platform has only around 7 million monthly active users, but it’s entirely focused on gamers. So if gamers are your ideal customer, this social media platform is probably a great place to be.
Social media marketing can be very time-consuming. Building connections, creating content and replying to comments require daily commitment. But it will all be in vain if your customers are not there. Or if they are there, but not in the right mindset to engage with your products or services.
Context is important too: my guess is that most people would not interact with a post promoting pet food on Linkedin because their attention is focused on work-related topics, but they might interact with an article about the benefits of bringing your pets to work, even if it is published by a pet shop.
Consider these 4 questions when building a social media strategy for your small business:
- Who is your ideal customer and in which social media platforms are they likely to be?
- In which platforms can you reach your customers in the right frame of mind to engage with your products or services?
- Can you customise your content to better fit the channel your’re promoting it in?
- Are there any social media platforms that are not worth the time and effort?
If you reflected on these questions and still decided that Facebook is the only social media platform that matters for you, that’s absolutely fine! As long as you’re doing it with conviction and not because you feel like you have to, then you can make it a success.
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