Think back to when you were in school. It’s likely that you had a subject or a few subjects that you loved and excelled in while there were others you dreaded. If you were like us, you attacked the homework for the former and reluctantly approached the latter after exhausting your long list of excuses not to start it. We hate to be the bearer of bad news, but these old habits often die hard. Only now it isn’t homework or studying that we put off, it’s other tasks like filing our taxes or hitting the gym.

One such scenario we see time and time again occurs in the social media marketing realm. Business owners don’t mean to, but they play favorites with social media, focusing their time and energy on one platform and allowing their presence to dwindle on others. While in some cases, they’ve done so because they’ve learned that certain sites are no longer a good fit, and this is a completely valid reason to let the presence drop off or remove the page entirely. However, others simply get into a comfort zone with a particular platform and leave the others behind.

Getting Stuck in the Social Media Comfort Zone

Though we all know it’s easy to stick with the familiar, there are several reasons that business owners favor one social platform over others:

• It’s their preferred platform for personal use
• It’s their newest social platform and they’re excited about using all of the features
• They simply aren’t familiar with the other platforms
• Other platforms have changed or removed features they enjoyed

Are You In the Zone?

If you find that you’re social presence is heavily skewed toward one particular platform, ask yourself the following questions:

• Was this platform outperforming the others before it became the preferred platform?
• Do the other platforms offer little value for your business?
• Is this the only social media site on which you can reach your audience?
• Do you have little to no following on your other social platforms?

If you answered no to any or all of these questions, you my friend have gotten stuck in the Social Media Comfort Zone.

Breaking Out of the Comfort Zone

You may be in the zone, but that doesn’t mean you have to say there! There are several strategies that can help you explore other platforms and create a more well-rounded social presence for your business.

• Identify Platforms that Are a Good Fit:

  Before you begin filling out your social presence, take some time to research each site. Are your customers, or people who you’d like to become customers, using the platforms? Do you offer content that is compatible with each platform? For instance, if you don’t currently have a lot of imagery, Pinterest may not be the best fit at this time. Ensuring that the platforms you decide to support are a good fit for your business will save you valuable time when generating your social media content each week.

• Join Each Platform Personally:

  Once you’ve determined which platforms are appropriate for your business, create a personal account on each one and start playing around with them. Post content, follow other users, test out any features that are unique to the platform. Once you understand how your customers are using the sites you’ll be more comfortable using it on a professional basis and you’ll have a better idea of the types of content that will engage your followers.

• Take a Class:

  Find a webinar led by a social media strategist or look for workshops at a local small business support organization such as SCORE. These resources exist to help small business owners stay current with the business landscape and support their success, so take advantage of them!

• Consult a Digital Marketing Team:

  Getting support from a digital marketing team is arguably the fastest way to get out of your social media rut. They can analyze your current social presence, identify the appropriate platforms for your business, conduct market research, and develop an overall social media marketing strategy for you, allowing you to focus your attention on running your business. They will present you with a detailed plan containing themes and best practices for each platform. From there, you can decide whether you’d like to implement the plan yourself or if you’d like to have the continued support from the external team.

Ready to break out of the comfort zone and start optimizing your social presence? Reach out to us! We’ll help you develop a plan tailored to your business and provide ongoing support to ensure that your pages are never neglected.