Social media has a way of turning rational marketers into panicky chickens running madly in circles. Should we be on every platform? What about all the new platforms that seem to be constantly appearing on the scene? How do we tell if a platform is actually worth our time, or if we’re just spinning our wheels? It’s a lot to address, but here are three important things to consider when you’re deciding which social media platforms to use and which to lose. Warning: some of these opinions are unpopular.
No, You Don’t Need to Be on Vine.
I’ll amend that with: I’m 90% sure you don’t need to be on Vine. Unless you’re GE or President Obama, with nearly unlimited resources for that sort of venture, or a cool startup with hordes of creative interns willing to spend the time it takes to make Vines people actually care about, don’t bother. No one cares about the 6-second interviews you’re doing at trade shows. They just don’t. The Vines that get millions of loops are made by high school kids with more time (and more creativity) than you. Which is why several larger companies—Verizon, for example—are paying those Viners to do sponsored videos, some of which do well and many of which don’t.
My feeling about Vine is that you should approach it as you would any social platform: can you dedicate time and resources to it? Do you know how to do it well, and consistently well? If not, don’t bother. We all know content marketing is gearing heavily toward video, but that only counts if the videos are actually good.
Traffic Isn’t Everything
As logical marketers, we measure everything. (Or at least we should be measuring everything.) As such, many marketers grimace over the traffic that their social platforms drive—or fail to drive. But as Twitter, for example, becomes more and more visual—with videos and gifs playing in-stream and more companies allocating resources for standalone graphics made specifically for the platform—traffic may not be the most important metric you measure. Instead, impressions and engagement are what you should focus on to tell whether or not that social platform is wheat or chaff. No, people may not be navigating to your site from Twitter—we need to get even more creative with how to make that happen—but they are seeing, liking, and maybe even sharing your content.
That’s why it’s more important than ever to make sure that content can stand on its own two feet as a single post or tweet: users may not be clicking through, so do what you can to give them everything they need to consume your message right in that one impression. In addition, giving them a way to contact you directly from that single post is a nice tool to have in your back pocket. The rise of mobile means social users are engaging on smartphones at unheard of volumes, so using something like a click-to-call is a neat trick: not only can a follower on Twitter see your message and visuals all in one post, but they can connect with you directly from it as well. No friction.
It’s Okay to Have A Favorite
All marketers know that the point of measuring success is so that we can do more of what works and less of what doesn’t. The same is true for social media, which is why it’s so important to keep an eye on your monthly metrics rather than slaving away blindly hoping your endless stream of Google+ posts are impacting someone. Your metrics may reveal that you get the most engagement on LinkedIn over any other platform. So what should that mean for you? Do more on LinkedIn!
That may not mean posting to your company page more often—you don’t want to annoy your followers—but it might mean creating some original LinkedIn groups or increasing your posting in existing groups. If you see the most engagement on LinkedIn and paltry engagement on Pinterest, it’s okay to do less on Pinterest and more on LinkedIn. It’s easy to forget what the word “social” in “social media” means. It doesn’t mean standing in an empty room and yelling—it means going where your friends are and chatting it up. So why spend tons of energy in a room where you’re not having any good conversations? It’s okay to peek in on that room every now and then to see if the party has arrived, but spend more energy where the crowd is buzzing for you.
Social media continues to be a shifting space that is up for interpretation. Like every marketing effort, you should consider your platforms carefully…and don’t be afraid to move on from what’s not working.