How to Pick the Best Platforms for You!
With so many platform options, which ones should you be on? Where should you spend your time, where is your audience hanging out, and what's your strategy? It's a loaded question, and Bree's coming to you with some strategy to help you determine where to spend your time so you can grow your brand and your income without burning out!
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE TOPICS DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:
"The truth is your audience is everywhere. You can find your audience on any platform, and there are millions and millions of people on all of those platforms. So it really comes down to asking yourself a few questions that we're going to go through today, and really just determining what platforms are best suited for you for your personality, for the things that you love, and all of that."
Discussed in this episode...
What do you like doing?
I want you to stop and think about, why did you start your blog? Why did you start your brand? What are the things that you love to share? What are the things that you love to talk about? And how do you like to share and talk about those things?
Do you like to do a lot of research and do really detailed writing and posts? Maybe you prefer short and sweet posts. Do you prefer to be on camera and to film yourself going about through life and sharing different things and really showing showcasing your content through video? Perhaps you still prefer photography (which is not going away anytime soon). The main idea here it to figure out why you're doing this and what you want to share.
Below I'm linking a handy diagram to help you figure that out! I want you to spend some time filling it out. In one quadrant you're going to list all the things that you love do to, and are really good at doing, for your brand. In the next quadrant, you'll list what you love to do but aren't so good at. Next, you'll list things you're good at, but don't like to do. And last you'll list things you don't enjoy doing, and that you're not good at.
I believe every single thing that we do for our business can be placed in one of those quadrants. This is a great place to start when you're feeling torn on what platform to focus on growing!
Two Non-Negotiables
These two things are something that I believe anyone growing a brand or audience anywhere has to include as a platform. (This may be a little different if you are a You-tuber, since that is a stable platform and requires so much time and energy to do well.)
First, a blog.
Let's say you spend a bunch of time building an amazing community and audience on a social media platform, and then something happens one day to that platform? Or your account is deactivated? What happens then? Every brand needs an "internet home" in case their social media platform of choice has an issue.
The other thing with a blog is that your content has the ability to live beyond 24 hours. Because when you think about it, most content on platforms like Instagram or Tik Tok has a lifespan of 24 hours. Beyond that and there is so much new content coming out that yours is no longer being pushed and seen. People are seeing your posts for seconds at a time, and then it's gone and they don't watch it again.
Whereas a blog post has the ability to live on year after year, and give you the chance to get a break from the hamster wheel of content creation.
Second, an Email List!
Not only will an email list help to increase your page-views, (because you can strategically place links in your email to get readers to click over to your blog) but also it can drive sales.
The best part of having an email list is that it's yours. You own it. If something were to happen to your social media platform of choice, you will still have your list of people who have subscribed to hear from you via email!
Social Media
So like I said at the beginning, your audience is everywhere. There are multiple platforms and millions of people on each platform. It's not a matter of which platforms are your audience using; because your demographic is going to be on all the platforms! So it's really a matter of looking at what type of content you like to create, or what is getting you the engagement.
Video
If you're great at Video and you love it, then you need to be on Tik-Tok or Instagram reels. Do I think you can just choose one over the other? Yes. But if video is something that you love, and are great at, and get engagement on, then lean into it!
Photo
Right now, if a photo is more your jam and you really just do not love video, one thing I would encourage you to do is figure out creative ways for you to merge your photos with video. That could be by creating really fun, fast-paced, interactive videos. It could also be by figuring out a way to film some behind the scenes. So let's say you're a food blogger and you've worked tirelessly to be able to create and capture gorgeous photography. I would encourage you to find some type of behind-the-scenes content you can capture by just throwing your phone up really quick.
For all my photo people, you're going to want to focus on Instagram and also potentially Facebook. Did you know that there are actually more users on Facebook than there are on Instagram? Your audience is truly everywhere. I am not going to lie to you, Facebook pages are tricky and can be tough to grow, but I've seen people have really good success with them.
Conversation
If you love having conversations with your audience, you have a few great options!
First, you could consider building a Facebook group. We have a Thrive Community Facebook group and we love being able to facilitate conversation for you guys! It's an amazing space where you can ask questions, get feedback, do collaborations, and do all kinds of different things! It's a little more intimate place to have conversations with your audience and help them feel like part of a community.
Texting is another way to have conversations with your audience! There are some really nifty resources out there that make it possible to connect with your people via text. This can have an amazing, personal feel and lead to really good conversion rates.
Encourage direct messages! Comments on social media are a tough place to expect people to have a real conversation, but you can encourage your audience to comment if they'd like a DM! Your DMs can be an amazing place to have those conversations with your audience.
Additional Topics Discussed:
- How to analyze data to figure out where to spend your time online
- How to create and use evergreen content
- Don't Sleep on Pinterest!
Resources Mentioned
- The Profitable Blogger Society
- Shift
- Thrive Blogging Community FB Group
- Pinterest Workshop
- The Delegation Matrix
More about Bree Pair:
Bree Pair is a blogging coach and founder of Thrive - A blogging community built to empower and educate bloggers to make a full-time income by spending time on the right things. Her passion is helping bloggers create a strategy for growth and working with them on every side of their business to give them the confidence they need to be successful. Bree is propelled by the results of seeing bloggers go from overwhelmed to steady and sustained growth and creating the lifestyle they want.
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