The most expensive mistake a digital marketeer can make - what social media platforms should your brand use?

The question I get asked most is: on what social media should I create content for my brand? And most of the advice out there would say: every single one! In itself it’s not bad advice, but every brand has budget and time limitations, making it a bad choice to focus on everything if you can’t do it right. And if you don’t do it right, you are throwing away up to 75% of your time and budget on the wrong channels that won’t deliver you any, if at all, results.

So do you follow the trend? Currently that is short-form video’s, but two years ago it was live video, and possibly next year it might be Facebook groups (which are making a comeback by the way, but more on that in a later article).

Or do you follow the unlimited posts on tips, tricks, hacks, analysis and strategies to grow our brands online? Because through that non-stop wave of random (non-)advice, you can get lost in trying to do it all.

So this is not an article on how to grow your social media following, or a listicle discussing the different tools to use, or an e-book plugging article trying to get you to download some strategy guide on how to improve your ROAS.

No.

In this article I will discuss the current state of the different social media channels and giving you a sense of which to focus on to meet your goals. This means, discussing:

• How different social media channels compare.
• What social media channels are best to use for different type of brands and goals.
• And how you can optimize for those goals on every channel.

And at the end, you might have actually learned something that can help you grow your brands’ reach and performance, by focussing on the channel that is best suited to your (brands’) ambitions.

To be clear: there is not one channel that is best for all, different channels offer different benefits. So the question is not: what is the best social media to create content on? It’s: what social media should my brand focus on to deliver the most results?

Social media comparison infographic 2022

To compare anything, it’s important to define on what basis you make the comparison. So I focused on the criteria that most specifically define the use case for specific types of brands:

• Reach
• How many users does the platform attract and how easily can you as a brand get discovered by the users on the platform? In short: how easily can you get in front of as many eyeballs as possible?
• Paid options that the platform offers
• How mature are the advertising tools available for brands to identify, utilize and target specific audiences and content options? And how comprehensive are the tools available to brands? In short: how easy is it to execute and scale (profitable) advertising strategies?
• Content that is uploaded
• Does the platform attract a certain type of user that uses the platform for a specific type of content; for instance are users looking for educational video’s or entertaining texts? And does the platform prioritize any type of content specifically in their feeds? In short: what content has the highest priority within the platform and its’ userbase to gain the most engagement?
• Additional functionalities
• Does the social media platform offer additional benefits, like a high-end search engine for users to discover niche content or e-commerce tooling to help creators sell more easily?
• Focus of the platform itself
• Does the platform invest in a specific type of audience or segment? In short: do certain creators/users receive a larger than average return because of the platforms’ priorities?

If you analyze all these metrics for each channel, you get an infographic that details exactly how each channel is performing on each of these metrics.

Which is exactly what I did.

So here is how I see all channels performing, based on the data we see at our agency and the current trends in the market.

Clear, now what social media platform should I focus on?

Having this infographic is nice, but it doesn’t stop there.. Because there are a so many different brands and businesses, the question remains unanswered: what platform is worthy of your time and money?

The answer is very simple: it depends. It depends on what you want to achieve as a result for your efforts, and what type of business or brand you have:

• E-commerce: Are you looking to grow your webshop?
• Content creator brand: Are you looking to grow your community of dedicated fans? Or looking to earn more from the content that you’re creating?
• Growing brand: Are you looking to increase the awareness your brand gets?
• Strengthen brand: Are you looking to improve your trustworthiness and referrals?
• Lead generation: Are you looking to get more leads for your business?

These are a handful of options, but there are many more scenario’s that exist. So start by clarifying what type of brand, business and ambitions you have.

Now let’s look at each of these scenario’s in terms of the platforms.

What social media should I use to grow my webshop in 2022?

To grow the sales of your webshop you need 2 things:

• Get as much people to get to know your brand
• Identify and convert the most profitable of those people you’ve reached

This means you need a strong advertising channel and a strong discoverability channel

That means you need Facebook as the main advertising channel, as its’ superior on targeting options, deliverability to large audiences and a relative low cost when using it with high quality creatives.

Small side-note: Pinterest as a channel does offer much higher advertising performance value, but only to a limited number of markets, like: Food & Drinks, Interiors, Fashion and DIY. So if you’re active in those markets, emphasize Pinterest over Facebook. But as a general rule: Facebook > Pinterest.

