Choosing which Social Media platform

Prelude: The concept for this post was provided by ReputationManagement.com, a leading provider of premier relationship services.

Branding isn't just for businesses.  It's also for bloggers , YouTubers, podcasters, and all those internet creators.

And when it comes to promoting your creations, the choice of social media platform is key.

It's critical to understand how the different platforms work, and where your audience is.  It's very easy to stick to the largest networks (e.g. Facebook and Twitter) and then getting disappointed that you aren't building your audience.

Two examples - firstly, my own blog.  Whilst not being the largest blog in the world, over the years I have been fortunate enough to build up a number of regular viewers, making me feel that my work is read.

Facebook is great for friends and family, and when I first started blogging Facebook was my go-to social media platform.

But the trouble with Facebook is that it is for friends and family.  My friends and family may love/like me, but they don't necessarily want to read my ramblings about my various hobbies.  So not every blog post - in fact, few of them nowadays - get promoted on Facebook.

Twitter always attracts a few readers, but to make Twitter work, you need ideally to have content that is trending.  A blog post about Valentines Day on Valentines Day, with a cute GIF of a heart, and the right wording in the tweet, will (hopefully) drag the readers over.  Otherwise it's only going to be your followers that ever see it.

Or a GIF like this works.

So which social media platform do I personally find best?

Well, I actually find Google+ is the best social media platform for me, in that its communities allow me to find like-minded people and places where I can share my content, and discover other content.  Blogging is very much a quid-pro-quo world, where you need to read and work with other bloggers to build your own audience.  And it makes it more fun, too.

So despite various rumours that Google+ is about to vanish, I desperately hope that it carries on, because for the likes of me, it is the best way to find and attract new readers.

The second example I have is my wife.  She loves to cross stitch.  And she's found YouTube to be hugely successful, as there is a large YouTube community of what are called "flosstubers", people who cross stitch, and vlog about their cross stitching.  In a very short space of time, she's taken her YouTube channel and attracted over a thousand subscribers.  And she's been able to leverage this into starting her own cross stitch-related enterprise on Etsy, for me she's a real success story on how to use social media to promote your product.

So for me, it's about learning where your audience is, and how to engage with them.  It is extremely rare that someone can release a piece of content, and have it simply go viral, instead your must build those networks, find those people that love your work, and offer it to them.  It may take time, but it will pay dividends.