Is social media your main way of connecting with people and raising your profile right now?
For years now, social media has been a key part of any public relations strategy. It’s a way to directly engage and sell to your target audience. But it feels like there’s a major shift in social media happening this year.
One of the trends I’m seeing in thought leadership and business marketing is the growing use of LinkedIn and Pinterest as audience building and promotion tools instead of Instagram or TikTok, and I’ve seen more Slack, Discord, and independent online communities pop up as people move away from Facebook groups. I’ve also seen more “growing a business without social media” workshops pop up this month than in the last six months combined.
LinkedIn is even leaning into the idea that they are the business social media platform. They just announced they are creating a way to optimize your lead generation to better customize your ads on the platform. (Of course, that means you have to have the marketing budget to run LinkedIn ads, but at least they’re trying to give you more value for the ad spend.)
I don’t think I need to go into the why all this is happening. But what should you do with the information?
If you’re just starting your business, you have the luxury of choosing not to use any given social media platform. Really. It’s getting harder to build a business using those platforms, so you can decide that it’s not worth your time/money/effort. You could focus on newsletters and email marketing only. You could pick one platform only and focus on it.
If you’re an established business – even if you’re still small – it might be painful to make any major changes. If you haven’t looked at your social analytics lately, it might be a good time to do a deep dive. Are you getting anything out of those platforms, or are you there because you think you have to be?
Changing your social strategy isn’t about following the latest trend or new platform – it’s about showing up where you feel comfortable investing time and energy. And if you want to streamline your social presence, you can do that without hurting your business.