Then you need to combine this advertising channel with a high engaging and discoverable channel, which at the moment are the short form video channels: Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and TikTok. The best way is to start with short form video is to see what works on one channel and then start scaling the content production across multiple channels. There are many articles written about UGC and short form video strategies, so spend an afternoon on Googling those insights and you’ll be ready to go!

What social media should I use to grow my community and earn more from my content in 2022?

To strengthen your community and make it possible for you to earn more as a content creator you need to focus on three things:

• Find and grow your fanbase, which means a high reach and discoverability
• Be present on a platform that fits best with the type of content that you create, both in terms of the type of content (informative, entertaining or inspirational) as well as the format (text, image, video).
• If at all possible, find a platform that offers additional features and ways to earn for the creators on their platform

Looking at the graph, this means that YouTube, TikTok and LinkedIn are the most logical choices to grow your content creator fanbase. These channels offer many tools, incentives and are rewarding towards creators while also offering a high reach and discoverability to the content on their platforms. Depending on the type of content you’re looking to produce, you can pick the platform that fits best.

Some honerable mentions in this category are Pinterest and Twitter; these platforms offer a high degree of qualitative audience growth and discoverability, but are very limited in their incentives and creator support. Which is the reason why these are only useful to a more limited set of creators.

How can I get more brand awareness online?

Awareness is an uphill battle and is usually executed wrong, because of combined focus on awareness and sales for example. So the key here is to seperate awareness efforts with other goals for your brand.

So if you want to focus on awareness specifically, the goal is to get as many eyeballs for your brand as possible, for the lowest investment. That means focusing on channels where there is a high demand for content with a (still) limited supply. Right now the channels that offer this imbalance are the short form video channels: Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts & TikTok.

Because there is still such a high demand for content, it’s very easy to get many views. The key question here is:

• What do you want people to view?
• How will they become aware of your brand?
• What is it that you need them to remember about your brand?

Focus on those questions and start leveraging these platforms to skyrocket your brands’ awareness.

How can scale my brand through growth marketing strategies?

If your brand already has some scale online and you’re looking to grow it further, the key focus should shift from “awareness” to “trustworthiness and referrals”. Because that compounds the investments of your brands’ awareness into sales.

Gaining trust online is paradoxically easy and difficult at the same time, because consumers are getting smarter in identifying ads but are simultanuously less understanding of the effects of user generated content.

Most trust is built by:

• Offering more trust in the product, by expert reviews
• Understanding the product better, by unboxing or experience videos
• Having recommendations or testimonials from similar people.

So your goal is to make sure you work on a channel with high quality review opportunities and user generated content offers. In 2022 and 2023 the channels that offer the best performance for those type of videos are YouTube for the expert reviews, TikTok for the user generated content and experience videos and Pinterest for recommendations.

How can I get more leads for my business with social media?

If you’re a business or a brand that requires leads to grow, it’s important to distinguish the context in which people are inclined to become a lead. For instance, some businesses offer leisure products, so their strategy can be executed in a more leisure context, whereas business propositions have no place in the “regular” social media context.

So for the latter, focusing on a business focused platform like LinkedIn is key.

But every lead generating business should have a strategy that is strengthened by a strong advertising and knowledge platform like Facebook and/or YouTube. Because in the end, every product needs a certain level of trust, recognition and awareness. That means you have to build content that explains your product and creates trust while at the same time converting your potential leads in a contextual relevant channel.

TLDR; What social media channels should you focus on with your brand?

• Don’t go out of your way to be present with your brand on all channels, but be picky on where to focus all your time and efforts to grow your brand.
• Understand the goal of your strategy before deciding on what channels to be present.
• I personally advice our team to use the 80/20 rule: focus on the channel(s) that are able to drive 80% of the results with “just” 20% of the efforts. Once you have that up and running it is time to expand your view.
• You need to learn to crawl before you start running. And it’s much easier to be consistent with your strategy on just 2 channels instead of 6.
• Don’t get caught up in trying to do the newest trend, focus on where you know you can leverage your brands’ audience to the fullest.

So… are you able to limit your focus and double down on the strategy and channels that will deliver actual results for your brand?