Social Media Use: When to have Multiple Channels

Social media use is a tricky topic when it comes to businesses. What I would suggest to one company wouldn’t be wise for another. Bigger companies like Coca-Cola and Disney have the manpower and the overall capacity to handle multiple channels at once, while my non-profit can barely manage multiple Facebook pages. The size of the company plays a huge role in whether they can even maintain multiple channels effectively. While we can barely handle our Facebook pages, we do have two Twitter accounts and an Instagram account. These are not being utilized for their full potential, which makes us look bad overall.

SIZE OF COMPANY

The size of the company is a key factor in determining the company approach when it comes to social media. Being able to reach as many customers as possible means having the manpower to do so. If a company can afford to have a team that is dedicated to managing multiple social media accounts, they should do so. Social media is more than just posting a few times and closing it for the day. Companies have to answer comments on posts, respond to tweets, answer messages on all platforms, and do all of this in a timely manner. My non-profit can’t handle that kind of care on its social media. We have three people who check the Facebook messages that we get in case we get a message after hours that needs to be answered. Adding Instagram and Twitter only means that we would have to increase the amount of time that we spend monitoring those platforms.

I handle all digital marketing for my company, so I wouldn’t have time to monitor multiple platforms. This would have to be a new position for our company, since that would involve five Facebook pages (two schools within our building, our Federation, our JCC page, and the newspaper that is run out of the building), Instagram accounts for at least three accounts, and three more Twitter profiles. This would create a new position in the marketing department to handle all of these platforms. Bigger companies who have the capacity to manage this kind of online presence would be better suited for multiple channels.

WHAT YOU’RE SELLING

Companies need to analyze what would be the most important to them if they had to choose one social media platform. That page should grow in followers and gain some brand recognition before branching out to more platforms.

On the opposite end of things, companies can’t always know with 100% certainty that their entire audience is on one social media platform. “Unless you know without a doubt that your audience uses one social media website, you can’t depend on reaching your entire target demographic by just joining one networking site.” (Hovde, 2017) This means that the companies shouldn’t use one platform as their primary channel if they want to reach as many people as possible. Again, this can be tied back to larger companies who are able to handle this kind of traffic.

Even though companies can’t be completely sure that they are reaching their audience on one platform, they can do research into what platform most of their audience uses. If the company has the manpower to support one platform, they should spend time finding out which one will work best for them.

DECIDING WHICH PLATFORM TO USE

Deciding which platform to use means looking at every option. If a company can only start with one social media platform, they should do some research into what their userbase uses the most. If that information isn’t possible, the best bet to start with would be Facebook. As of December 2015, Facebook had 1.59 billion users. Since there are over a billion users, it would make the most sense to start with Facebook. Instagram followed Facebook with 400 million users, so this would be a smart second option. (Adweek.com, 2016)

If the company’s plan is to focus most of their efforts on one platform, Facebook is still my choice. Facebook ads can show in an Instagram feed without having an Instagram account, so the company could potentially show up on multiple platforms without having to manage another account. That, along with the high volume of users, makes Facebook the most ideal choice to focus most of their efforts.

CONTENT VS CONVERSATION

When it comes to the debate on content vs conversation, I tend to agree that conversation is king. Users are constantly sending out little bits of information, but the fun really doesn’t start unless those morsels are taken up by someone else and responded to, passed along, or even “liked”. And for that to happen, there has to be a conversation starter somewhere in the message.” (Novak, 2010) With that being said, the conversation has to get started for these companies. For most, that is where social media comes in.

Content is often the place where the conversation starts, and they’re not that different. Greenberg states that “Developing content is not for the faint of heart. You have to constantly develop new ideas and think of new ways to keep your readers or viewers engaged.” (Greenberg, 2009) This content can often be the conversation starter. Content doesn’t have to be boring or straight-forward. The content can be surrounded by appealing copy which starts the conversation. Content and conversation work together to generate buzz and get customers interested.

Different social media platforms can do different things for brands. Facebook can provide a great place for the conversation to start. While Twitter is more limited by character limits, conversation can be started there as well. Depending on what the business wants the conversation to be really makes the decision on what platform to use. If they’re looking for customer experiences with the brand, Facebook might be a better option. If they’re looking for a poll on a possible product, Twitter might work better for them. Each social media platform has different strengths, and it really depends on what the conversation is.

The factors listed above are all dependent on the company’s ability to handle multiple social media platforms. If they’re able to handle more than one platform, the focus should be spread around as equally as possible. If that isn’t possible, the company should have a strong presence on one platform that represents the consumer base they’re targeting. This platform, because of the sheer number of users, would most likely be Facebook. In an ideal world, all companies would be able to maintain multiple social media platforms to reach as many people as possible. Since this isn’t an option for some groups, focusing on building up one platform is a great place to start the conversation.

References

Adweek.com. (2016). Here's How Many People Are on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Other Big Social Networks. [online] Available at: http://www.adweek.com/digital/heres-how-many-people-are-on-facebook-instagram-twitter-other-big-social-networks/ [Accessed 29 Jan. 2018].

Greenberg, M. (2009). Content is King of Social Marketing. [online] Multichannel Merchant. Available at: http://multichannelmerchant.com/marketing/content-is-king-of-social-marketing/ [Accessed 29 Jan. 2018].

Hovde, K. (2017). Multiple Social Media Accounts is a Must. [online] business.com. Available at: https://www.business.com/articles/why-every-business-should-be-using-multiple-social-media-accounts/ [Accessed 29 Jan. 2018].

Novak, C. (2010). Why Conversation, not Content, is King. [online] Social Media Today. Available at: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/why-conversation-not-content-is-king/480976/ [Accessed 29 Jan. 2018].