Melanie
The Monday Morning Marketing podcast is brought to you by Esther of IPA Group, bringing premier online promotion to your business.
Esther
And Melanie of STOMP Social Media Training. Who in ours business owners to manage social media and marketing for themselves? And welcome back to another episode of the Monday Morning Marketing podcast. Today we're telling you to go where your audience is. Now, this might seem a little obvious, but with the way things have been going recently in some social media platforms, we shall not name any ex names, but people have been jumping ship. They have been figuring out other platforms that they may want to use instead of some more established ones. So like we've told you in other episodes, there are thousands of social media platforms that come out every year, but there are some that make it and some that don't. So where have you heard Melanie recently that people are moving to?
Melanie
I guess what I've been using myself recently is Bluesky and it's just like an old fashioned Twitter, even down to the fact that you have only 140 characters, which is quite annoying.
Esther
We used to love that about original Twitter.
Melanie
But do you know what? It doesn't really matter where you're moving to, I mean. We know that Andrew and Pete, for instance, of Atomic fame, they decided to move off one platform and move entirely onto another one for a whole year. Do you remember that exercise they did? And they just tried it
Esther
Was that before?
Melanie
They just went onto Instagram, just did everything. Instagram fully for a whole year. And it was an excellent exercise to see how much they could build up traction and gain. And they got a huge amount of people up on their emails and everything else, and their membership really increased as well. Because at the time, Instagram was a platform to be on and they were doing reels and they were doing shorts and they were doing stories and they were just doing lots of posts on a regular basis. So if you can establish where your audience is mostly gaining traction, that's down to the fact that you're looking at your analytics and maybe, just maybe, you can actually pull your audience to that platform as well. So even just telling them you're going to be moving from Facebook to such and such, sometimes it's also down to the fact that you've changed tangent as well. You've changed your model, your business model in general, or you've looked at your SWAT and you've established that this particular product or service is doing so much better on that platform. Let's try it there for a while.
Esther
Yeah, all of the above, I fully agree with you have the moving your audience with you factor, which could be risky if you have a big audience. So, for example, on Twitter, there used to be a lot of Twitter chats which were in the stream, in the feed using a certain hashtag, depending on what chapter, what r you were talking in. There used to be Belfast R, which is non existent. It was running for years and years. And Twitter smarter and chat about brand and USA Bizparty, all of these ones that have had to go, oh, hang on a minute, it is now getting more difficult, even with a hashtag, to be seen on Twitter X, whatever it's called. So what should we do? Should we move our entire audience to another platform? And then the audience starts going, I don't have any other platform, I only work on this one. And then you've other people going, well, I'm on every single platform, so I don't mind where you go. And then you're trying to figure out if there's a way to have the same sort of method as used to be, with it being in the stream and answering questions and the questions popping up in real time and everything. And no other platform has that functionality just yet. So there are ones. Christine Gritmon, who's also been on the podcast, did an experiment a couple of weeks ago saying that she was on threads, she isn't available in the EU, and she was on LinkedIn. And every day she posted a question that she would have usually posted on chat about brand in X, Twitter, Twitter, X whatever, twix, whatever you're calling it. And she ran this experiment for the full week to see if her audience had moved or would move or if it was going to be viable to do this on another platform and go and take a look at her results. They're quite interesting. I'll let you do that one in yourself. There's a bit of homework for you. Just cheque out. Christine Gritmon, she posted the results on her LinkedIn, so it is available for everyone to go and see. For those that are listening to us in the EU that aren't lucky enough to have threads, which is just Twitter made by Facebook, basically, and blue sky is made by the original guys of Twitter. Like do sometimes wonder about all these new platforms that are trying to copy the old platforms, why don't the old platforms just go back to what was working?
