Should my company be on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, etc.?

"Should my company be on social media?"

This is a huge question that is bugging a lot of traditional companies.

The answer is simple.

Are your customers on these platforms?

It's funny because many businesses don't ask this and rush to each new platform like chickens with their heads cut off. This leads to a lot of spinning of their wheels and wasted time and energy.

Take Snapchat for instance. Snapchat's demographic is dominated by young individuals between 18 to 24. If you're selling to retired citizens, it's such a waste of time going on there.

I have seen businesses simply send out emails and blog posts persuading people to follow them on Snapchat, not knowing that what they are also doing is persuading 99% of their audience to use Snapchat for the first time.

You're crazy to try and convince 60 year old's who don't enjoy Snapchat to spend their time on there to follow your company.

There's plenty of free demographic information online about the general age, ethnicity, and race of who are on each social media platform.

Yes, demographics change over time. But as a social media nerd, I have seen a ton of social media apps and platforms you've never heard of rise and fall.. And a ton of people in the 30 to 50 year age range jump onto every new bandwagon.

Why are the 30 to 50 year old's the ones who follow these trends? There's a huge influx of people from traditional markets who really don't have a clue and are quite confused or concerned. When you see more adults on a new platform than kids, that's not always a bad thing. But when most of them are people subscribed to every social media update and trying to keep up with the trends, you know that it's more about hysteria than actual real value.

Social media apps that have had their hysteria over the years include: Blab.im, Peach, Shots, Yik Yak, Beme, Periscope, Meercat, Medium.com, Quora, and more. Some have been successful, others are on the decline.

Personally, I'm sick of this constant shuffle. I'm pretty plugged in to the millenial world online being a millenial myself. I'm also quite up to date with thousands of Youtubers, Facebook pages, and Instagram accounts that dominate the web with millions of followers on each.

What's interesting is that the millienials who are doing the best on social media usually aren't concerned with "the next new thing."

Pewdiepie has 45+ million subscribers on Youtube and admitted to not ever using Tumblr in a recent video. He has a Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, but that's it. He's not really active on much other than Youtube and occasionally Facebook.

There are thousands of other examples of this when you look at the very best: Markiplier, Smosh, Nigahiga, Jenna Marbles, etc.

What's really surprising and funny is that when you look at the most followed, they admit crazy stuff. They rarely or if ever read the social media advice websites like Social Media Examiner or GaryVaynerchuk.com. Some of them barely or never watch other Youtube videos by other content creators!

Yet there are almost daily articles and content being shot out about social media. Not saying that there isn't good advice out there, but there seems to be diminishing returns in terms of advice as the noise increases.

So what should you do?

Find out where your audience lies and drill down on 1 or 2 of the biggest social media platforms they are usually always on.

Find out what type of content they prefer and use that in your decision as well (do they like audio, video, text, or photos?)

I suggest only the big platforms, as they are most likely to endure and most of your audience is already on there.

These include:

Facebook - Most of the world is on here. It's incredibly active. Almost every age group or interest is represented.

Instagram - Not every topic is on here, but it caters very well to visually appealing photos.

Youtube - #2 Video Search Engine in the world. Most topics are on here. However, creating the right videos requires a creative mind and an understanding of what formats work best on Youtube.

Twitter - Probably the worst of the four right now. But it's still very relevant. People are still active on there.

Snapchat - Highly engaged audience on here. However, only used by a very specific, young demographic for the most part.

LinkedIn - More of a professional setting. Very little engagement and return for B2C. Better for B2B businesses.

Blogs - Great for text based content and Google search traffic.

Podcasts - iTunes is its own search directory. Great for people who prefer listening to just audio.

Conclusion

It's best to figure out where your audience is online and master 1 or 2 platforms that they prefer.

There are many subtle in's and out's of each platform that can be missed if you try to do them all at once.

Trying to do too many platforms at once spreads yourself too thin and gives you a surface level understanding of each of them. Believe me, I learned this from experience.

Most businesses, even big ones, have yet to understand this and have a very generalized "manage all these social media platforms for me" approach.

By really figuring out where your demographic is active and going from there, you are already thinking one level higher than most of your competitors.

Frank Body is a great example of a company that did just this to succeed. They drilled down and mastered just Instagram realizing that their female audience loved visual photos on Instagram. They knew everything about the platform, including the best times to post. They would wake up early in the morning to post at the right time. This resulted in over 20 million dollars in sales in their second year, using Instagram as the major traffic driver.

I know of numerous other businesses that have done this and received incredible success. 2 of the major ones that come to mind are food bloggers who use Pinterest's unique platform to drive massive food-related traffic to their blog, and girls on Instagram and Youtube building multi-million dollar hair extension businesses.

Can you build out onto other platforms later on? Yes, but as I've seen, it's much more efficient and easier to dominate on one platform and grow a following, then build out later.

Pewdiepie has 2 million followers on Instagram because he already dominated on Youtube and casually mentioned his Instagram. Nash Grier has millions of subscribers on Youtube because he leveraged his millions of followers from Vine.

What's the #1 platform you will dominate and why?