"What is the Best Social Media Site for Me?" In a response to our community post to choose the next traffic challenge, William Rodger, who blogs as Market Secrets, brought up an interesting point in his response, which echoes a frequent question I get at live events. He said:
….there’s so many social networks to test yet only so many hours in a day as there are certainly other maters in life that needs attending to for the sake of universal balance Which is certainly quite true – and made me think of a question myself and my peers get at live events, in some variation:
“With all the social media sites, tools, and networks, how do I chose which one to focus on?” The issue of course, is that there are new networks coming out all the time. How do you know which sites should get your limited time and attention, and which should not? Well, especially if you’re attempting to fit your marketing into 15 minutes a day, it’s an important question. You want to cover as much ground as you possibly can with your limited resources. At the same time, common sense tells you that spreading yourself too thin will yield miserable results. So you know, logically that means you have to limit which sites you’ll use. But how do you choose which sites? My general advice would be to select the top handful of sites with the most potential reach, in addition to your social media home base – your blog. For many business owners, its Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, YouTube and Slideshare. Some more advanced business people with a bit more time might also invest in BusinessWeek’s Business Exchange, Ecademy or communities like Entrepreneur Connect from Entrepreneur.com. But it’s not as simple as finding a way to broadcast one message on multiple platforms (perhaps through Amplify or Ping.fm).
More to Consider in Social Media Than Links to Your Blog Posts There may be times when you want to share a link in multiple places occasionally, but doing so as a matter of routine eliminates your customer’s need to consume your content. Sometimes the same people will be subscribed to your blog, Facebook, and LinkedIn channels. If you’re constantly singing the same song, why would they tune in to your channel? Would you watch NBC, ABC and CBS if they all had the same shows on at the same time in slightly different formats? That one issue makes choosing which networks to dedicate yourself to that much more complex. And there are other considerations: What kind of content do you like to create? What kind of audience are you attempting to grow? Where does your audience spend its time? Which of the network appeals to you the most? What kind of resources do you have access to, presently? Is there a way for your content to be re-purposed to hit multiple venues without simply repeating yourself? • How much time do you have? • Are there tools that can cut down your time commitment without dulling your message? • • • • • •
After going over those questions and more, one on one with a client, it becomes clear where they should spend their energy. And I can’t think of a single case where a person excels, enjoys and expresses themselves equally on all channels – companies with staff who can be dedicated to each channel, perhaps, but not organization of less than 9 people.
Social Media Polygamy: You’ll Marry One Site, & Have Several on the Side It will usually be the case that you find yourself spending most of your time on one network, and then dedicating your extra time to four or five other sites that you find useful but not as compelling. And there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, I’d encourage you to measure, as much as you can, the impact social media has on your business, not just from a return on investment perspective, but from the angle of less measurable benefits, such as sparking ideas and innovation. Then evaluate how much time it makes sense to dedicate to social media – you can always change your mind. Social media is just one tool in your communication, networking kit, that can connect customers to the marketing funnel on your site. Remember to use it in accordance with its effectiveness. For More Information about which is best social media site visit http://www.freetraffictip.com
Additional Resources: 10 Reasons Why I Love Amplify, a previous blog post My Facebook Video Quick Guide My Facebook Pages Video Quick Guide Articles and video getting visitors from StumbleUpon who actually DO Things like Click, Buy or Subscribe • The Basics of Stumbling • 4 Big Lies About Social Media – an article at BNET • • • •