Usually in a website development project there comes a time to choose which sharing buttons to display (if any) and for many, this is also the time where they review which social media channels they are on. Slightly surprisingly, many decide to go all-in. Let me explain why this might be bad.
Case: Small Business
Let’s look at this from the point of view of a small business or freelancer. For bigger business, things are slightly more complex. Your most limited thing as a small business owner is your time. Chances are you are already doing administration, marketing, business development and more aside from your actually area of business. Daily, you struggle to fit everything you should be doing into your calendar.
Time is limited
Time is where an “all-in strategy” fails completely and is also the best argument why you should not attempt to be on all social networks simply because they exist. No customer is going to thank you for just having an account and making the spontaneous post. No following is going to come from this—quite the opposite.
You will do much better focusing your energy on networks that are the most effective, and do an even better job there.
How do I choose?
When you look at which social networks you want to be active on, you need to consider the nature of the networks, your business and what you could gain from them. For example:
Twitter is excellent for connecting quickly with customers when they are having problems or engage in conversations. However, it demands attention and activity if you are going to succeed. Nobody will see your randomly posted tweet.
Facebook is hard to neglect for businesses today. The user base is gigantic and is a good balance between user engagement and sharing content. For most companies, Facebook is where you would definitely want to be present to reach the “general user”.
Pinterest makes little sense unless you are dealing with highly visual content, or content that your visitors are likely to want to save in a scrapbooking fashion.
LinkedIn, while excellent for a business setting also requires some serious investment because of the lower daily usage from its users and because following companies on LinkedIn is not as wide-spread as liking a page on Facebook. If you are in business industries, such as economics, business administration or management consulting (and related), chances are you will want a LinkedIn presence.
Conclusion
The answer to the question that the title begs is a simple and resounding no. You should not and even need not be on all social networks as a small business. Choose the ones where you are likely to have a following and work on the quality of one channel rather than trying to do everything haphazardly.
