If your small business is like most, it becomes increasingly obvious, as you grow, that you can’t be everywhere at once. This is true physically (your business location, service area, and your geographical target market), but it also applies when you think about which platforms you need to advertise and market your business on, and where you need to engage with your prospects and customers.

There is no shortage of social media channels, advertising networks, niche listing providers, and so on, from which to choose. It can be a daunting and perhaps seemingly impossible task to analyze where your audience is more likely to appreciate and benefit from your presence.

The best way to begin is to ask a few questions about each platform you are considering:

1. What main purpose does this platform serve?
2. Do the characteristics of the platform fit my business needs?
3. Who is the target audience that utilizes this platform?
4. How much of my businesses resources will be necessary for me to properly utilize this platform?

For brevity’s sake, let’s just consider a few of the SOCIAL platforms for now, but this task can be accomplished for other channels, as well. Of course you have the common defaults that almost everyone uses: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, but perhaps you should also consider SnapChat, Vine, and Pinterest, and don’t forget YouTube. Really…the list could go on and on (Entrepreneur, Jan 8 2016). The point is, you should ask the questions above about each, and decide if it is right for your business and target audience. Don’t know the answers? Most people don’t, and who has the time and bandwidth to research? This is where a personal marketing consultant can be quite valuable in the formulation of your marketing strategy.

We’ll dive deeper in the next few posts, and discuss examples of this analysis, and how it might apply for a given business. Stay tuned!