Which social media platform should you choose?

If you’re building a business or just looking to work on your personal brand you are most likely going to need to use social media. But which platform to use can be daunting.

There are so many platforms to choose from so where should you start? The consensus seems to be to pick one platform and do that really well. In the early days of your business you probably won’t have the time to leverage multiple platforms. Therefore, choosing the right platform is going to make or break the early days of your business.

I’ve spent some time experimenting with Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest to see which platform might work for me. Check out what i’ve learned so far.

Twitter

When I started my newsletter five weeks ago, Twitter was my first port of call for pushing out links to the newsletter posts. Why did I go for Twitter first? The main reason was that I didn’t really have much of a following there so I could push the newsletter to a group that I didn’t know. I guess I was a little nervous what people I knew would think.

So I began this experiment with a following of 60 people. I started my Twitter account many years ago so this was the following that I grew back then. As I hadn’t tweeted for many years this was a pretty unengaged audience. I was basically starting from scratch.

These are my latest twitter stats.

I’ve put quite a bit of time into Twitter in the last few weeks and it really has moved the dial. Followers have trebled which has been pleasing. They are also starting to engage more with my tweets.

My strategy has had three main elements.

• Put out 4 or 5 tweets per day staying within my three niche areas which are personal development, leadership and mental health. The strategy here is to build a presence for the algorithm to start to see that I’m a regular contributor.

• Retweet and Quote Retweet interesting posts 4 or 5 times a day. If I’m short on time I will just hit Retweet but I’ve found the most engagement when I Quote Retweet and add some value on top of the post I’m retweeting.

• Comment on fresh posts from large accounts. This has gained the most engagement of the three strategies, yielded the most profile clicks and follows. One comment alone drove 43k impressions, 136 likes and 42 profile clicks. Also from that post I gained 4 subscribers to this newsletter from Twitter alone. @mentioning large accounts has also worked quite well especially where they have retweeted my tweet.

Generally, it seems a little hap hazard as to what gains traction and what doesn’t. Therefore, a strategy of commenting on as many tweets from large accounts as possible seems the be the best way a small account can gain impressions. The more you comment, the more chance of one of them going semi viral and directing people to your profile.

Given the progress I’ve made, I’m going to continue with Twitter for now. If I can double my following again in the next 3 to 4 weeks then that should start to give me a little more gravitas when people look at my account. With 170 followers at the moment, I still look like a small account not worth following by the majority.

LinkedIn

I have been on LinkedIn for many years but only ever used it for posting about vacancies I had in my team or information about events at work. Despite the lack of attention I had given this channel I was surprised to find out I had over 700 followers. Maybe this could be an interesting route to reaching more people.

The LinkedIn algorithm works very differently to Twitter’s. Instead of the posts having a life of just hours at best on Twitter, LinkedIn posts can last for 2-3 days and if you get good engagement it can continue to push out your post for over a week.

Over the past few weeks I have experimented with a few different posts at different times of day. These are my main take always from that:

• All my posts at weekends seemed to bomb. The algorithm takes your post and pushes it to only a sample of your followers. It is the reaction of this sample of followers that determines whether the algorithm continues to promote your entry. Possibly, at weekends my followers are busy doing other things (as they should be) and the posts simply get lost.

• My most successful post reached over 3,000 people. Why did this post have more success? This is the post:

• The post has an interesting hook in the first line. Maybe people want to know why am I writing 500 words each day! It draws you in. The post then tells a story about something I’m doing and then finally challenges the reader to have a go. A clear action for them.

• It also has some hashtags that may have enabled the post to show up on other feeds. I’ve got 700 followers and this reached 3,000 people so it has been pushed elsewhere. However, 95% of engagements came from my close connections.

LinkedIn has some real value. I’ve not actually posted a link to any of my blogs in a post yet. To be honest, I’m a little nervous about getting this in front of lots of people I actually know! Maybe something to hold in reserve until I’m a little more confident that what I’m doing is actually useful for people.

Having said that, I’ve updated my bio and included a link to the blog and so far LinkedIn has generated two subscribers to this blog. Early days!

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Pinterest

To be honest, when I started writing this post about a week ago I’d not set foot on Pinterest for many years. However, i’ve recently read that it can be a good way of promoting your blog if you can create decent pins.

The idea of Pinterest is that you create a visual representation of your message. The pin descriptions can be searched so adding key words are as important as the visual pin. As with Twitter, you can follow others and they can follow you. Your pins will appear in the “For you” area of you followers account. As part of your pin you can also create a clickable link through to your blog. That is where it’s power lies - most social media platforms try and keep you within the platform for as long as possible - Pinterest doesn’t do this which you can use to your advantage.

It is the clickable link that sets Pinterest apart. It is designed to be a directory for bloggers so the potential here is incredible.

What have I managed to achieve on Pinterest in the last four days? Well, I’ve created nine pins (in Canva), achieved 12 followers and 17 click throughs to this blog. Not bad at all! Below is a pin that has done particularly well.

Overall thoughts

All three platforms have significant potential but i’m aware that I probably need to focus on one and do it well although there may be potential to come up with a strategy such as:

• Twitter - post daily

• LinkedIn - post 3 times a week

• Pinterest - post 2 times a week

However, i’m concerned that the multi-platform approach will take away too much time from creating quality blogs. Clearly there is a decision to be made in three weeks time.

What are your experiences with these platforms? Do you have any tips you could share in the comments below?