Leverage All Features in Each Social Media Platform

In two months, it will be ten years that I have been publishing a blog every Monday here on the website.  As I say quite often on my weekly “Now Hear This Entertainment” podcast, I have a “bizarre mental rolodex” of past guests that I’ve interviewed on that show.  And similarly, I have a rather good inventory somewhere up in my brain too of past posts that I’ve put up.

I know that many moons ago I wrote a blog about not putting all your eggs in the Facebook basket.  Funny enough, with as popular as TikTok has become, it almost makes me wonder if a “Don’t put all your eggs in the TikTok basket” blog is in order – especially given the clock ticking on them finding a U.S. company to take over so they don’t get shut down in America.  Nonetheless, it’s an interesting shift in terms of the social media standings, to use a sports analogy.

But regardless of who’s in first place, second place, third place, and so on, the fact of the matter is that you need to be on a variety of platforms.  While it’s true that I’m also often heard saying, “You can’t be all things to all people, meaning, you can’t be on every social media channel,” you can’t just be present and active on one.

I remember speaking at a conference where I said that Instagram is my favorite social media platform and someone in the audience raised his hand to ask me why.  Regardless of my answer, I’m still regularly active on Facebook, X (Twitter), YouTube, LinkedIn, and Stage 32 also.  (Apologies to TikTok – which I fight the temptation to join – and Snapchat.)  In other words, just because IG is my favorite doesn’t mean that that’s the only place you can engage with me online.

Heck, for that matter, this blog, the podcast, and the weekly e-newsletter are other channels that I leverage (plus, one could even argue, the Owwll app).  But this blog isn’t about me, it’s about you.  And so, where are you?  But more importantly for this week, are you optimizing what the various platforms have for you?

For several months now, we (Now Hear This, Inc.) have been building a YouTube channel for an author client.  After getting a respectable number of videos up on there, however, we recently tested uploading something there as a Short and boom, it got the highest number of views.

For a different author client, we were working on getting that person booked for a guest interview on someone’s podcast, but the offer was made to do an Instagram Live instead, which we quickly said Yes to.  That’s a terrific way to pull someone else’s followers over so that they now become followers of yours as well.

I have a second podcast that I do, and for quite some time now I have been posting a Reel every single Sunday.  The other content on that account is “just” posts, but the Reels, as you should know, offer a different type of experience, which some people prefer.

And by the way, EVERY time I post on Instagram – for a client or, say, on the “Now Hear This Entertainment” podcast official Instagram account – I always put up an accompanying Story.

Being the sports fan that I am, I’ve raised a curious eyebrow at how national sports host Jim Rome has taken his popular radio show to X.  There’s also a radio show that I’ve placed a couple of clients on that I often see going live on X, which (shhhh) seems like a route that not too many people are going.  (Translation: try it and you might just get noticed since they will push out that you’ve gone live.)

I often say on the podcast that it’s too bad that once the world opened back up after the pandemic, artists stopped doing a regular Facebook Live performance for their fans.  Guess what?  It still exists, folks, so use it.  I was thrilled when a radio show in Hollywood agreed to interview a Now Hear This client but even more so that they livestream on Facebook.

The client above who I mentioned I’d pitched for a podcast and ended up getting an IG Live out of it was also interviewed by someone else who utilizes a service that allows their show to be simulcast across a handful of platforms, which meant that I was able to sit and watch on YouTube Live.

Are you remembering to tag people in your posts (i.e., Facebook, X, Instagram) so that they get notified and will hopefully reciprocate?  Instagram has the Invite Collaborator feature which really helps you more directly get in front of someone else’s followers (provided the other user accepts your invitation to collaborate).

Being on a platform is one thing.  Posting with regularity is another.  But you can get so much more mileage by activating some of the above features, not to mention those that I didn’t even cover.

For twenty years now I have been helping indie music artists, authors, actors, entrepreneurs, podcasters, small business owners, and more.  What challenges are you having in your creator career that I can lend some insight to?  Let’s have a ten-minute call so you can take advantage of all my experience, and I can help and keep you moving forward.