Steady the “be everywhere” ship

This week I’ve had conversations about social media marketing with 6 different people, which for me is weird because I don’t offer SMM services, and social generally just makes me feel a bit queasy.

Despite that, I’m showing up (mostly on LinkedIn) – these conversations were about where we each show up, and how often.

I was surprised to hear that the idea of “I need to be everywhere” is still so alive, so here’s a summary of those discussions through my rudimentary lens:

• Each social channel (LinkedIn, Insta, Reddit, TikTok, whatever) has a certain “playbook”.
• You can choose to follow the playbook and be rewarded by the channel with reach;
• Or do your own thing (eg: auto post, syndicate, use AI 🤢) and not be rewarded.
• As soloist, doing one channel well is far more efficient than doing every channel poorly.
• The feeling of “which channel/how many channels” creates panic.
• Settle that feeling by understanding your numbers.

So… what are your numbers?

Here’s a rough and dirty formula:

• Ethyl sells $50,000 services
• She needs to close 4 deals per year to hit targets

• Beryl sells $5,000 services
• She needs to close 25 deals per year to hit targets

• Sheryl sells $500 services
• She need to close 200 deals per year to hit targets

Ethyl, Beryl and Sheryl will need wildly different social media strategies to hit their targets.

Ethyl will likely be focused on low-touch, not-very-scalable activities to book phonecalls with top-tier prospects, while Sheryl might lean on more scalable tactics like ads and partnerships.

Knowing their numbers gives them a sense for where they need to be, and how often.

I’m sure no-one’s numbers are as clean cut as this, but if you take a minute to know yours, it’ll help settle the freight train in your head that wants to crash through every channel it can think of.

(For actual rock solid advice on this stuff, check out Louis Grenier and Ethan Golding in LinkedIn).