Which Social Media Platform Is Best For Me?

Reginald Chan

February 17, 2015

Hate it or love it, you need to have a good social media strategy.

This literally means hours after hours of split testing and thousands of dollars in social media tools, right?

Erm, no.

What if I tell you that at the end of this post, you will discover cheap (and probably free) ways to determine which is the best social media platform to use?

Sounds real good and too good to be true? Not really! So do read on and leave a comment.

And yes, I’ll try my very best to “wow” your mind and as well as my dear friend, Jan Gordon.

What type of social media platform we have today?

Here’s the best part. There are too many for us to count. Seriously.

We have ample choices; from usual blog post sharing to image sharing. We have them all!

The first step is to determine the which platform works best for you and this can be done by understanding your own niche (and competitors).

I’m going to use myself as an example. I manages a blog focusing on blogging, entrepreneurship and marketing. My competitors ranged from the popular Smart Passive Income to Entrepreneur On Fire. Competition is really strong and they are literally making the hit on many social platforms.

But just like us, they are not able to tap into every platform out there in the world which leave me with two options:

Competing heads on
Competing from the side

Now, let’s go into a little more technical for both these parts.

Competing head on using social media

Competing in this sense would mean using the same social channels as your competitors. On a daily basis, I spend approximately 2 hour managing my social media account. This ranges from replying to comments I received to performing social listening.

If you are wondering, I am using HootSuite along with MavSocial for the matter. You can even read my tutorials on HootSuite and MavSocial using the respective links.

Competing heads on is basically sharing information which relates closely to the competitors.

For example if my competitor published an article related to topic A, I’ll be doing the same on my own publication.

The only difference is that I may be adding even more information to the topic compared to my competitor. In return, making my article even richer in information.

Competing from the side

This is pretty much different from the above. Basically, you reach out to your potential readers by sharing specific information related to the topic you are competing.

There are several methods you can do this:

Following the comments
Following the questions asked by their followers on social media

What happens when you realized people are constantly asking for the same information of the specific topic? You get a blog post up!

And, you do not need to publish on your own blog. You can do it even on authority sites such as LinkedIn Pulse or even on Curatti.

So, how to determine which social media platform is best for you?

I’m going to assume that you have selected either competing heads on or the side. Now, the next step is to kick start the competition by choosing the right social platform that works best for you.

This process is lengthy but trust me, it worth all your time.

Perform split testing around major social platforms; for me, I go with Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter. The testing should take around 2 to 4 weeks and the longer the testing is, the better the results will be like.

Information that need to be universal:

Article
Images
Text only

Information that you need to test:

Text only
Pictures only
Quotes only
Lifestyle only

For example, I launched a new blog recently, AskReginald.com which comes with podcast as a form of media. I wanted to be New & Noteworthy on iTunes but with thousands of podcasts launched in a single day, changes are hard.

So, what I did was simple: I did 3 weeks worth of testing (using MavSocial for better analytics feature). With the information from MavSocial, I concluded that:

Facebook works better when I share personal information (pictures of me having lunch, dinner, shopping etc)
Twitter is better for promoting an article or podcast
LinkedIn is better for quotes
Google+ is awesome for discussions (and some quick and temporary search ranking)

Here’s a quick snippet of the my MavSocial stats:

Wait! Reginald, you are running around the bush! Tell me which is the best social platform I should be using!

I bet you are thinking about that right now and I don’t blame you for that.

The truth is, I can’t guarantee you that what works for me will work like charm for you.

However, what I am absolutely sure is that you can’t just focus on one social media and assume it as a Swiss-army knife.

If you have limited budget (or are stingy like hell and not willing to spend a dime), then opt for Buffer which is free. Perform the test for a few weeks and use the analytics decide which is the best platform to invest your time and efforts.

Like or hate this? Tell me in the comment below. And if you love listening to podcast, feel free to check out The #AskReginald Podcast on iTunes!

Featured/Lead Image: Copyright: ‘http://www.123rf.com/profile_bowie15‘ / 123RF Stock Photo

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Reginald Chan

Founder at Reginald Chan

Reginald started blogging in 2005 and it soon went from just a hobby to a serious occupation. He specializes in content writing, marketing, social media and SEO. He also tweaks WordPress during his free time. Reginald is also offering paid services and if you need any help, feel free to contact him and check out the services he is offering.