Welcome back everyone to your Ideal Reverie! I want everyone to be honest with me here, when was the last time you scrolled through your social media? Let me guess, was it today, or maybe even within the last hour? Well, no need to feel embarrassed as you certainly aren’t alone. Social media is vital in today’s world for staying in touch with people and the world as a whole. Based on research done by SocialMediaToday up to 71% of people will get news from social media. I’ll be honest I am definitely in that percentage. With this being the case, it only makes sense that social media is an important tool to utilize if you’re looking to build a brand for yourself. In this article I will talk a bit about what social media I recommend and what I am currently doing with them.
The first two tips I think are important to building your social media presence are why you are building it and the end goal. These will help you figure out what social media to use and how to use it. If you’re a business-to-business retailer, being active on TikTok is less effective than say LinkedIn. Vice versa if you are a consumer-focused business, TikTok is always better the LinkedIn. Now that’s not to say you can’t do both, but we will talk about that more a little later. So, what is your reason for getting into social media?
Taking me as an easy example, I had multiple reasons to get into it once I began building my brand. The first was exposure, building a brand is hard if no one knows you exist. The second was to build a community. Social media is a great way to stay in touch and connect with people. The final reason was it is extremely cost-efficient and easy. Social media has no monetary cost to download and start posting. Remember though, your time is money so don’t forget to be aware of how you are utilizing yours. Getting started and posting is extremely easy as well. You can get started online or even on your phone just by downloading the app. It will ask you for some basic information and you can set up your profile in under 10 minutes.
These examples above are focused on my brand more than anything. Many people may have the same reasons while others will have different reasons. It is also good to know that building brand awareness and a community will take different forms depending on the specifics of your business. As an influencer, your goal might be the same as a typical business, but your methods will differ. No matter what the case just being aware of why you’re putting in this time and effort is important.
The next piece of the puzzle is your end goal with each social media. Again, I’ll talk about this in reference to myself to put it into perspective. The end goal of everyone on social media is to get more exposure, why else put in the work? The difference is what the end goal of that exposure is. Are you hoping to gain more followers and active members, or perhaps selling your product or services? My personal goal is a mix, right now I am trying to focus on building the community aspect first. My next step would be to turn that audience to my website, blog or streams. The final goal is to help me sell my books, services and merchandise. I have my goals structured so I have to complete one before moving on to the next. These are generic goals. I have tailored my current strategy to me specifically on how to accomplish them.
Whatever your goal, understanding it will help you manage your social media correctly. If, as an influencer, social media is your only form of business then you should be posting much more often than the average person. If you’re a business and all you use it for is to have another way to talk with your customers, posting every day most likely isn’t worth the effort. Social media is a powerful marketing tool, you don’t want to fall into the trap of doing too much. Don’t attempt to take on every social media, or post every day, if you only have 10 minutes a week to dedicate to it.
This is an important next step once you have your goals and reasons for building your social media presence. Make sure you put effort into what is best for your brand and don’t worry about anything else. Referring to my earlier example, a B2B retailer should not focus on TikTok. As per Statista over 70% of TikTok users are between the ages of 18 and 34. As a retailer on social media, you’re focusing on other businesses, hence other business owners. Spending your time or energy on this platform doesn’t make sense, and it would be better to turn to alternative platforms such as Facebook.
After knowing more about your target audience, you can decide where best to spend your time. Choose the social platforms where your customers spend their time. Now that you have only a few social platforms, do some research! Yes, unfortunately, I cannot give you all the answers even though I would love to do so. Each platform has different recommended posting times and formats. They also may have different etiquette so read up on that. A well-known example of this is Reddiquette for Reddit. If you’re really short on time, try mastering just one social media first. Then slowly add more to your repertoire as your skills grow and your time investment shrinks.
I am personally a bad example of this strategy. I chose instead to utilize multiple social platforms. The biggest reason for this is because of my business style. My business plan is to release new content weekly through my blog and streams. This content is then readily available to be edited and posted to social media. Honestly, I would love to post more than once a week in the future. Despite this, I simply cannot invest more time in social media than I already am. Not yet at least. That may change in the future. Make sure to post high quality content and don’t let it be the bane of your week. Make it fun and look forward to your posts.
We talked a little bit that choosing the right social media is important to the success you have with it. I’ll go over a few trends I’ve noticed that I may give you a direction to focus your research in. No matter the business venture I personally believe Facebook is a good utilization of your time. It has the most active accounts as a platform, giving you the best chance of overall exposure. It does fall off with younger ages, but still has good numbers. LinkedIn is my other preference when it comes to business-to-business contact. It is a professional hub for both businesses and freelancers. Having access to these contacts are wonderful for anyone selling business services. Instagram is a close second in number of users compared to Facebook and as they’re both Meta owned. I would recommend Instagram for consumer-based businesses. Not to say B2B can’t also utilize it, if you think it is the best option for you go for it. TikTok for me is in the same area as Instagram, definitely more consumer focused. Despite this, it is growing extremely fast so perhaps trying a Business centric TikTok might pave the way to something great.
You’ll notice that I personally am on each of these social platforms. I believe they are best for my current strategy based on research over the past few months. I know some people might dislike I left off twitter from this list. It is an extremely useful social platform and would never discredit anyone for placing this one highly. It doesn’t fit in my brand and personally find it overrated, despite this do your own research and see if it would work for your brand. I also did not add YouTube to the previous list. I think YouTube is an extremely beneficial social platform and functions as a powerful search engine. It is definitely more of a time sink then many other traditional platforms, for certain industries more so than others. There are tons of other platforms you can make your mark on.
Now we are all convinced social media is wonderful if done correctly, right? I’ll take that as a yes since you’re still reading. No matter the number of platforms you utilize, social media is a powerful tool to put your brand on the map and build around it. Do your research and dedicate yourself and you can upgrade your social media to the next level!
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Global TikTok user age and gender distribution 2023 | Statista
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