Brands old and new are using social media to expand their fan bases, find new customers, and boost revenue. You may feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of social media sites available for use in your brand-building efforts. However, with the help of social media, reaching new audiences and expanding your customer base is simpler than ever.

No matter if you’re just starting out or have been using social media for years, you can always learn something new. Numerous purposes can be served by each available medium.

Advice for using any social media service

Develop a plan tailored to each social media outlet.

You need to have a detailed and well-thought-out strategy for each platform you use, just as you would for any other part of your marketing strategy. There are subtleties and optimal strategies for generating engagement on each platform. While it’s possible that your brand doesn’t need a presence on every platform, you should always employ a platform-specific strategy when posting content.

See if you can confidently respond to the following types of questions:

  • To what end am I utilising this medium?

  • Who do you think this platform will ultimately help?

  • Which kinds of posts do best here?

  • In what ways will my contributions here be different from those made by others?

If you find it difficult to respond to any of these questions, it may be time to examine your motivations for spending time in this setting more closely. If you answer these questions, you’ll have a better foundation on which to build your platform strategy.

Prioritize the quality of your content over the quantity of your posts and sites if you’re just getting started. Most companies, especially smaller ones, don’t fare well when they try to implement a novel strategy across all five major social media platforms at once.

Keep to a regular schedule

The frequency with which you update your social media accounts should be tailored to each platform individually. In order to maximise your audience on Twitter and Instagram Stories, for example, you need to be active multiple times per day. Regular Instagram Posts and Facebook updates, on the other hand, aren’t nearly as time-sensitive and can be used more sparingly. Think about the platform-specific algorithm and whether content is posted in chronological order or curated based on other criteria when formulating your posting strategy.

This is related to the social media strategy you’ve developed. To do this, you should outline:

  • In accordance with the recommendations for each network, how frequently will you be posting to each?

  • Is there a specific kind of content you have in mind for each platform?

  • Which demographics do you hope to attract with each medium?

Sprout Publish schedule for the week on social media
Keep in mind that the people who follow you are probably also following hundreds or thousands of others. It’s easy to be forgotten if you don’t update your account as frequently as the competition.

Mediate your messages

The target audience for any given platform will be different. There will be some overlap between the audiences you’re trying to reach on different channels, but it’s still important to know who you’re talking to on each to make your message resonate with the most people.

Having a clear goal in mind will allow you to produce content that is more consistent with your brand and more likely to resonate with your target demographic. Your social media posts will always be useful to your target audience if you stick to a consistent message.

Sprout Social’s ability to narrow the audience for your social media posts is a major selling point. Posts can be tailored to specific audiences based on factors such as location, language, and demographics, depending on the social media platform.

Create and send targeted social media posts with Sprout Social.

Let’s say you’ve written a post about the financial sector and want to promote it on LinkedIn. Those who follow you from the information technology or medical fields might not see the relevance. You can choose to restrict visibility of that post to just your finance-related connections instead of broadcasting it to everyone in your network.

Sprout offers a no-risk demo of its audience-targeting capabilities.

Observe the current trends.

After settling on a central message, it’s important to monitor the latest developments across all of your platforms. If you see a trend or tactic that is gaining traction and it fits in with your messaging, you should use it to your advantage.

Don’t rush to follow every passing fad on the web. It’s easy to turn off your audience by posting content that isn’t consistent with your overall messaging but is meant to look relevant. Just because other companies are producing an item doesn’t mean you have to.

This is why it’s important to establish a central message that can serve as a yardstick for evaluating the success of your future social media updates.