When Elon Musk sends out a tweet, he reaches millions of people. Columnist Hidde de Vries sees a lesson in this for entrepreneurs: choose one or two platforms for your social media strategy and go full steam ahead.
Twitter is Elon Musk's regular social media channel. That much is clear, even if his possible acquisition of the platform is accompanied by much turbulence.
In mid-April it was announced that Musk, already the largest shareholder, wanted to buy Twitter outright. For $44 billion. An interesting decision when you consider that Twitter has not made a penny of profit in eight of the past 10 years.
Musk wants to transform the platform by giving users back control over what they share. It remains to be seen whether there is any business incentive behind this significant investment. Knowing Musk, that will be fine.
Even if the sale does not go through, Elon and Twitter are probably inseparable. Plenty of Twitter has done him no favors (media) in recent years. With now just under 100 million followers, a tweet from Musk can generate major media impact.
As an entrepreneur, what can you learn from this? Even without a lot of followers, it's smart to decide for yourself which social media channel you want to own.
Social media as part of the customer journey
More than half the world uses social media these days. On average, we spend about 2 hours and 27 minutes. As a business owner, you really can't be left behind and a plan for social media should be part of your broader marketing strategy.
Almost 45 percent of all Internet users use social media to research products or services. This figure is even higher among Gen Z (born between 1996 and 2015), where users say they search for brands and products more through social media than through mainstream search engines.
The most effective way of social media marketing, according to marketers, is to use short videos
This tilt shows that social media is becoming an increasingly important part of the customer journey. By responding to this strategically, you can save time and costs and boost your performance.
Twitter is actually a small player with 363 million active users. Larger platforms such as Instagram, YouTube and Facebook have 1.4 billion, 2.3 billion and 2.9 billion monthly users, respectively. The relatively new TikTok is also growing fast and has reached the 1 billion active users mark by September 2021.
Insights and best practices
The most effective way of social media marketing is according to marketers the use of short videos. Not for nothing is YouTube, next to Google, now the largest global search engine. On Instagram, about the half of all users on a daily basis to stories, the short 15-second videos. With that, overall follower engagement is a lot higher than Facebook.
Incidentally, this does vary by target group. Does your company mainly serve the baby boomer? Then it is wise to build a strategy around the use of Facebook.
For b2b companies, LinkedIn is the most valuable platform. Advertising costs at LinkedIn are therefore about five times higher per click than at Facebook. The total number of members on LinkedIn is around 690 million, but only 3 million of those users share content on a weekly basis (less than 0.5 percent).
To discover what works for your business, it's best to just experiment
If you want to reach especially young people with social media marketing, TikTok is the place to be. Almost a quarter of the tickers are between the ages of 18 and 24.
If you are looking more for the political debate, then again you are better off turning to Twitter, as 83 percent of all world leaders is currently active there.
As a company, by the way, you don't have to be present on every platform. A good strategy for one or two of the largest social media platforms (Facebook / YouTube / Instagram) offers the most potential to reach a large proportion of global users. The important thing here is which platform your target audience is active on.
Choosing and experimenting with social media
To discover what works for your business, it's best to just experiment. By linking Google Analytics to your socials and sales pages, you can get a good handle on which platforms you get the most customers from.
For planning your content, it is advisable to work with a content calendar in which you set out once a month what you will share on which platform that month. That way, you (or your content manager) do not have to be constantly busy writing content, but its creation can be bundled into specific moments. You can then prepare and schedule the posts with tools like Hootsuite or Later.
Like Elon Musk, choose the platform you are going to bet full on. Maybe not with $44 billion, but certainly with time and energy.
Research which channels work for your audience and business and which don't. Create a content strategy with your target audience in mind and plan your content ahead so you don't spend time on it on a daily basis. That way, you'll have more energy left over to focus on everything else your business requires of you.
