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When it comes to branding and online advertising, there’s no denying the power of social media. However, the best social media platform for your business might not be the one you know best. Before you start experimenting with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc., take a few minutes to get to know your platforms.

Learn social media platform basics

One rookie mistake of social media: assuming you should copy content from one social media channel to another one. However, that can do more harm than good.

For starters, some of your audience will follow you on multiple platforms. If there’s no difference between what they see on Facebook and Twitter, why should they follow and engage with you on both?

Secondly, your content should be shaped by the platform’s strengths. Consider each platform’s restrictions, user interfaces, and engagement methods.

Learn what to post on each social media channel. If it’s a good fit to be adapted for another platform, make those platform-specific tweaks that will make your content work smarter.

Troubleshoot platform issues yourself

Getting used to a new social media account takes time. Sometimes your content strategy works fine, but technical issues hinder your efforts. Before contacting the support team, try to solve the issue yourself.

Oftentimes, others have had the same issues before. A quick online search, such as for answers to common IG support issues, can sometimes help get you unstuck faster than waiting for a response from support staff.

Learn what works

You should get to know how successful marketing campaigns work on each platform you’re interested in using. Browsing and engagement habits vary from platform to platform. Look at recent examples of successful Facebook marketing campaigns and apply some pattern recognition to see what trends you can apply to your own posts.

Do the work every day

To really make your social media work for your brand, it needs to be part of your regular working hours. Check out social media management tools that can take care of scheduling posts for you, giving you more time to focus on content creation. Just make sure your tools are suited to the platforms you’re most active on.

At the end of the day, preparation will save you time on your road to success. Don’t hit publish on any posts until you understand how your social media platform works.