Melanie
Well, I think personally that some of them, I'm not speaking about all of them here, but some of them either want to lead a trend or have listened to their audience. I'm not adverse to changing things up. I think people get complacent and they stop seeing certain posts. Or like we discussed in a previous episode recently, people assume they know what that person or that business does, and they're wrong. They're just wrong. So sometimes you just need to change it up because people get complacent.
Esther
Yeah. And again, guys, remember we say this most of the time when we're talking about changing platforms or looking at other platforms. You do not need to be on every single platform, which is why the title of this is go where your audience is. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. You don't have to go somewhere and rebuild an entire audience. For example, threads, if you have it, it automatically pulls over your followers from Instagram. So you already start with a follower base there, blue sky. A lot of people are joining it, if and when you can, with a code because they're reminiscing about old Twitter and the days of 140 characters and no gifs, but things like that. You can try them for a while, see if your audience is also moving. Do a questionnaire, do a poll on your other platforms and ask people where they're hanging out most, because it might surprise you completely. I hang out on TikTok just for watching videos and information purposes. I do not want to be sold to on TikTok, although there were a lot of times recently where TikTok made me buy. It has come up in conversation, but it wasn't because of ads that I saw on TikTok. It was because of people talking about what they were using, not in a promotional ad way, but just showing how the thing worked. I use Facebook for keeping in touch with friends and family, but I don't want to be sold to. You have to think these things through as to where people want to connect with you. Because if they're only using some platforms for being talking to friends and family, remembering family's birthdays, for example, Facebook's great at that one, then that's where they will be for that. So be very specific in the questions that you ask your audience as to where they hang out.
Melanie
I mean, I think there are places where people view and other places where people do as well. Unfortunately, a lot of our generation are more viewers on places like TikTok than doers. And you've got the same on every platform. There are people who stalk and there are people who walk on platforms. So you've got to try and pick the platforms where you're going to actually get engagement and not just reach an impressions. And that is probably down to a bit of actual market research, actual A/B testing even. I'll go as far as saying actual a B testing. So don't make your decisions short sightedly. This is something you're going to have to work on. I think Andrew and Pete said they were going to trial it for three months and when they saw how successful it was, they did it for the whole year. So this isn't something you can just decide on and try for a month. It's something. No, it's got to be a good dose of time. Because let's face it, everybody can be consistent for a week. We can all be consistent for a week on our business, on our social channels. But can you actually be consistent for weeks and weeks, months even?
Esther
Yeah, especially when you're adding in all the videos and reels and stories and all the different aspects of each of the platforms, because they all have the audio function or they have the video function and everything. Using every single aspect of the platform that you're going to focus on would be highly beneficial in your trial period. But check your analytics. Do your research before, check them during, and check them after, because you could be pleasantly surprised or unpleasantly surprised by what you see versus what you thought was going to happen.
Melanie
Yeah, that's a good one. Actually.
Esther
People are a fickle lot. We could really surprise you by doing something completely out of box. We'd love to hear how you get on with this. Do get in touch with us. There is Q&A section on our podcast that you can send us a little message. You can catch us on most of the social platforms. We'll soon be up and running as the podcast on Bluesky as well. If you're there, I'm sure we'll get threads set up by me, not by Melanie, because she can't eventually. So yeah, do join us. Do give us a shout out and tell us where you're listening to us from, what platform you're using to listen to us, and where you see our posts, because we're always interested to know all this information. That's it for another guy. That's it for another day, guys. If I could speak. It's been a long Monday already. Its the Mondaist Monday there ever has been.
Melanie
Amen.
Esther
In the latest bunch of Mondays. We're almost at the end of 2023. Deep breath. Let's do that outro again. That's it for another day, guys. Yeah, maybe got it right that time. The editor is going to love me today.
That's it for today. We'll be back next week with more Monday Morning Marketing. Until then, bye. Bye.
Melanie
Do you know what? You do the intro. I'll do the outro from now on, okay. Sound like a plan?
Esther
Plan.
Melanie
Yikes.
Esther
Let's do it.
Melanie
Bye for now.
