There’s a social network for everything these days, but do we really need so many options?
Today’s question is from Jenny McFadden, from Sydney, Australia. Jenny’s Question is:
What social media networks should I focus on to get the most traction for my business. There are so many, what are the best ones?
There are hundreds of social media networks and by no means should you even be attempting to use them all. There are also social media networks that are more relevant for some businesses than others. There’s no hard rule on how many you should use, and which ones you should use.
I’m going to give you my guidelines to help you figure out which ones you should be using for your business.
Watch this week’s Make It Work Fridays: Open Office Hours now and leave a comment! 🙂
Video Transcription
Hello and welcome to make it work Fridays open office hours, my name is Sara Nguyen from Socialmediarocketeer.com and in make it work Fridays I take you burning social media questions and answer them to help you rocket your reach and boost your brand profitably using social media.
Now todays question comes from Jenny McFadden from Sydney Australia and Jenny’s question is what social media networks should I focus on, there are so many out there, where do I start so I can get the most traction? And there are hundreds of social media networks out there and I would never recommend that you attempt to use them all, particularly not at the same time, you may find that extremely overwhelming, I would rather see you focus on a few social media networks and do them really well.
As opposed to attempting to use 10, 20, 30, 50 a hundred of them and do them really poorly, so in response to your question Jenny I am going to talk about the top few social media networks that I recommend you use and I am basing this off my experience and experience that I have in running social media for clients, and these social media platforms enable us to get a lot of traction enable us to build our brand quite quickly and efficiently, because at the end of the day we need to start making money from our social media marketing efforts.
So the first of the social media networks that I highly recommend whether you love it or you hate it is Facebook, Facebook is extremely important as a consideration in the social media networks that you use, in particular Facebook ads now you need to have a Facebook fan page in order to run Facebook ads but what Facebook ads allows us to do is it allows us to extend the reach of our content so that the content that we post, now if we didn’t use Facebook ads what we tend to see is we would post content and depending on especially if your just getting started you will see that the reach of your posts is quite low in order to maximize your efforts you want to get your content out there to as many people as many relevant people as possible.
And Facebook ads allows us to do this, so Facebook is definitely a consideration that I would recommend you use in your business and to put it in there particularly if you’re getting started to grow your business quite quickly and get your content seen by many people, so the second of the social media networks that I recommend is Google plus now some people who use Google plus become lovers of Google plus in exclusion to Facebook, I don’t believe in using any social media network in isolation to another, I believe in picking the best pieces of the different social media networks and using them all to our advantage.
Now Google plus is a important consideration because it offers Google hangouts, Google hangouts is a free broadcast offering that Google plus as so if you’ve seen some of my videos I do a lot of Google Hangouts and what it enables me to do is to broadcast via video for free, it’s a great way of creating content it’s a great way of getting my content out there to more people and its free and that’s a great thing to have particularly when your just getting started with business, and it’s really quite easy to do, don’t let the video component of it for you, so that second recommendation is Google plus especially the Google Hangouts component of Google plus.
Now the third social media network that I recommend you use and it’s kind of tied in to the second one is YouTube now you’re watching this video which is on YouTube and I think that kind of says a lot YouTube enables you to upload your own content upload your own videos now your Google Hangouts also end up on your YouTube channel, I recommend having a blend of videos that you upload yourself and also to use Google Hangouts as well, video is an extremely powerful way of getting people to know like and trust you, it’s probably the fastest way that people get to know you because they see you they hear you and they can see the way and there is no real hiding behind video, what you see is kind of what you get most of the time.
The other thing with YouTube which is really important when your just getting started is that YouTube has an advertising option as well, so you can drive more traffic drive more eyeballs to your YouTube videos as well as to your website using YouTube ads, so it’s definitely an important consideration because of those factors, the ability to promote yourself using video and the ability to advertise, there is a bit of a theme here as you may see with the social media networks that I recommend, they are the ones that allow you to advertise and the ones that allow you to create content quite easily and broadcast.
