A social media strategy without Instagram is unthinkable. When selecting suitable channels, it’s now really just a question of “TikTok – yes or no?”. However, Pinterest, LinkedIn and YouTube often make more sense, especially for small companies and organizations. And you should also keep an eye on Whatsapp!
Admittedly, some things are easy to say. A “social media strategy away from the norm” sounds good at first, but when it comes to the nitty-gritty and you as a social media manager have to explain to your boss that you want to leave Instagram out of the equation, things look very different. Because the risk of your strategy failing and then everyone saying “See, I knew that from the start” is high. In practice, I wouldn’t have the balls to do without Insta completely. To prevent an embarrassing failure, it is therefore a good fallback solution to use Instagram and Facebook as “secondary utilization channels”. If it is foreseeable that the strategy you have developed will not work, you can adapt it without losing too much face.
Why even try a different social media strategy?
The answer is simple: because the competition on Instagram and Facebook is extremely high. If you start a Facebook page in 2020, you’ve practically already lost because most users are simply tired of following companies. The trend is the same on Insta. In practice, this means that a massive amount of effort has to be put into making your own channel known and generating followers. It quickly becomes a matter of trivial questions such as “What time is the best time to post?” or “How many hashtags should I use?”. This behavior sometimes reminds me of a seriously ill cancer patient in the supermarket wondering which is better for their health, apples or pears? So instead of getting bogged down in the minutiae, you should think fundamentally about whether your own social media strategy is promising.
LinkedIn: Because users are older and have more money
To date, the business network with around 14 million users in German-speaking countries has mostly been used by companies for brand building and purpose marketing as well as employer branding and HR marketing. To exaggerate, you could say that all companies on LinkedIn are innovative, sustainable, fair and diverse, offer great career opportunities and have cheerful and competent employees.
The sometimes lamented “Facebookization” of LinkedIn is therefore not so much the result of companies, but rather of some users who post vacation photos and the like there. For companies, Facebookization is an opportunity. Although a little more seriousness and a little less product advertising seems appropriate on LinkedIn, in my view there is nothing wrong with cultural institutions uploading their trailers there, craftsmen giving insights into their work or companies presenting new products.
Ritter Sport is still quite new on LinkedIn, but seems to want to include product-related content(example). If you act with moderation and moderation, such a strategy can be quite profitable, especially since the users are actually much more interesting for many companies in terms of their age and purchasing power than any TikTok teenagers. Another advantage is that there is less pressure to publish. While other social media channels virtually demand that you post something new every day, things are much more relaxed on LinkedIn. This should suit most companies.
Pinterest: Because the half-life is longer than on Instagram
Pinterest has around 7 million users in Germany, around 70 percent of whom are female. Big advantage over Instagram: The half-life of content is significantly longer, as Pinterest is also used as a search engine. Disadvantage: Pinterest is not equally strong in all areas. It is ideal for topics such as DIY, food, photography, interior and graphic design and fashion. It is quite possible that the range of topics will expand in the future.
Rewe, for example, shows how to use Pinterest successfully. Although the company “only” has 40,000 followers, around 4 million people look at the published recipes every month. Solo freelancers can also achieve considerable reach: Wedding photographer Jana Stening only has around 100 followers, but has over 100,000 monthly viewers. Although the significance of such figures should be critically questioned, this does not change the basic statement that you can create enormous awareness via Pinterest. Instagram and Pinterest can be synchronized via Zapier or Tailwind (better, but for a fee).
YouTube: Because almost everyone watches videos there
Ok, not everyone uses YouTube, but 77% of internet users in Germany use the platform “at least rarely”. Companies mostly use YouTube as a storage location for videos, but don’t usually run regular broadcasts like those of YouTubers. This is probably due to the fact that successful YouTube channels are usually tied to individuals, but companies do not want to be tied to individual protagonists. The yumtamtam channel from Edeka is different. Here, Melissa, Felicitas and Felix each present a recipe on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays at 4 pm – and are very successful with 400,000 subscribers. The handyman channel floorcenter.eu, whose “tutorial-like” videos are often viewed several hundred thousand times, shows that you can also achieve high viewing figures with simple means (and funny music).
Whatsapp Business: Because SMEs have a head start
The topic of messenger marketing was particularly hot in 2018 when the free Whatsapp Business app was launched. The fact that interest in it has waned is probably due to the slow development of the app. Considering the potential that Whatsapp has, it is quite astonishing how leisurely the parent company Facebook Inc. is taking things. Whatsapp Business is linked to a mobile or landline number and cannot be used on several devices at the same time. This makes it unusable for large companies (although they can use the WhatsApp API). At first glance, Whatsapp Business is only slightly different from “normal” Whatsapp. However, you can also enter company information, create a product catalog and set up automated responses (e.g. out-of-office messages). Whatsapp Business is primarily suitable for customer service, but also for marketing. SMEs can use the status messages to draw attention to current offers, new products or reference work, for example. These can then be seen by everyone who has saved the company’s number. The broadcast function (similar to a newsletter) is also available on Whatsapp Business, but commercial use is against the terms of use.
