Hello learners. I hope that you have your refreshing beverage handy because today's topic requires refreshing beverages. We are talking about a big topic. We are talking about social media platforms today. And how to choose the best one for your product, for your brand. Now there are lots and lots and lots and lots of different social media platforms out there, and in the readings you'll find links to a couple of different articles that will give you overviews, not only to the most common ones in western countries but also internationally in case, you are living in a non western country or you want to promote your brand in these countries. I think you'll find those helpful. Let me know in the forum and on social media if you do or if you don't, that's good feedback too. What I want to focus on in today's lecture is impressing upon you the hugeness of the world of social media. And why it's really important to choose the best platform for your particular product. If you are, for instance, visual artist you might choose to promote your art on Tumblr or even on Pinterest. Those platforms are designed for visual pieces. That's their whole thing. They are meant to be visual. So I'm not saying that you couldn't also be on Twitter but because, remember we talked about Twitter and how Twitter's a fish hook, so you could certainly use Twitter to catch somebody's attention and have a link embedded in your Tweet that goes back to your Tumblr or goes back to a Pinterest board that showcases your work as a visual artist. That's a completely appropriate strategy. I don't recommend that you try to be on more than three platforms. And actually in most cases, I think that two platforms should probably be the maximum that you're working on. Particularly if it's just you, if you're not part of a bigger team, if you're a one-person shop because you don't want to get into trying to feed so much social media because it is a lot of work. And, there are different ways that you can lessen your burden. You can use automation software. You can certainly schedule time to do these things so that you have a, you know exactly when you're going to do it. You're going to update two to three times a week. But you don't want your content to be stale. You don't want somebody to go to your Twitter profile page and see that you haven't tweeted in six months. That doesn't give the right impression because you want to look engaged and informed. So I really recommend that if you're a one-person shop two social media platforms are really the maximum of what you wanna do. But Facebook might be a good choice for you for a variety of businesses. Facebook, not so popular with the teenagers because all the old people, like me, and parents, like teenagers, their parents are on Facebook and they don't wanna be on Facebook anymore as much. So, but it's still overall a really great platform for business, for your brand. Some of you might have seen the personal branding Facebook page. And I know that my learners cover a vast expanse of demographics. You know, we know we have people of all ages there. And Facebook still, I think, has a lot of cross appeal. So, Facebook might [INAUDIBLE] be one because it allows you to post pictures, post links, do polls, set up events. So, there's a lot of benefits certainly to having a Facebook page for your brand. But there are a lot of options and you don't wanna over burden yourself with trying to feed too many platforms. One of the keys for you will be to identify your audience. Who's your target audience? Are you, does your business mostly focus on moms with young children. If so, you need to find out which platforms are most popular with that demographic. That's how you're gonna wanna do it. If it's teenagers, if you are marketing your skills toward teenagers, or you sell a product that teenagers would be most interested in. Again, you need to do a little bit of homework. I provided some links, but you might wanna do some research on your own. So, find out which platforms are most popular with specific demographics. I think that would be a very helpful strategy, as well, for you as you're choosing your social media platforms. Those of you who are a little bit further along maybe, when you started this course. If you have already established yourself on various social media platforms and you've had a lot of success. Or maybe not so much success. If you would like to share your stories, the community would be very, I speak for the community, the community would be very interested to hear those and, of course, I'd be happy to share my experiences as well. So, get out there, do your homework, look at a few of the articles that I posted, and get back in touch. And let me know if they were helpful to you, or if there are other great ones that you find that you would recommend. So as usual, I hope this was helpful.
