Ask your last twenty customers where they spend time, and post there. Platform growth figures describe a national audience that has little to do with who buys from you locally.

The wrong question

Which platform should we be on usually gets answered with which platform is growing, which is a national figure about a general audience.

Your customers are not a general audience. They are people of a particular age, in a particular area, buying a particular thing.

A platform can be growing rapidly and contain almost none of them, and effort spent there produces followers who will never buy.

The right question is narrower and easier to answer: where do the people who already buy from you spend their time.

Ask twenty customers

The method, and it beats every published statistic about your market.

Over the next month, ask each customer where they saw you, or simply which apps they use, in the ordinary course of talking to them.

Twenty answers is enough to see a pattern for a local business, and the pattern is frequently unambiguous.

Do the same for enquiries that did not convert, since they are the same audience.

That gives you your own data about your own market, which is more reliable than any general survey and takes no time because the conversations were happening anyway.

It also occasionally reveals something useful, such as most people finding you through a local group rather than a platform at all.

What actually determines fit

The last is the one people ignore. A platform demanding frequent video from a business with nobody who will appear on camera is a poor fit regardless of who is on it.

Local groups beat platforms

Worth stating separately, because it is the answer for a large share of small businesses and it does not feel like social media.

A local community group, a neighbourhood forum, or a town page frequently contains a higher concentration of your actual customers than any platform's general audience.

Participation there is also different in character: answering a question in a local group is helpful behaviour rather than promotion, and it is remembered.

That produces work in a way that posting to followers frequently does not, because the people reading are within a few kilometres and are asking about the thing you do.

Read the group's rules about businesses posting, and follow them, since the fastest way to lose that audience is to be the business that advertises in a community space.

A worked example

A trades business was persuaded to build a presence on a platform their marketing supplier described as growing fastest.

They posted twice a week for eight months and reached a few thousand people, mostly outside the province.

Enquiries from it were none.

They then asked their customers, informally, over about six weeks, and found that most had either found them through search or through one local community group they had never joined.

They stopped the platform entirely and started answering questions in the group, within its rules, perhaps twice a week.

That produced regular enquiries within two months, from people in the right postcodes, for the work they wanted.

One platform, done properly

The constraint that makes any of this work for a small business.

Being present on four platforms means posting badly on four, and the effort divides while the audience does not combine.

One platform, posted to consistently, with replies answered, outperforms four neglected profiles by a wide margin.

An abandoned profile is also worse than none, since somebody finding a page last updated in 2019 concludes the business may have closed.

Choose one, commit to it for six months, and close or clearly park the others.

Where you park rather than close, put a line saying where you actually are, so the profile serves as a signpost rather than as evidence of neglect.

Judge it on enquiries

The measurement point, since platform metrics are designed to look encouraging.

Reach, impressions, and follower counts all rise with effort and tell you nothing about whether anybody contacted you.

Ask every enquiry how they found you and record the answer, which is the only figure that settles whether a platform is working.

Give it six months before judging, since building any presence takes time, and then be honest about the result.

A platform producing no enquiries in six months of consistent effort is not going to produce them in the seventh.

Revisit occasionally, not constantly

Because audiences do move, slowly.

The customers you have now are not the customers you will have in five years, and a platform that suits an older audience today may not suit the people buying then.

Once a year, ask the same question of recent customers and see whether the answer has changed.

That is often enough, since platform shifts happen over years and chasing them quarterly produces churn.

Where the answer does change, move deliberately rather than adding a fifth profile.

The counter-case

Choosing purely by current customers has a blind spot.

It optimises for the customers you already reach and tells you nothing about the ones you do not, which is exactly who a new platform might contain.

A business wanting to change who it sells to has a legitimate reason to be somewhere its current customers are not.

There is also a case for a modest presence on a platform for findability alone, since some people check whether a business exists there before contacting it.

Ask your customers, commit to one place properly, and treat any second platform as a deliberate experiment with a review date rather than as a default.

Choosing

  1. Ask twenty customers where they spend time.
  2. Ask enquiries that did not convert too.
  3. Check local groups before any platform.
  4. Consider what you can actually produce.
  5. Choose one and commit for six months.
  6. Park or close the others with a signpost.
  7. Judge it on enquiries, not reach.

Step one costs nothing because the conversations are happening anyway, and it produces better information than any national figure about your industry.

Whether to be there at all is covered in deciding social media is not for you.

Frequently asked questions

How should I choose a platform?

By where the people who already buy from you spend their time, not by which platform is growing. Growth figures describe a national audience with little relation to your local customers.

How do I find that out?

Ask your next twenty customers where they saw you or which apps they use, in the ordinary course of talking to them. Twenty answers shows a pattern for a local business.

What else determines fit?

Customer age, whether the purchase is visual or practical, local against wider selling, household or business buyers, decision length, and whether you can produce what the platform rewards.

Are local groups worth more than platforms?

Frequently, for a small business. A community group contains a higher concentration of your actual customers, and answering a question there is helpful rather than promotional.

Should I be on several?

No. Four platforms means posting badly on four, and an abandoned profile is worse than none since it suggests the business may have closed.

How do I judge whether it works?

By enquiries, asked and recorded. Reach and followers rise with effort and say nothing. Give it six months, then be honest about the result.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

Posting somewhere because it is growing?

Ask your next twenty customers which apps they use. The answer is usually one place, and often a local group.

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