Does Our Organization Need To Be on Every Social Media Platform?
The pressure to maintain a presence everywhere is strong, but it’s smarter to focus only on platforms where your core audience spends their time. Here’s how to determine which are the best fit.
By Tina Kelly
With so many social media platforms out there, you might feel pressure to maintain a regular presence on many, if not all of them. But each platform serves a different purpose, attracts a unique audience and requires a nuanced strategy: Copy-and-paste cross-platform posts won’t cut it.
Instead of going all-in on all the apps, consider your target audience’s behavior, your business goals and your team’s ability to create relevant content. Where and how your audience spends its time should determine where and how you invest your time and resources. Base your decisions off the strengths, drawbacks and most impactful drivers of these major platforms.
Strengths: Facebook still has the largest network globally, making it beneficial for content distribution, community updates, event news and the like. And its capabilities to target very specific audiences are among the most advanced on the market when it comes to paid social.
Drawbacks: Because Facebook is built around engagement, organizations must heavily interact with their audiences. Algorithm changes have throttled organic reach, making it harder for posts to be seen without investing in advertising. Meta has also faced ongoing scrutiny over privacy concerns and data handling.
- Users Like It For: Connection
- Use It To Build: Reach
Strengths: Instagram was built on visual storytelling, so it can be a very effective platform for organizations with a strong visual identity to build brand awareness and engagement. Short-form vertical videos are the top method of discovery today, with Reels in particular driving engagement.
Drawbacks: Maintaining a presence on Instagram requires a consistent flow of high-quality visual content, which demands significant time and resources. The platform is also designed to keep users within the app, making it difficult to drive traffic to external websites.
- Users Like It For: Inspiration
- Use It To Build: Branding
X (formerly Twitter)
Strengths: X is known for real-time information and conversation. It’s widely used for news, quick updates and commentary, making it useful for organizations that want to participate in industry discussions or respond to breaking developments.
Drawbacks: Posts on X have a very short lifespan, making it difficult to maintain visibility. It’s not an ideal platform for long-form storytelling or campaigns. The channel has also experienced user decline after its rebrand from Twitter to X, and now has a smaller user base than many other social networks.
- Users Like It For: Immediacy
- Use It To Build: Relevance
Strengths: LinkedIn’s strong presence among B2B marketers makes it an effective platform to demonstrate thought leadership and industry expertise and share educational content. It’s also valuable for developing business relationships and generating leads.
Drawbacks: Organic reach can be limited, so brands must consider paid support to increase visibility. Generic or promotional content tends to perform poorly. Because the platform is more professional in tone, posts must be thoughtful and offer useful insight.
- Users Like It For: Opportunity
- Use It To Build: Authority
TikTok
Strengths: Gen Z and Gen Alpha spend a lot of time on TikTok being entertained and keeping up with trends. If a post has gone viral recently, chances are it’s a TikTok. This has made the platform a powerful tool for discovery — its algorithm allows content from even unknown brands to reach thousands, even millions, of users.
Drawbacks: TikTok requires regular fresh video content, which can be difficult to maintain. Users also expect that content to feel authentic and creative, not promotional. An emphasis on more playful, entertaining-storyteller content doesn’t always align with how an organization prefers to present itself.
- Users Like It For: Entertainment
- Use It To Build: Discovery
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Tina brings more than 10 years of experience to C/A, where she partners with companies to develop digital marketing campaigns that leverage content, encouraging audiences to consume, engage, share and convert. Tina’s experience spans industries, having led digital marketing strategy development and execution for several global and national brands, including The Children’s Place, Nationwide Insurance, Delta Faucet and many more.
Tina has presented at a number of industry conferences and events, including SXSW Interactive and Content Marketing World. Outside of work, Tina and her husband can usually be found on a sports field somewhere, cheering on their two kids.