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I'm a self-published writer and want to market myself as a brand to my target audience. In social media marketing, is it better to

  1. use only one platform (e.g. Facebook or my own website) and publish all my news, blog posts and images there,
  2. publish the same content on several platforms, or
  3. publish different content on different platforms (e.g. "private" news and images of myself on Facebook, photos I took on Pinterest, stuff I like on Tumblr, how-I-write blog posts on Blogger, instructional videos on YouTube, artistic videos on Vimeo, questions and answers on ask.fm, etc.) and connect everything through link lists in each platform's sidebar?

I ask this, because personally, when I find someone interesting, I dislike having to hunt for all their activities across all the net, never knowing if I have missed something interesting or important, on the other hand, if their website or Facebook profile is all someone has, they don't appear very interesting because I have quickly exhausted their depth.

So, what strategy works best? If you can, don't just post your private opinion, but quote research or expert publications, or give successful examples (and successful counter examples).

  • Well, who is your target audience? From my unscientific point of view, if your audience is pretty static (and if you're on a budget), then you can just focus on one platform. If your audience varies greatly (targeting 18-65 males in UK), then you may want to post the same content to multiple platforms, since different segments may frequent different sites. – Chris Forrence Sep 05 '14 at 13:26
  • @ChrisForrence The question here is not so much which platform would fit my indended audience best, but how to use these platforms. The answer should be more generally applicable to all self-publishing artists, like musicians, webcomic artists or independent film makers. The example that made me ask this question is a nude model. –  Sep 05 '14 at 16:14

1 Answers1

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I think the first question to ask yourself is "how much time am I ready to spend managing my social web presence?

This should already narrow down how many platforms you should tackle in working on your "brand".

Effective Social media strategies take time, so make sure that whichever you choose, you have time to do it well.

  1. one platform: I would suggest trying the different platforms you believe are most interesting for your line of work one after the other, to try and see which offers the most engagement.

  2. While you could have one platform (it could be your website) that you would use as a hub to give an overview of all your social media presence, I would strongly advise against publishing the same content in several places. It is frustrating for anyone following you to see the same thing appear several times in their feeds in different platforms.

  3. While not "all" social media platforms will yield the same engagement from the public, it is interesting to diversify if you feel it actually serves your branding. Different platforms call for different content, and complementarity content makes sense. You don't say the same things in pictures (instagram) or in words (medium) or in video (youtube or vimeo) etc..

But this all boils down to time. A social media where you can't engage with the public, where you don't answer questions or join the conversation is a dead social media and does more to give a bad impression than having just one channel you use to market yourself. Keyword: "social". Be social, join the conversation.

I found a few of thise "how to" guides quite useful, even if they are more general than specific. But they do give a good starting point to choose the right media and see how to go about using it.

In the end though, time is key. Time is care, time is attention, and it's the attention you give that will get you the attention you seek.

notafish
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