In the evolving world of digital marketing, the rise of social media has been meteoric!
The past two decades have seen an explosion in the number of platforms and today there’s more choice than ever before! For individuals, this abundance means that there’s a vast variety of ways to share their story, while for businesses it provides a multitude of ways to connect with their target audience in a more personal way.
The Fear of Missing Out (FOMO)
While some may see the abundance of platforms as a dream come true for digital marketers, it does present some challenges. Having so many platforms available often creates “FOMO” or the “Fear of Missing Out”.
According to Carl Garner-Watts, lead content marketer for exhibition stand contractors Quadrant2Design “For individuals, FOMO is the fear of not being involved in the most up-to-date conversations, while for businesses it is the fear of missing out on opportunities to connect with their customers and potential customers. FOMO is one of the main reasons why both businesses and individuals maintain profiles on multiple platforms at the same time.”
For businesses, maintaining multiple profiles as part of their social media strategy offers both benefits and challenges.
Benefits:
1. Varied Reach:
Being on multiple platforms increases brands’ potential reach, providing an opportunity to connect with diverse audiences of varying demographics.
It allows for targeting different marketing messages at different segments of an audience, without creating obvious and confusing inconsistencies. Businesses can use their LinkedIn account to professionally network with suppliers and partners while simultaneously using Facebook, Instagram or TikTok to connect with customers in a more jovial tone.
2. Future-proofing:
A diverse online presence provides opportunities to quickly adapt to changing trends and consumer preferences.
What’s popular today may not be tomorrow and if all social media efforts have been focused on a single platform, even a slight decline in popularity could lead to a substantial loss in audience numbers.
Having a presence on several platforms can future-proof social media strategy and allow businesses to be proactive rather than reactive.
3. Increased Discoverability:
Having a branded presence on multiple platforms can work wonders for brand awareness and discoverability.
Different users often prefer different platforms, so brands are more likely to come into contact with their target audience if they appear in many places.
4. Increased functionality
Different platforms offer diverse functionalities and focus on different types of content. X is based primarily on short-form copy, Instagram focuses on imagery and YouTube is primarily known for video content.
Being on multiple platforms allows businesses to experiment with different functionalities and content types to find what works best for their audience. It also makes it more likely that individual audience members will be exposed to the brand through their preferred types of content.
Challenges
1. Drain on resources
Maintaining a presence on multiple platforms demands a significant investment of time, effort and resources. Each platform requires unique content, tailored strategies and consistent engagement to be successful which, for smaller businesses with limited marketing budgets, can sometimes prove overwhelming.
Overstretching a small team will inevitably lead some platforms to be plagued by repetition, uninspiring content, or both. Many businesses will simply copy and paste the same content across all of their platforms but this strategy can appear somewhat low-budget and make the business look low-budget as a result.
2. Audience Fragmentation
Different social media platforms attract different audience demographics. This means that targeting the wrong platform could mean not reaching your target audience at all – a complete waste of time, effort and resources.
Without a large and well-financed digital marketing team, businesses will likely not have the resources to properly optimise every platform, which could result in certain audience segments being neglected.
3. Message dilution
Different social media platforms require different tones of voice, which means that being on too many platforms could create some inconsistencies.
There will inevitably be users who follow brands across multiple platforms and if they experience noticeably different brand personalities from one platform to the next, this could lead to confusion around the brand’s identity, which can hinder customer relationships.
Finding the Right Balance
The key to successful social media marketing in a world with so many platforms ultimately lies in finding the right balance. There are several steps to finding this balance:
1. Adapt to Your Audience:
Knowing your audience means knowing their preferences and behaviours and concentrating your messages on the platforms where they are most likely to engage.
2. Quality over Quantity:
Spreading marketing efforts too thin will often result in poor results, as everything is done to an acceptable standard rather than a good standard.
Instead of posting on every possible platform, concentrate on a select few where you can deliver high-quality content and engagement directly to your target audience.
3. Consistency Is Key:
Avoid brand dilution by maintaining a consistent brand voice across all platforms. The words you say can differ but your tone and character must remain a constant.
4. Monitor and Adapt:
To ensure future success, continuously monitor your performance and use results to inform future activity. If a platform isn’t delivering results, be prepared to reallocate your resources and, if a particular strategy isn’t working, perhaps you need to change things up.
5. Experiment Thoughtfully:
Don’t blindly jump on every trendy new platform without a long-term content strategy. A barren profile is worse than no profile, so if you cannot create a long-term plan for a particular platform, perhaps give it a miss.
Conclusion
The proliferation of social media platforms offers both opportunities and challenges for businesses and must be navigated carefully. Navigating the world of multi-channel digital marketing is all about knowing when enough is enough.
While it may be tempting to be everywhere at all times, an overly scattered approach to social media can dilute the impact of your marketing efforts. Ultimately your perception of “too many” social media platforms will depend on your business objectives as well as the size and resources of your marketing department.
For many businesses, the resource drain, message dilution and audience fragmentation of an extreme multi-channel strategy is just too much. For others, the abundance of choice offers a greater opportunity to connect and share, diversifying messages without confusing audiences.
The key to success is to strike a balance that suits your business, prioritise quality over quantity, adapt your strategy to your audience’s preferences and ensure that brand consistency remains a top priority. In doing this, you’ll be well-placed to make the most of the various platforms in your social media strategy.