Which social media platform is 'best' for networking

Are you a member of your local town or village's Facebook group? Here we have Spotted Witney, which seems to be pretty dedicated to people who take photos of badly parked cars in the local supermarket car park, along with an accompanying passive aggressive message!

But every so often, someone will ask "which is the best restaurant / Indian restaurant / taxi company / nail bar in town?" and guess what they receive as answers? 8 million different opinions, based on everyone's different experiences and how they were treated the time they used that business.

Social media has evolved massively since I first started using Twitter for business back in 2008, inspired by Gary Vaynerchuk . Back then social media was Twitter, and life was pretty simple. Now social media means Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn and Instagram and TikTok and Threads and etc etc etc.

And people want to know, understandably, where they should be spending their time and which is 'best' for their business. But the answer isn't that simple.

Because, just like in Spotted Witney, what's best for one person isn't the best for another, and the rules which people believe work don't.

An example would be that you've likely been told that LinkedIn is best for business to business and corporate stuff? And yet three of my biggest gigs, with two major UK corporations and a UK university, both came through Facebook, and through Facebook messages from personal profiles rather than business pages as it goes.

The best social media platform is the platform which is best for that particular individual, and where they prefer to hang out. A lot of corporate people will hang out a lot of the time on LinkedIn, but they may spend even more time on Facebook, Instagram or somewhere else.

My strategy is really simple, and it appears to work. I make sure I am available and visible on as many platforms as possible. I have accounts and post content on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and Threads, plus videos on YouTubes, but I put my energy and focus into a couple of them (as there is only one me). Most of my time is spent on LinkedIn and Facebook (and increasingly now on Threads too) and unsurprisingly, most of my sales come from LinkedIn and Facebook too. Whether that is because I invest the most energy there, or that my clients hang out there, is difficult to ascertain, but I can't be everywhere all the time, so double down on the ones which work for me, and which I enjoy.

I repurpose a lot of content, to ensure that I'm not invisible on the other platforms, so Instagram Reels are reused as TikToks and YouTube Shorts, just as an example.

Part of my logic for being on some of the other platforms, such as TikTok and Instagram, by the way, is this. The person who pays my invoice at any organisation I work for is likely to be the MD, HR Director or Learning and Development Director. But they probably aren't the person who does the research to find out which speaker to book. Very often the job of researching speakers is passed one or two rungs down in the organisation. So by being active on other platforms I'm more likely to be easily found by someone who is doing the research. A lot of younger employees are active on Instagram and TikTok, either in their professional or personal capacity, and they get to see this speaker guy with spiky hair. So when their organisation comes to look for a speaker, I'm more likely to already be familiar to them.

I have always had the goal of being seen everywhere. When I was an estate agent we used to advertise every week in the local newspaper, we would submit press releases to the local newspaper, I would go on the local radio and talk about house prices whenever asked, and we would push leaflets through people's doors in our town every few weeks. So that when I was in front of a new prospective client, there was more of a chance that they had already heard of me (and if you haven't read the first edition of this newsletter, so that I wouldn't need an 'elevator pitch'.)

If you're asking "which is the best social media platform?" you're probably asking the wrong person. The only person who can answer is the person who is using that platform, and the answer is going to be different for each and every one of them.

Thank you for reading! I've written a few books about business networking and social media, so if you haven't already read them, they're available on Amazon right here - stefanthomas.live/books