How to balance a multi-platform social media strategy

Building an online presence across multiple platforms is an important part of growing a brand on social media, but one word you need to keep in mind going into 2022 is balance. Balance is actually our word of the year for 2022, so it’s definitely on our minds when making decisions for our business and social media strategy. Some brands choose one social media platform and go all in, while others try to be on every platform. But honestly, neither route will give you the results that a well-balanced strategy can provide.

Today, we are going to dive into choosing the proper platforms, how to create a cohesive strategy on all platforms, and the tools you need to balance it all! Let’s get into it!

Choose your platforms.

As I mentioned, some brands choose one platform, while others try to do it all - but I think it’s important to choose the platforms that fits your brand and even more importantly, the platforms your audience is using the most.

Here are a few tips on deciding which platforms are best for your brand.

Your audience.

When it comes to selecting platforms for your business, your audience is the most important factor. You need to ask yourself one question. Where are they? If you can figure out which platforms your audience is spending the most time on - this will help you narrow down which platforms are best for you to spend your time on.

Your brand.

Though your audience is the most important factor, another important thing to keep in mind is your brand. Who are you as a business? What products or services do you offer? What is your brand voice and personality? The answers to these types of questions might help you find the proper social media platform for you. Some platforms are more business-focused, whereas others are lighthearted and fun - you really just have to figure out where you (and your business) belong.

Your competitors.

You can also take some time to research your competitors. What platforms are they using? Is it working for them? How engaged the audience is on each channel? This is another great way to determine where you might belong.

Now that you have done some brainstorming. Here are a few stats that might help you make your decision.

Instagram: As of October 2021, it was found that 17.9 percent of global active Instagram users were men between the ages of 18 and 24 years. More than half of the global Instagram population worldwide is aged 34 years or younger.

Facebook: The largest Facebook audience in 2021 is men aged between 25 and 34, accounting for 19% of total potential reach. Men using Facebook between the ages of 18-24 make up 15%, while female users between the ages of 24-35 are responsible for 13%.

Linkeden: 57 percent of LinkedIn users are male and 43 percent are female. 37 percent of US adults who use LinkedIn are between 30 and 49 years old.

TikTok: 25% of TikTok's active users accounts in the U.S. are people aged 10-19. 22.4% of TikTok's active users accounts in the U.S. are 20-29. 21.7% of TikTok's active users accounts in the U.S. are 30-39. 20.3% of TikTok's active users accounts in the U.S. are 40-49.

YouTube: Users in the age group of 15-25 years old make up 77% of all YouTube users. Tied to the 15 to 25 year age group is the 26 to 35-year-olds with a 77% user share. Ages 36 to 45 have a 73% share of YouTube users, while 46 to 55 have a 70% share.

Twitter: In February 2021, it was found that 42 percent of adults in the United States aged between 18 and 29 years used Twitter.

Pinterest: While 60% of Pinterest users are women, don't discount this platform if your target audience is men. In fact, male users are up 50% year-over-year, and many are heavily active users.
Podcast Listeners: In 2021, the number of monthly US podcast listeners will increase by 10.1% year-over-year (YoY) to 117.8 million. Podcasts are mostly seeing traction among younger consumers—this year, more than 60% of US adults ages 18 to 34 will listen to podcasts monthly.

Create a cohesive strategy.

Now that you have decided which platform will be best for your brand and your audience, it’s time to turn this into a cohesive, consistent social media strategy.

Batch it.

I know I mentioned batching content all of the time, but it’s a very important piece of the puzzle when trying to balance multiple social media platforms. The first step in the batching process is deciding on what I call cornerstone content. This is content that is longer from, high value, usually educational or maybe inspirational content. This is going to be the biggest time commitment in your content creation process - but it is so worth it to invest in because it will allow you to power through the rest of your content creation process, and repurpose so much content across several different platforms. This could be something like a blog post, podcast episode, or a youtube video. Once you have all this great, long-form content to work with, there are countless opportunities to repurpose all of this for social media. Some examples would be ...

Make a graphic carousel, story, photo, or reel highlighting the biggest takeaways from your long-form content. You could create a tweet graphic, quoting a memorable section of this piece of content. You could create a TikTok or Reel inspired by the long-form content. You could even create a meme that references a relatable problem you mentioned.

Curate it.

Let’s be honest, creating content can get exhausting. There is one way that you can still have content, but not necessarily have to create it yourself … and that’s curating content. This is actually something I just mentioned in the Reels vs. TikTok Podcast that was posted last week, so definitely make sure to check that out next. I mentioned that this strategy we are currently using on the Creatorly Media Instagram is a mixture of Memes, Tweets, and TikTok Reshares. Resharing TikToks as a Reel not only helps expand your reach, but also is a great way to network with other creators. You can also scroll through Twitter and discover some catchy, relatable Tweets that you can share on a Canva graphic. With this strategy, you can make sure the topic of your curated content matches up with the content you created on other platforms for that week, so that it still keeps you on brand, but saves you loads of time!

Use the right tools.

A carpenter is useless without their tools - the same goes for a creator. You cannot have a balanced strategy without the right tools. Here are a few we recommend that can help you find balance in using multiple platforms.

Canva

This one is new to you, isn’t it? Ha. I would say the majority of you have already heard of and probably use Canva. This graphic design platform is seriously a game-changer. Canva gives you the opportunity to create designs for nearly any social media platform - YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest … the list goes on. But the part that can help you balance all of this work is by creating ready-to-use templates. In Canva, you can create multiple folders and subfolders for all of your platforms, create a handful of templates for each platform (and each post format), and then make minor adjustments each week or month when creating content.

Premiere Pro

This is for those who are using YouTube as a social media platform. Premiere Pro is professional editing software that can make editing a YouTube video a breeze. The great thing about premiere pro (and I am sure other editing software as well), you can create video templates as well! Do you use the same intro music, maybe the same animations, or editing techniques for each video? You can save these as a template project, that can be opened each time you’re ready to edit a video, that way you’re not always starting from scratch.

Notion

Creatorly Media uses Notion for all of our project management. We are even in the process of moving our client content into Notion for the New Year. Notion provides us with the structure and flexibility we need to be organized and plan our content on all of the various platforms we use for Creatorly Media. We are actually doing a YouTube video this coming Wednesday, showing you our Creatorly Media content calendar in Notion, so make sure to check that out!

Later

Now that you have your content, it’s time to schedule it. Later is our preferred scheduling platform. Though it can’t schedule everything, it can schedule a lot. You can schedule for Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Pinterest, and Linkeden. The convenient part about Later is that if you are making the same post on multiple platforms, say you’re posting the same video as both a Reel and a TikTok - you can actually check both in Later and it will allow you to schedule them at the same time, which will save you a lot of extra work.

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Here are Creatorly Media, we are on multiple platforms - including Podcast, Email Newsletter, Blog, YouTube, Instagram and coming in 2022 - TikTok. We are doing our best to expand our reach across multiple platforms and it can be challenging… but I hope these tips and tools help you keep things balanced.

As we make our way into the New Year, let us know if there is anything we can do to help you along in your journey. We are offering our usual Instagram Audits and Podcast Audits, but now we also are offering YouTube Audits as well. These will all be linked in the show notes!