Generalist or Specialist, What’s Your Social Media Strategy?

Almost everywhere you look online, people are talking about the importance of Social Media Strategy. We can easily learn what the top platforms are ( Although the top three have remained Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for quite a while, the other contenders do change over time, so this is not a one-time action),  how often to post on each of them (although this seems to be so much a matter of opinion that you may find wide ranges among the expert opinions you read), or even how to get started on any social platforms – including some of the up-and-comers like Pinterest, Google+ and Instagram.

One question which is not addressed quite as often is this one. Should you be a Social Media Generalist or a Social Media Specialist? The generalist approach means that you have a viable presence on the top half dozen platforms, and are constantly scanning the environment to see if there are some trending sites that you should look into. Vine would be a recent example of this. The specialist approach would suggest that you have chosen only a couple or three social platforms, and you pour your time and attention into those, forgoing the rest of the pack. There may be no real clear-cut answer to this question, and it is certainly possible that a specialist strategy could easily be as large an investment of time as a more general approach. In fact, if you do hitch your wagon to the specialist team, you almost certainly will need to be strong in a more well-defined space.

Regardless of your choice, one question that you should be asking yourself on a regular basis is “What’s the payoff?”. No matter how many tools are on your belt, if you are not evaluating the return you are getting for the energy you are putting into each of them, you may well be wasting precious resources. A regular social media audit will help you determine if it is valuable to continue your efforts on any SM platform. Be sure that you apply the principles of critical thinking to your audit process. It can be easy to look at raw data – the type that might come from the top layer of most analytics – and not ask important questions that will help you use that data to your advantage. Sure, I might see that my company Facebook page delivers 1500 hits a month to my website, and my Instagram account only 300, but a more important question is what is the conversion rate of these visits. If less than 1% of my Facebook-inspired visitors end up doing business with me, but 1 of every 5 visitors who find me via Instagram become clients or customers, I am actually getting four times as much business (in terms of customer count) from Instagram.

Even if I create the same number of customer relationships from two separate platforms, if one of them is bringing me people who spend twice as much money with me than the other, the former source is definitely more valuable. Tracking this information accurately is important!

Maybe the best approach is to start as a generalist and, once you have some experience and good data under your belt, decide to specialize and funnel your energies into the two or three social media platforms that are paying off best for you. Of course, nothing is so consistent as change, so seriously consider a quarterly review of the entire social media landscape. There just may be something out there that you need to be thinking about next!

There will come a time when you may realize that the effort you are putting out to maintain a presence on a particular Social Media platform is just not paying off. This happened with Copyblogger, who killed their Facebook page despite the fact that they had almost 40,000 followers. They realized that, despite the impressive number of fans, this interest was not turning into business for them, certainly not as well as was true on other platforms they inhabit. So, they pulled the plug.

If it becomes time for you to do that as well, do it right. Don’t skulk out under the darkness of night, let people know what you are doing and why. This is not to suggest that you criticize the platform for failing to deliver (don’t shoot the messenger), but that you let your loyal readers and others who may come looking why you are not there. Actually the best approach is to close your account completely if possible, but if you can’t get that accomplished, at least make an ultimate posting that lets everyone know  why they don’t find you on <name the platform> anymore.