End Social Media Overwhelm

If you’re someone who is just starting business, you may be feeling completely overwhelmed by social media.

Everyone is touting the amazing results that they get from Facebook, or Twitter, or Instagram. You want those same amazing results too, right?

But where do you find the time to learn how to use the ever evolving number of social media channels?

Before you go and completely overwhelm yourself, stop for a minute and give it some thought. Each social media channel has a different audience and caters to specific types of media. They can’t all be treated equally.

Here’s where to start:

Pick only one social channel

The best advice I can give you is to start out with one social media network. Don’t succumb to the fear of missing out here! You can always (and should) join other social media platforms later.

Focusing your time and attention on one platform will make you more effective. If you have an hour a day for social media, then you are going to see better results focusing that whole hour on one platform rather than 15 minutes on Twitter, 15 on Facebook, 15 on Instagram, and 15 on Pinterest. When you do this you will be creating more impact on that platform. When it comes to social media think less but better. Everyone is so inundated with social media, if you can create one really great post or leave one really thoughtful comment, they are more likely to notice what you are doing.

Which platform to choose?

Start by thinking about how you use them. Here’s a brief overview of each to give you an idea of who is using each platform and what they’re posting. Think about what types of content you want to create and what type of audience you are looking for. Do any of these platforms make more sense than the others?

Facebook
Facebook is the king of social media and is a great place for community. People don’t like to be sold to on Facebook and most of the time are there to connect with family and friends. I would start here if you want to start a private community of exclusive members.

Twitter
Twitter is best used for short, to-the-point text. It’s a great place for news and status updates. The audience here is looking for the most current data within a universe of information or to have conversations with like-minded people. I would start here if you have great written content to share or timely information that your customers are looking for.

Instagram
Instagram is the new print magazine. The platform is heavily image and video driven and has the fastest growing audience base. I see Instagram being used effectively by a wide variety of business, because it is the most effective at showing an overall brand identity. I would start here if you have great images or want to share your brand’s story through images and videos.

Pinterest
Pinterest is for shopping! People go to Pinterest to buy products and get product recommendations. The platform focuses on visual content and giving recommendations based on what you’ve already been pinning. The audience skews heavily towards the female demographic. I would start here if I was a product based business.

Its hard to start a new profile and the benefit here is that you only have to start from the very beginning once. When you do decide to expand to other platforms, you already have an audience that you can leverage and ask to follow you on that other platform. I think its really important to offer different types of information on different platforms, rolling out social media in a thoughtful way will give you more time to think about how you can uniquely serve your Facebook audience versus your Twitter or Instagram audiences. If you can articulate the benefit of your new social media platform to your current followers, they will likely go over to that other platform and follow you there.

Have a well thought out strategy

I (among countless others) have wasted so much time by diving right into a social media channel without any clue on how to use it. Its important to take a moment and create a strategy – an hour of planning can save 10 hours of time.

Start by doing your due diligence. See how other people are using the channel effectively. Search for blog posts with tips and tricks. Collect ideas that you could implement on that channel.

Here are a few questions to get your strategy planning going:
Who do you want to connect with?
What are you trying to sell?
What abstract ideas or emotions are associated with your product?
What types of content are getting the most engagement?
What types of content sound the most fun to create?

My personal recommendation. I love Instagram. It’s my favorite because a photo is worth a thousand words, right?! (And you don’t have to scroll through all those political posts on Facebook in between your photos.)