Finding the right social media platform is essential in your business, but this does not mean you have to be in ALL of them!
Listen to this week’s episode and learn more about choosing the right social media platform that works for your business
2:20 which social media platform should you be using
5:39 choosing the platform and avoiding a zombie account
9:02 how algorithms work and how you can use it to your advantage
Free webinar: Meganbrame.com/marketingclass
Transcript:
Hi, how are you? I am so excited to talk to you today because I am going to talk about something that I’ve become incredibly passionate about that I never really expected to be passionate about. But here we are and I want to talk to you about it. So clubhouse is the new thing, right?
Everybody is like, oh, you let it be LaBelle’s. It’s so awesome. It’s connecting with people and targeting it. It’s great. And I don’t I won’t go on clubhouse. I don’t have a clubhouse account. And so help me God. I hope to never have one because I am so burnt out on all of these social media platforms, I can’t do it. I can’t like I have apps and I have my visa and I have people that help me do social media, but I can’t I can’t be in another place and do another thing.
I don’t want to do it. It makes me feel bad just thinking about it. So I’m not going on I’m not going on clubhouse. And that’s my segue into talking about which social media platforms are out there and how to figure out where you should be on social media. Like which platform should you be using because you cannot be everywhere and please don’t try. I know that it feels like flomo fear of missing out. You need to be everywhere because maybe your customers are checking that place out and they won’t see you and they’ll see your competitor.
But you being on two platforms, consistently delivering amazing content and value and building a community is so much better than you having two active social media accounts and ten zombie accounts of things you never update. So rather than trying to be everywhere, I want to talk about how to figure out where you should be and how to use that to your advantage. So the first one is make sure that your customers are where you’re going. And I mean that in a sense that, yes, your customers are most likely on every social media platform in one way or another.
But are they there for what you’re offering? And the perfect example of this is when I was a director of marketing, I had fights like Go in your corner and calm down fights with sales departments because the sales departments would want to be on Instagram. Now, this was for a service based company. It was for professional certifications, for like tech stuff like me or my school or something like that.
So they wanted to be on Instagram because they felt they should be on Instagram, but they couldn’t tell me why. And I fought with them because we weren’t a visual company. And people don’t go on Instagram to find out about professional certifications. They go on there for beautiful pictures, for boss babe quotes for shit like that. They don’t go on there for what we’re selling. And so it is a waste of our time to put effort and content into this platform.
We should not be on Instagram. And they went behind my back and they did it anyways. And then guess what happened? We had a zombie account. We had this account on Instagram that had three posts. Then they realized that they couldn’t keep up with it and it just sat there dead. And I like I didn’t want to be I told you so, but I was just so freakin smug when I found that out and oh, so angry.
Still kind of have some emotions about it, actually. But it’s fun because I learned a valuable lesson and I. I got proof of my hypothesis that just because you’re on Instagram doesn’t mean your customers are going to be on Instagram looking for stuff that you are offering. The only people that are following those accounts are employees that have been asked to follow those accounts. And like their spouses, nobody is following these accounts that don’t provide the thing that that platform is used for.
Now, to be fair, you can be disruptive and you can use Tik Tok in a way that nobody else is using. But the chances of it working are so slim. And when you are a solar producer or a small business owner, you have so many other things to worry about that in my opinion, it’s really not to your advantage to go out and try and be disruptive when you can just get the lowest hanging fruit possible by going onto the platform that’s meant for the type of business you run.
So if you are a visual company, if you’re a product based business, if you have a blog, if you have things that you can deliver consistently in terms of content and your customers are on Instagram looking for that content, then be on Instagram.
If that’s not your thing, if you’re a service based business, if you don’t have a lot of visual content that you can provide often be on LinkedIn, be on Twitter, be on these places that are text based and are used to the users are used to seeing that kind of information. The second thing is be where you can be most consistent. That is such a clutch thing that has to happen for any social media account to be successful. And I know that from experience on my own, I know that experience from my customers and from my marketing clients.
It doesn’t matter if you have all of the right pieces, you know, like you have your strategy laid out. You have this awesome sales funnel, you have advertising, you have content, you have engagement. If you can’t show up consistently, you are just going to be one in thousands of other people that are doing the same thing.
Hey, guys, Megan here, just a reminder, I have regular Q&A episodes coming out, so if you want your questions answered, head to Megan Brame Dotcom. Ask a question on Woodward and you’ll be able to get your questions posted. And if I feature it, you will get a copy, a free copy of my book, Day one and Practical Guide to Launching Your Business. So again, head to Megan Brame Dotcom. Ask a question and if your question gets featured, I’m sending you a free copy of my book as a thank you.
Think of it like a marathon, you are starting at the same part with all of these people, this huge pool of people that are all like, yes, I’m going to be on Tik Tok. It’s going to be amazing, it’s going to be awesome, and I am going to rock the hell out of it. But once the race starts, the further you go along, the more space you have between these other people, the more people to kind of fall behind, quit, fall off.
