It is frustrating arriving to a website with social media icons everywhere saying “Connect to us” and “I’m social”, when the reality is, they only actively use one platform, or share that same post automatically with another two platforms.
The problem is, how many platforms should you engage with?
Over the years I have attended many social media seminars that encourage you to sign up with pretty much all platforms.
Personally, I only use Twitter and Facebook and occasionally Pinterest & Youtube, though I only view content on Youtube.
Rather than signing up to every single platform, invest the time into determining which platforms will suit your business model the best.
Determining what social media suits your business
- Find out what social media platforms your clients use.
- Do you have interesting information or products your clients want to hear about?
- Do you have enough content to post on a continual basis to so not become stagnant?
Duplication of content across platforms
Many social media platforms have the capacity to share your post across multiple platforms. For example: Instagram has the option to share on Twitter and Facebook, however unlike Facebook, Twitter links to the image file rather than embedding the photo in the post. This appearance shows it was shared from Instagram, and that looks lazy and not posted with love.
What is the most important social media platform?
The only platform that all businesses must have is Google+ for business.
Following the removal of Google Authorship, this is the next best thing.
Google+ Business allows you to maximise your exposure on Google when people search your business. It allows people to review your business, and provides an area on the right of the search results to show a photo and map.
Below is an example of the Halls Gap Zoo result.
However if you’re not going to post on it, don’t provide an icon to your Google+ Business page.
It is critical that you provide a rel=”publisher” link from your website to you Google+ Business page so you can get the same maximised exposure like the Halls Gap Zoo example.
If you’re using WordPress, the Yoast WordPress SEO plugin can do this from the backend.