By now you’ve probably been thinking “should I be using Tiktok?” or “I’ve heard Instagram is the best place to start” and wondering why I haven’t mentioned platforms yet.

I’ve held off for a reason.

Because choosing platform first is arse-end backwards.

We need to focus on where we can provide the most value to our customers. Then worry about platforms and formats.

Let’s get started:

First question is where are your customers?

This ultimately determines where you need to build your audience. Your preference isn’t actually important.

Remember that we are focusing on providing value to our audience and potential customers first.

In the same spirit we want to make it as easy as possible for them to access the value. If we’re intent on building on Facebook because we like Facebook (but they don’t!) then i) they won’t see it and/or ii) we’re forcing them to come to a place they don’t want to be to consume your content.

No bueno.

Therefore first step is to locate where they are.

How to find your customers

Hopefully as someone who knows a fair amount about the topic you already know the main social media hang out spots.

If not then you’ll need to go research on all the major platforms.

You are looking specifically for other large creators in the space. Specifically those who sell products and services off the back of their audiences. We don’t want entertainers.

For example in the AI entrepreneurship most of the big names are on Twitter. They are not, conversely, on Facebook.

These people have built up audiences on Twitter because that’s where their audience hangs out. They haven’t build up audiences on Facebook because that’s not where the audience hangs out.

This is a simple but effective rule of thumb and when starting out its worth following. The converse is trying to break ground on a new platform. You may be the first and you’ll do exceptionally well. But chances are others have tried before and there just isn’t the audience density required to make it worthwhile.

One platform

To start you should focus on one platform. And ignore the rest.

The reason is focus. It takes time to grow on a single platform. And the more you spread yourself thing the longer it’ll take to “click” on any single platform.

If you genuinely don’t know where to start then here’s an alternative. At first post on all the major platforms for a month or two and see which one you begin to gain traction on. As soon as there’s a clear frontrunner focus purely on that one and drop the rest.

Either way you want to end up with one platform for growth.

The reason for this is that growing isn’t just about posting content. You also need to be present and engage. With other accounts as well as with people who comment on your content. You need engagement time.

This is because people follow people. And they want to know you are a person, not just someone reposting automatically. Equally the algorithms of the various platforms look to engagement when calculating how much to push your content.

Therefore we need to go all in on just one to start.

Format follows

We’ve followed our customers to where they hang out. And we have decided to focus on that specific platform.

The question now is what format do we use?

Simple: whatever works best on that platform for the various levels of value based content marketing.

An example will help here. One of my primary platforms is Tiktok.

What works well on Tiktok is, surprise surprise, short video.

So my format will be: short video.

I’ll align that with my content funnel from the last Part like so:

• top of funnel: short <60 second videos for high level audience build. Focus on volume, low production value, speed, talking head style.

• middle of funnel: 2-3 minute videos going into more depth about a topic. More editing, more scripting. Less rushed delivery. Aim is to deepen relationship so I’ll give examples, ask questions, relate personal stories.

• bottom of funnel: CTA content to bring people over to my newsletter or directly into sales. Aimed at people who have been consuming my content for some time and know who I am so I’m primarily reminding them that I have a next step.

All of this is done on one platform: Tiktok. Using one format: short video.

If you are find your audience on Twitter then you would use text as your primary format:

• top of funnel: short single tweets, aiming for wide distribution

• middle of funnel: in depth threads and long form posts

• bottom of funnel: CTA tweets, social proof tweets, testimonials and case studies.

Your job is to match up your content funnel to your platform of choice.

Always remembering:

Where customers are → Platform of choice → Platform’s preferred format

Once you know your platform we will very simply add a line to the prompt from the last Part:

Adjust this for [platform] as platform of choice.
Make suggestions on time/format based on this platform's best practices

This will edit your content funnel and match the ideas to your platform of choice.

Expansion and repurposing

Once you’ve begun to build an audience on one platform you can absolutely try out others.

The main thing you need to avoid (early days) is bouncing from one platform to the next.

Growing on any platform is going to take some time. And far too many people quit when they don’t see immediate results. That’s great for you if you are committed to building an audience (for your business) for the long term.

I’d recommend getting your first 1000 followers on a single platform before looking to expand. That should be sufficient for you to find your feet and learn what it is your audience wants to hear about.

Once you have this on lock you can take those same topics and same content to other platforms. And, if there is a similar audience there, they should be receptive.

When doing this I’d recommend starting by reposting and repurposing content. You don’t necessarily need to make fresh content for every platform. But instead you can:

• repost - literally taking the same video, without a watermark, and posting to another platform

• or repurpose taking a piece of content and chopping and changing it for another platform

Because you’ll have a steady content pipeline for your first platform in place this becomes much simpler than starting fresh on each platform.