Choosing the Right Social Media for Your Business

One of the biggest stressors my clients come to me with is social media. Mainly, trying to figure out how people seem to effortlessly post content that gets a ton of likes and comments while simultaneously running their business and being a present parent.

I mean, how do these people have the time to put into becoming “influencers” and still doing sales, school drop offs/pickups, meal planning, and actually executing on those sales?

Oh yeah, and let’s not forget: do they even sleep?

If these questions sound familiar, keep reading because I’ve got your two-step solution to executing social media for profitability without losing your sanity.

First, let me answer the questions above:

1. Their entire job description is to create engaging content and consistently post on social media. It’s that simple. They have the time because being an influencer IS their business. So the same way you balance running your business with being a parent, they do the same only their business IS social media.

This means they spend anywhere from 20 to 60+ hours a week on social media. Seems like a lot right? Who has time for that? Well, they do because again: it’s their job!

Takeaway: don’t compare someone’s full time job to one-arm of your multi-prong marketing strategy. (more on that in a minute.) These two things are not the same.

2. Yes they sleep. They’re human just like you and me. Not cyborgs after all.

We all know that what we see on social media is only half the story, and yet it’s still something that can easily stress us out. Seeing somebody else with perfect photos that appear to be effortlessly created are usually not effortless at all.

It’s usually multiple takes, reworking the lighting, retouching, and 10 different angles, plus more than one draft of the caption before it goes live. Yes it may come across as effortless, but it’s not.

So rather than feel defeated because what you create never seems to measure up, give props to those who spend that amount of time and energy to provide something for the rest of us to consume.

Choosing What’s Right For You

Now onto the solution YOU can implement as far as social media. When it comes to choosing which platform is right for your business, i see it as a pretty simple two-step process:

1. Choose the platform where YOUR prospects and clients spend their time.

This may not be where Fortune 500 businesses spend their time or where multi-million dollar marketing experts recommend you be, but their clients are not necessarily your clients. And let’s be real, they usually have a presence on all the platforms (and the team to run it) and recommend that others do in order to be successful.

Well, that’s great if you have a team of 20+ people in the marketing department alone, but we all know that isn’t realistic for solopreneurs or small businesses. So rather than try to be what you are not, fully embrace what you bring to the table for your clients and show it to them.

Determine where your ideal client spends their time, either professionally or socially, and show up there. It may be Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok or some combination of these. Whether it’s one or three, go where they spend their time and showcase who you are and what you do.

2. Choose the platforms where you will actually enjoy spending your time.

Yes you may have determined that your clients are on Twitter all day, but if you absolutely hate Twitter then you’re not going to be motivated to create the content to share. This means you’re probably going to experience way too much stress about what to post and when to post it that you end up doing nothing at all. That’s not exactly helpful to your marketing strategy is it?

Instead, figure out if one of the other platforms they’re on gets you more excited and show up there like a boss!

The whole point of social media is to be social. If you’re not going to post and engage, then you’re really missing the point of doing it at all and therefore the stress is just not needed. You have enough of that right?

Let me say that again:

Social media should not stress you out. If it does, put the phone down and walk the hell away!

Social media is an absolutely wonderful way to build your network, create brand advocates, and give prospective clients and referral partners a peek into your everyday life and business operations. We LOVE to see behind the curtain.

However, it is not the only way nor should it be the solo direction you rely on for building a business and network of brand ambassadors. Social media is just one aspect of a comprehensive marketing strategy. Email marketing, public relations, client relations and content marketing are the other parts.

I’m not saying you need to do all of them right now and every single day, but I am saying you need to diversify your efforts for lead generation and public relations beyond social platforms. Just like you wouldn’t put all of your money into a single stock investment, you don’t want to put all of your time, energy and lead funnel into a single social media platform or even social media itself.

After all, imagine all of social media went away tomorrow. Would your business take a hit or completely crumble? If either of these things is the case, then we need to diversify your marketing efforts.

That doesn’t mean you have to do ALL the things every day, it means you need to do a variety of things across a series of days/weeks. When you diversify your financial portfolio, your security & wealth increases. When you diversify your marketing portfolio, your business success increases and stress decreases.

Now go have some FUN on social media!