We have spent a lot of time on this blog talking about the role of social media in the digital marketing world. For those of you who are new here, the role of social media is to bring people to your website where they are encouraged to buy your products or services. (For a great read about this, check out our blog on the digital universe). With this in mind, you would think that the more social you have, the more traffic you will receive and the more sales you get. Don’t make this faulty assumption.

The best advice I can offer a marketer is to choose a few social platforms and then really concentrating on building a strong presence on those. Once you have the platforms chosen, get online and really get involved with that platform. Build a strong presence. Then if you are comfortable adding another platform, do it when you have the time and resources to do so.

How do you choose the right platform?

We have come up with the ACE method.

Audience: Now let’s think of that aforementioned perfect customer. Where is he/she? Before you commit to any platform, you have to make sure that where you are headed, there are potential perfect customers. One of the best things about social media is that we have so much data available about the users and how they use the platforms. We know the number of users on every platform. We can see how often they use the sites. We can also see a lot about these people such as their interests, likes, and even more recently their emotions (take Facebook for example). Use that data to drive your decision.

Content: What type of content will you be sharing? Platforms have been created and optimized to share certain types of content. Think about the type of content that you plan on sharing. Look at which platforms are best for those content types and factor this into your decision.

Ease-Of-Implementation: SnapChat has some amazing potential for advertisers but it can be very complicated to implement. On the contrary, it is very easy for anyone to create a Facebook page and post content. While we all want to be the most ambitious people possible, we don’t want to bite off something we can’t chew. If you try a platform that is too much for your ability level, you will mostly likely neglect it or not do as well as you can elsewhere. Stick to your comfort level because regular posting has to be easy. It has to be as fluid to you (or your social media manager) as making a phone call.

Choosing the right social platforms is critical to your success online. If you make a hasty decision and you can spend an excessive amount of employee time and on something that is destined to fail. So do your research, then decide. Most importantly, do not bite off more than you can chew. Start small and grow as you can.