Which Social Networks Should Your Small Business Be Using In 2014?
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A quick Google search will pull up several articles with titles like “13 Social Networks You Need to Use”. This is not one of those articles. Quite the opposite actually.
In fact, it’s articles like those that cause all the stress, confusion, and mistakes. It can be overwhelming. The approach is all wrong because social media should be about engaging your audience, and that’s why you should put quality before quantity.
Seriously, you don’t have to join everything!
If you are a large organization with the disposable resources to invest in a dedicated social media manager whose full-time role is to maintain a strong brand presence across multiple networks… great!
On the other hand, if you are the primary social media manager for your brand, then feel free to ignore the so-called experts trying to encourage you to dive in over your head. Nothing is more annoying than re-cycled information, so if your entire Twitter stream is nothing but a feed of your Facebook updates… why bother having a Twitter at all?
Three ways to decide which social networks you should be using:
1. Where are your competitors? It doesn’t have to be the Coke to your Pepsi. It could be a relevant organization the next county over. If there is somebody in the same industry who is flourishing on social media, and you are marketing to a similar audience, then it might be a good platform for you to use as well.
2. Where is your audience? Obviously, you want to focus on the networks where your best customers are most active. It might not even be Facebook… you might find that another platform like Pinterest has a better ROI.
3. Most importantly, what can you handle? Now, this is the point that’s missing from articles that tell you “how many” social networks to use. Focus on mastering one network before you try diving into another. If updating your status, sharing your lunch, and tweeting your location is becoming a bigger daily process than actually growing your business… you’re in over your head.
