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Google ‘small business social media’ and you’ll find hundreds of articles touting the need to be on every single social media platform.
The thinking is this: you have to be everywhere people are in order to reach the most people.
But the truth of the matter is, being on every platforms can hurt your business more than it can help.
Why Being on Every Social Platform Can Hurt Your Business
Getting on to every single social media platform (and there are a lot these days!) can distract and disengage your followers.
Social media is free marketing, but only if done well. If you’re creating bad content, or irrelevant content just to have something for a specific platform, you’ll isolate readers.
There’s a lot of competition for people’s attention. Only the best content is getting seen these days, thanks to endless algorithms. Throwing pasta at the wall and seeing what sticks isn’t a great social media strategy.
It’s also time consuming to create content for multiple platforms. You should be on the platforms that are generating a return for you. Small business owners have enough on their plates without wasting their time on mediums that don’t bring them profits.
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Focus on Finding the Right People, Not The Most People
You don’t need to be the moderator of a Facebook group if your core demographic spends more time on Pinterest and Instagram. Picking a select few social platforms to grow a loyal following on is better than being on every platform and having no interaction.
Curation has become the name of the game, both in regards to content and to audience. You should be speaking in a specific language, to specific people, using specific marketing tactics.
For example, if you’re speaking to moms about working from home, you should be on Facebook, using images of parents and children, and talking about how to balance schedules and daycare costs. You don’t need to be on Instagram (which has a younger demographic base) sharing vacation photos. It’s not what your audience is looking for, and it’s not a good platform to find your key audience.
So before you spend days creating accounts on Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Vero and Youtube, do you research. Find out where your audience is already, and focus on those platforms. Think about what your message is, and how you can best present that.
It’s better to start small and do things well than waste time, resources, and goodwill by trying to please everyone.