Written by: Matt Skallerud, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Since I work in the world of LGBTQ+ marketing, I’m on multiple social media platforms daily. I work with the strongest of these platforms, and one thing I’ve discovered over the years is that not all social media platforms are equal.
I don’t think that’s a surprise to anyone reading this article, of course they’re different! One focuses on entertainment, another on photos, and another on how our family and friends are doing. Over time, some social media platforms are predominantly solo sports, while others are much more collaborative and team oriented.
I would say that most media, influencers, brands, and marketers are treating social media outreach in a more traditional sense, as simply another touch point to reach their audiences. This is a very one-to-one, linear relationship. In other words, they’re flying solo!
Many of these people may monitor their posts, checking likes and shares, and responding to comments, but it’s becoming clear which organizations are focused on themselves and which are engaging with the wider world. There’s a distinct difference when a person or brand is showing interest in their followers, engaging with fans, and sharing similar interests.
I liken the social media strategy of flying solo akin to that of tennis, where stars often play on a team of one. There is much success in the world of professional tennis, but it’s more of an individual, celebrity experience, and I can equate that with everyone’s favorite social media platform, Instagram. Success on Instagram is all about posting creative and engaging content, usually in the form of photos (and now more reel-style videos). The specific audience for an Instagram post is a user’s followers. This is a very linear relationship which encourages users to develop larger and larger follower counts in order to be successful.
In essence, TikTok works very much this way as well, but it does allow an individual or organization with creative talent to rise above the rest, reaching an audience that one is not directly connected to. It has a very successful “crowdsourcing” element to its newsfeed algorithm, allowing popular content the ability to rise to the top, resulting in some amazing video views for a select few.
But there is another way that is proving to be much stronger than flying solo! Attaining one's marketing goals relies on understanding that true success exists when you treat social media like a soccer player that embodies true teamwork (think Ted Lasso). What this translates into is that it's less about your follower count and your posts that only talk about you. Instead, it's more about how you are engaged with your fan base, your clients, and your social media followers by collaborating, liking, sharing, and commenting along the way. The simple question is, "Are you speaking AT your audience or WITH your audience?"
The magic that makes this team effort work is not universal amongst all social media platforms. Those that allow posts to reach 2nd degree contacts, friends of friends, are key to having the greatest potential in a social media post going viral. If you have 5,000 followers, and they have 1,000 followers each, your post has the potential to reach 5,000 x 1,000 = 5,000,000. That's 5 million people. Now we know we're not going to reach 5 million people, even with a mildly popular post, but you can reach more of them than you would on other social media platforms. In addition, this set goals for how far and wide your message can go.
You can’t have that kind of reach on Instagram, and Facebook also isn’t really designed for this. On Facebook, your personal profile can be quite strong, but it’s capped at 5,000 people. Your business page or group can have greater reach, but the Facebook algorithm doesn’t favor showing these posts as often, unless you’re paying to boost a specific post.
LinkedIn and Twitter are, interestingly enough, the two strongest platforms when it comes to “team sport” behavior. On LinkedIn, you can reach your 2nd degree contacts, and the more a post is engaged with, the stronger its reach and visibility become. On Twitter, tagging other profiles that are related to the post, while also being engaged with these folks, can allow a post to go viral in ways that are nearly impossible on other social media platforms. On Twitter it’s not unheard of to have 1,000 followers or less while also having a post reach over 10,000 impressions. In fact, this happens quite often. All day, every day, there are posts that reach hundreds of thousands of impressions, and a select few reach millions. This is a feat that is extremely challenging to replicate on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn (despite its team sport behavior).
If you’re in tune to the ever-evolving social media landscape like I am, you can see these changes as they are more ingrained into our daily lives. Media companies, influencers, and brands that focus on themselves first, and not the greater world at large, are finding themselves in a state of transition. They are lamenting the way things ‘used to be’ as social technology evolves into a more collaborative environment. True success lies in showing interest in others, not just yourself, which is the ‘human’ way real-world interactions have always been!
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Matt Skallerud, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Matt Skallerud, president of Pink Media, specializes in LGBTQ+ online marketing, targeting gays & lesbians via content marketing, social media, programmatic ad banners, mobile smartphone apps and more. He also specializes in search engine optimization (SEO), key word/search advertising (PPC) and social media analytics. He's been in the LGBTQ+ online industry for over 25 years now.