Now the fourth Facebook, Google plus, YouTube now the fourth commendation that I have is Twitter I wouldn’t have recommended Twitter three four years ago but the reason that I recommend Twitter now is because they have an advertising option, with Twitter you can promote your Tweets and it’s all about extending that reach, it’s all about getting your content in front of as many relevant people as possible, and through Twitter advertising you can do that.
So there you have it there are my top four recommendations on the social media networks that you should get started with, Facebook, Google plus particularly with Google Hangouts, YouTube and Twitter.
Now I want to have a quick chat to you about the social media networks because I don’t really want for you to think about them in isolation, in order for you to get the most traction from your social media efforts, it’s important to be strategic and it’s important to be deliberate with your social media effort, and instead of looking at these different social media platforms in isolation, if you look at it as a whole as a social media platform as a social platform to get your message across you will find that you get a lot more traction this way as opposed to looking at the different platforms in isolation.
Now if you need help with your social platform development click on the link in the description below this video and fill in the form and we can have a chat about how we can work together with that, if you are not on my list also if you click on the link below this video you can sign up so that you can ask a question in the segments for make it work Fridays, if you are on my list watch out for the Emails and I will continue to send out the links so that you can send through questions.
So I hope you have enjoyed this edition of make it work Fridays and I will see you in the next one
Bye!
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I think I tend to stick with the same three – Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. They are comfortable to me, so I go with what I know.
I think it’s important to stick with the ones that you’re comfortable using and happy to maintain 🙂 Thanks for the comment @robinrue:disqus 🙂
Facebook is really great. I’m using it for ads (leads generation) and also engaging with followers. The fan page and community pages are critical to my everyday strategies for marketing.
I believe Facebook is a really powerful social media network too, even tho people seem to hate on it! I’m glad you are seeing good results with it @rochkirstinsantos:disqus ! Thanks for the comment 🙂
Since creating a FB and Google + page, Twitter and Pinterest accounts for our website, we’ve realised just how much work social media involves. It certainly seems to help though, so we don’t mind too much.
You could look to outsource the management with a virtual assistant or an agency to help lessen the workload, glad that you don’t mind too much 🙂 Thanks for the comment.
I always hear my sister talk about using Facebook and Twitter for her blog. They all sound like great options.
@catherinesargent:disqus, Twitter and Facebook are very powerful marketing tools that both have affordable advertising options as well. 🙂 Thanks for the comment.
Managing Social Media accounts is a tedious tasks.. But initially, you need to know which one works for your business.
Yes @grasyah:disqus, it certainly be very time consuming. But there are great ways to manage it such as outsourcing. 🙂 Thanks for the comment.
I manage to take care of all my social networks especially the ones I’m comfortable. I take notes, and I have a tweet list that I do almost everyday. (my memory is poor these days – therefore I take notes it really helps). I really don’t have a business except for my blog, and I guess that is my business. hehee
Well done @mariemoody:disqus! 🙂
I’m focus more on facebook, twitter and Instagram. Most of my networks are in the three social media network.
It’s always good to use networks where your audience are. Facebook, twitter and instagram are very powerful networks. 🙂
I concentrate on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and G+, and in that order. I get more interaction from FB and Twitter, though.
It wasn’t until yesterday that I noticed Twitter had a promoted tweets option. I’m not sure I’ll use it though as I don’t use FB’s paid options either.
Our focus is Twitter, Facebook, and Google.
Those are great recommendations! I agree that Twitter, Facebook, GooglePlus and youtube are important although I also use Pinterest.
Thanks for the tips, I am new at blogging!
I use all the social media accounts you mentioned here like Facebook, Twitter, GooglePlus and Pinterest. I think the latter is one that I need to focus on building the number of followers.
I mostly use Facebok Twitter, and Instagram. Although I love to use Pinterest to search for ideas and projects for myself I rarely use it to promote my own ides.
for me, my top three most influential social networks for brands would be facebook, instagram, and twitter respectively! thanks for this informative post! 🙂
Thanks for the tips, I use all the Social Media accounts you’ve mentioned. What I always use are Facebook, Twitter, G+, Pinterest, Stumble Upon, Reddit, Digg, Delicious. 🙂