Social media: Does your brand need to be on every platform to be successful?

Alisha Marfatia is a social media coach, co-creator of the Rise with Reels Course and the host of the Build Your Brand podcast. 

The following is an extract from the podcast’s second episode, Do I need to be on every social media?, where Marfatia dives into the importance of quality and how recycling old content can help you reach new followers. 

Build Your Brand

I wanted to touch on one of the biggest questions, the most common questions I get asked and it’s probably going to be in the back of your mind whether you realise it or not: do I need to be on every single social media platform? 

The list is just growing with Instagram, Tik Tok, Pinterest, clubhouse, YouTube, the list just goes on. I’m going to let you in on a secret — you don’t need to be on every single platform!

If you intended to post on every platform, high-quality content, chances are you would probably have to quit your day job, you’re probably going to have to quit whatever you’re doing 90% of the time because the fact is, if you’re putting content out online, the most essential thing to remember is that is high quality! If you’re just putting anything out, it’s not going to grow. 

One of my biggest mottos is that you will learn here in the Build Your Brand podcast is quality over quantity, every single time. Let’s apply this back to today’s topic. When we’re deciding which platform is right for us, I want you to think about who are you trying to target and where will they be. If your audience is unlikely to be on Tik Tok, don’t waste your time, focus on the platforms where they will be. With new platforms, apps and spaces popping up every week, it can be tough and confusing and a little bit overwhelming as well because you’re thinking, it’s a new one, do I need to be on that? 

When I was starting my business, I had the same overwhelmed feeling, I thought sign me up for every single platform and soon after I did that, most of them didn’t have any attention for so long. So, I focused on the one area I enjoyed, the one area I knew who my audience was, and the one area that I had the confidence in to grow and to stay consistent with.

I began with Instagram, the idea of having quality content on every single platform made me feel a little bit physically nauseous and unless you have a full team of marketing and content experts behind you, you’re going to struggle as well. So, want I you to take away from this episode is understanding that you don’t have to overwhelm yourself. You don’t need to be everywhere, just start with one platform. Once you feel you have a strong handle on that, take that next step forward. 

New social media platforms

Now what happens if a new platform appears? What happens if a new feature comes up? You may have heard of this quote, I like to refer to it a lot, the early bird gets the worm, and this applies to new platforms as well. When Tik Tok did come up, I thought it’s a new platform, chances are my industry isn’t going to be as saturated so should I jump on? And I did get into it, I did want to try it out because the fact is, some people have found that Tik Tok might work better for them than Instagram.

Whilst I say to focus primarily on one platform, that definitely doesn’t mean you can’t dip your toes and trial and test some of these other platforms. This can be as simple as repurposing your content you already have. If you’re working hard, creating high-quality content, sharing it across multiple platforms is a super easy way to possibly find a bigger audience without creating a bunch of extra work for yourself. 

So, what do I mean by this? I’m going to tell you how I take one piece of content on Instagram and  repurpose it to multiple different platforms. Let’s start with the first — I’ve just shared a reel on Instagram, what can I do next? I don’t have time to create a Tik Tok so what can I do with this one piece of content to ensure I cover the other platforms as well? Take the reel and in one easy step we’re going to go over to Tik Tok and re share this  reel but through Tic Tok, it’s easy, it takes a moment and you’ve used that same piece of content in a different space.

The other exciting thing about this is sometimes you’ll find that the Tic Tok algorithm and audience will favour your content more. You’ve created it, you’ve taken the time and we’re repurposing it on a second platform. Next thing you can take this and share it to Facebook. The one thing I do want to say here is that if you have copyrighted music, you will have a little bit of trouble but if your audio has a voiceover or “original audio”, then you’ll be able to share this to Facebook as well. 

Let’s circle back, do you need to be on every single social media platform? The good news is no, you can just focus on a few or if you’re just getting started focus on just one. When you gain that confidence when you feel ready, you can move across to other platforms, and you can take the little secret of the repurposing cycle over to your content as well, making your pieces last a whole lot longer. 

CREDITS

Host: Alisha Marfatia
Managing Producer: Andrew Brentnall
Producer/Editor: Hannah Bowman

A new episode of Build Your Brand is available every Thursday. Build Your Brand is available via the Nova Podcasts Player or wherever you access your podcasts.