They start to weed themselves out. And so the space for you to play in gets so much wider and you get such a bigger piece of the pie when you are consistent and when you are getting yourself out of this crowd of people that post occasionally post once in a while, don’t post ever all of that. The other thing to think about when it comes to consistency is how the algorithms work. And I mean that and all the algorithms, because they all essentially work the same way where it’s not a chronological feed that they show anymore.
Right. It’s all about keeping the customer on that platform. So to keep the customer on that platform so that they can show more ads, Instagram, Pinterest, Tik Tok, whatever they show content that they know is interesting to that person based on scary amounts of data that they collect. So rather than trying to fight these algorithms, use that information to your advantage and be the low hanging fruit for these algorithms so that they know when someone is coming looking for really cool skin care, they know that they will really like pictures of people making really cool skin care and oh my God, Megan skin care company posts regularly.
So we know that they are a consistent source of content. Let’s start feeding that in and that way will keep the customer on, will get more information and will get a better relationship with Megan Skincare Company to where they might want to advertise with us. So that’s how the algorithms work across the board. The reason you want to be consistent is to keep yourself in that favor with the algorithms. If you can show that you are a reliable source of content for them to give out to people who are interested in that content, you are such a good place and you are their new best friend.
So do that. Use that to your advantage. If you cannot be consistent on on on Instagram, if you cannot be consistent on Pinterest, if you can’t be consistent on YouTube, don’t do it. Don’t feel bad if you’re not doing it. I can’t be consistent on anything except for my podcast and YouTube channel. Those are the two things that I have dedicated my efforts to being consistent for a not consistent on Instagram. Pinterest, I wish I was Twitter, Facebook, none of those.
I’m not consistent on those and I accept that I have apps. Sorry, I keep putting my tongue. I have apps that help me automate that process and deliver content, but I actively am not on those platforms. I leave that to Dannica, my HVA and two apps to help me because I have the presence there. But it’s not where I develop consistent content that I put my heart and soul into. My heart and soul is in my podcast and my YouTube channel because I know that that is where hopefully I can develop the best relationship with people I want to help and offer the most value.
I feel like my my tone is much better through audio or visual than it is through text. It’s not that great through blogging because I’m pretty sarcastic. I have a kind of dry humor, I guess, and it just doesn’t translate that well into written content despite my efforts. And I feel like being able to know what my strengths are and how I want to come across makes me able to say, OK, well, knowing that I know that these two channels are the ones that are the way that I can deliver the content in the way that I want to deliver it and that I can do it consistently.
And then Apple and YouTube and Stitcher, they all get excited because Megan shows up every week or twice a week and delivers valuable content. So we’re gonna put. Sure stuff out and then she gets really big or she starts seeing a noticeable tick in her data, she’s going to start exploring advertising opportunities. So not only will we get her users to stay on this platform longer, where we can serve more ads, we will show that she is successful here and then she’ll start advertising with us.
So it’s a win win on both sides. And that’s how you need to kind of understand how the algorithms work.
So the whole thing be where your customers are.
If you don’t know who your customers are, then I would say figure out first how to do that. And I have a free webinar. You can take it whenever you want. It’s like an hour and a half, I think Megan Brame dotcom slash marketing class. And that will take you to my free webinar that helps you figure out all of that stuff.
It’s us going through your avatar features versus benefits and SWOT analysis and just making sure that you understand where you can be in marketing that is not only successful but is cheap and saves you a lot of money.
Once you figure that out and you’re able to go say, OK, I know my avatar is 18 to twenty four female love shopping, hates politics. You like that kind of stuff then I know she’ll be on this platform, Instagram, Pinterest, whatever. And I know that I can develop content consistently that will appeal to her. And by the way, if you need help figuring out which platform to go on, most of these social media platforms are public facing companies, which means they have shareholders, they have investors, and they have to report all of their data that they know about their users because that attracts whales, that attracts bigger stock investors.
So if you go and you Google Pinterest demographics, it’ll pull up Pinterest site that has their demographics and listed out. If you do that Instagram, I don’t know about Tik Tok, maybe Tik Tok, Facebook, Twitter, anything that’s a public facing company, you most likely will be able to get that information. So once you figure that out, figure out how you can develop a consistent plan to deliver content that gets you out of that pool of beginning runners and that makes you become that marathon winner.
Then deliver it, deliver the content, engage with people, of course, but deliver the content consistently and don’t try and be everywhere. Be where your customers are, be where you can help them the most and use that to your advantage. So help those helpful. I would love if you joined me every week on YouTube. I am doing a live series where it’s office hours and you and I and a bunch of people will sit down, we’ll do the Pomodoro method, will get work done together, and then we’ll have some chats and some community sessions and things like that and hang out.
And I would love if you join me because this is cool. I want to have a community and I want to help other entrepreneurs and I want you to be there, too. So if you go to Megan, Brame, dot com YouTube, that’ll take you right to my YouTube channel and you can subscribe and you’ll get notified when I’m going live with office hours. In the meantime, have a fantastic week. I will talk to you next week.
And we are going to rock our social media platforms, aren’t we? I’ll talk to you soon.
