When you first start using social media to reach out to your audience, usually one particular social network stands out as being right for your business. For some businesses, Facebook seems like a natural choice; for others, it may be Twitter or Pinterest or another social media site.
It’s important to remember, though, that social media is organic and ever-changing, and what works best for you at one point may shift over time. For example, lets say that three years ago you realized Facebook was a good social media fit for your company. The audience was engaged, they showed up in good numbers, and everything was great. On Twitter, you might not have been getting as much engaged response, so it would have made sense at that point to spend most of your social media effort on Facebook.
The tides can change, though, and the types of people who use a particular network vary as the network gets older. Recent research is showing that Twitter is currently attracting a much younger audience than it was when it first came on the social media scene, whereas Facebook’s demographic is more mature. This was once the other way around, and trends can change quickly and without warning.
So the lesson to be learned here is not to take a static approach to social media, but to be continually assessing how to adapt to changes in both your audience and social media trends. If your target audience is young and you started out courting them on Facebook, you may now find that Twitter or even tumblr is more appropriate today. Likewise, you may have once been aiming for one segment of the population, but over time have discovered that your product or service is more appropriate for another group. This, too, may affect your decisions about how you spend your social media marketing efforts.
You only have so many hours in the day to promote, and as social media is effort-intensive rather than costly, you’ll want to make every moment count. Experiment with different social networks, even those you may have discounted before. You may find that something that didn’t work for you before does work for you now, or you may even discover new social networks to try.
When was the last time you branched out and tried a new social network, or revisited one that you tried briefly in the past?
