How can you tailor your communication style to different social media platforms?

Its all about the platform's primary purpose and audience (and by purpose I mean what you as an individual use that platform for) For example, for me LinkedIn has become my number one personal branding platform. As a Coach and as someone that wants to be perceived as polished, I try to maintain an informative, and business-oriented tone, focusing on industry insights and thought leadership. For Twitter, where brevity is key, I keep it concise yet engaging with a bit of humor. I can't take the same to Instagram though, because it relies heavliy on visual content, accompanied by concise and engaging captions. So over there, I try and infuse my personality into lifestyle content but not forgetting the core of my personal brand.

The good news for social teams is that the value of social data is being recognized and understood by executive leadership. Clear goals of how your social strategy, hopefully consumer/customer-centered, will impact your marketing and business goals will help provide the most informative data. Leveraging tools like listening to really understand your key audiences, and the conversations they're having real-time, will inform how you can then generate messaging and content catered to specific channels that speak directly, not broadly, to the audiences you're trying to reach—and "everyone" is no longer a viable answer (if it ever was) for a target audience on social.

Your voice should be constant. Your tone should be modulated based on the audience and topic. What’s important is to connect with how the audience shows up on the platform, not what the platform is intending to be. The audience shapes what happens there, so be sure to analyze your audience’s tone and what they react to.

In my own opinion it is ideal to choose your content format based on what you enjoy doing. We all have areas of strength and weakness, acknowledge this and utilize your strength then take time out to work on your weaknesses. I started out with bit-sized written content that was easy to understand until I got comfortable making videos. Don’t try out what you are uncomfortable doing, your audience will figure it out and that might affect how they engage with your content.

Keep consistent to what you stand for and adjust accordingly. Create, publish, learn, repeat. As long as you show up in accordance with your purpose and values, you’ll find your style and what works for you.