Does your business need to be on every social media platform? If you’re using social media as part of your business marketing strategy, then you’ve probably gotten conflicting answers to this question. Some experts say, “Yes, you should have a page on every major platform.” Others say, “No, you should focus your efforts on a few key platforms.” We’re here to put in our 2 cents, so here it is.
The short answer is no, you don’t need to be on every social media platform. Why? Well, trying to be on every social media platform isn’t necessary when it comes to finding your audience, staying within your bandwidth, or getting a good return on your investment. In fact, it can actually hurt your business.
Finding Your Audience
Where can you find your ideal customers? In all likelihood, they’re probably not going to be on every social media platform. If you run a senior center in Tampa, then you probably don’t need to be on Snapchat where 78% of users are under the age of 35. If you’re a plumbing business looking to market to homeowners, then you might want to focus on Facebook, where there is a higher number of older users (and homeowners specifically). It all depends on what you’re selling, whom you’re targeting, and where you can find them.
Staying Within Your Bandwidth
Another thing you should consider when planning a social media strategy is who will be managing your social media accounts and how much time they will have. If you’re a small company with less than 20 employees, then you might be in a situation where you have a single “marketing manager.” Let’s say this person is in charge of running Google Ads, creating print advertisements, buying TV and radio ads, writing blog posts, updating the website, optimizing SEO, designing landing pages — and on top of all of that, they are single-handedly running all of your social media accounts.
Do you really think that person is going to have time to create diverse, high-quality content tailored to every available platform? Can they manage Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok pages all on their own? The answer is almost certainly “no.” At that point, they will likely just cross-post and use the same content on every platform, which isn’t productive in the long run. If you are in a situation where you don’t have the time, staff, or resources to commit fully to managing your presence on a certain platform, then don’t do it. It’s better to focus on creating high-quality content for one or two social media platforms than to put out mediocre content on many platforms.
Maximizing Your ROI
Across different social media platforms, it’s normal to see varying results. So, even if you’re putting out tailored, high-quality content, you might not get the response you were hoping for. If that’s the case, then focus on the platforms where you are seeing results.
Let’s say your social media manager is posting on platforms X, Y, and Z. They spend 3 hours every week creating and brainstorming content, 2 hours scheduling content, and 2 hours responding to users on each platform. That’s 7 hours per platform every week — 21 hours in total by the end of the week. If they’re paid $10 an hour (which is a conservative estimate), then you’re paying $210 for social media management every week, and $840 per month. That would make sense for your business as long as you’re seeing significantly more than $840 worth of growth from social media every month.
But let’s say that on platform X, you get an average of 100 leads every month. Half of those leads convert to customers, and on average, they spend $25 with your company. That’s $1,250 of revenue, and if that’s all you spent to garner those leads (which is possible for some e-commerce companies), then platform X is providing ROI sufficient to justify your expenditure.
Now, let’s say platform Y only provides about 26 leads per month, and platform Z only provides 10. If half of those leads convert at a rate of $25 of revenue per customer, then you’re only going to make about $450, which is less than what you’re paying for the labor.
If that’s the case, then you’re working against yourself. You would be better off focusing more of your time on platform X and drastically reducing the time you spend on the other platforms. This will help you to improve your ROI and get the most out of your social media strategy without wasting time on platforms not helping your business to grow.
So, in short, you should evaluate which platforms would be the most beneficial to your business before committing to posting on all of them. This will help to ensure your social media plan is realistic and manageable, and actually produces results.
