When Kelly asked her question last week, we were expecting to hear people share their love for Pinterest or tell us that they use Snapchat to talk to kids, etc…
Instead, we received a thoughtful analysis on the use of social media. Our community came through in a big way! Thank you, Neil.
Neil M. (1) What is your company’s audience? (2) What kind of content are you good at creating? (3) What are you trying to accomplish? and (4) are you actually trying to get the cool kids?
Snapchat and Instagram are fighting it out for the cool young kids creating video and images. The content there doesn’t stack up or become searchable, so the point is engagement and fun.
Twitter is for conversation. It’s the only place people hang out and have conversations. It’s also the firehose of what’s happening and what’s important in the world. If you want to create content that speaks directly to what’s happening now, stay on Twitter to pick up on trends and conversation.
YouTube and Pinterest create searchable content that lives forever, and speaks directly to what someone needs RIGHT NOW. Much like we used to spend money to show up on Google searches, making sure you have content that shows up on these channels when someone needs something specific (and searches for it) can be key. YouTube is huge for teaching (what I do), while Pinterest is huge for products.
Facebook isn’t going to give you any organic reach, but if you want to spend a little money to reach EXACTLY your customers – you can’t beat it.
You don’t need to be everywhere. You need to decide what you want to happen, and find the channels that are the best for the components of your message.
My strategy (once I get back from paternity leave) looks like this: create core content on YouTube and the blog. Pull interesting components from those to publish to Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter. Finally, use Instagram to be a person – photos of family, travel, and behind-the-scenes. If people stumble upon my content on Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter, it brings them deeper into my YouTube channel and the blog. If they’re really interested in me, they can follow me on Instagram to watch the interesting parts of my life.
Don’t re-publish the same content on all the channels – make an integrated content strategy, like creating a keyboard shortcut graphic based on the content in your keyboard shortcut video…
That was longer than I intended. 
Another thoughtful article can be found HERE. This CNBC article surveying young adults ranging from 12-20 sums up the differences of SnapChat and Instagram from a teen’s point of view. SnapChat is seen as a quick means of communication with close friends, while Instagram is a way to share ideas and happenings with a large following. SnapChat and Instagram came in as the two most popular apps with many choosing another messaging app as a close third. Many teens still use Facebook’s Messenger feature to connect. Overall, the teens surveyed were less concerned with being the first to find a new app and more concerned with their personal security.
