Social media: Not another canal discussion!

How many social media channels are important for a company?

But actually there are more important criteria for success. The question is still discussed with vehemence by religious wars: Should companies have two Social media platforms one or five? Or maybe seventeen? (Because there are currently seventeen platforms worldwide with more than 300 million users).

A recent study suggests an interesting thought on the subject: it may not be that important. Yes, you read that correctly. Maybe it is, exactly - never mind.

Sure, we are all familiar with the 360-degree hypothesis, i.e. the assumption that optimally every available channel should be covered in order to reach as many customers as possible. And, of course, we also know the counter-assertion derived from the Reactance Theory, which states that above a certain number of communication channels, advertising effectiveness suffers because the customer feels annoyed. However, it could also be that the number of channels is simply the wrong core size.

It's not the number that matters

A comprehensive study of 250 companies from Germany, Austria and Switzerland, which was mentioned here before, confirms this and finds: Instead of the number, it is important to find the right channels and to connect them with the right people. Content that is relevant to the customer. Which admittedly doesn't make things any easier. And it's also important to stick with it in the long term. Which, with stamina or, even better: the right agency in the background, should definitely succeed. But which channels are the right ones?

First of all, the less original part of the answer: those on which your competition cavorts may be important - but they don't have to be. And: Just because Facebook now has a reputation for attracting a very greying audience and TikTok is supposedly all about children, neither has to be a decisive criterion.

Much more like this: If you want to impress your audience with Content If you want to reach your target audience through a specific channel, rather than through pure advertising, which we also advise, you should choose the channel where your story will be most effective. A snappy technical text aimed at industry insiders? LinkedIn offers pretty good options. But there are also countless specialist forums where you can signal competence and prepare B2B business.

Always mobile

Or do you want to harness the emotional power of, as they say, the moving image? Then there is, we almost don't dare say it, that good old YouTube thing, which still has around 2.3 billion users worldwide and is amazingly good at addressing exactly the people you want to reach - cat videos notwithstanding. Or is your intended audience perhaps explicitly young Chinese? There's QQ, for example, which is actually a mass-market service, but with a whole range of additional functions.

But choosing the right B2B Social Media channel, or even the right channels, is only half the battle. The other half consists of preparing the content in line with the channel, i.e. in exactly the poetics that the channel requires. Or what would you think of a Xing profile picture with scribbled rabbit ears? Half of Snapchat lives from it. (Well, maybe not from the rabbit ears alone.)

As different as the various channels may be in their consumption habits and audiences, at least in one respect they are now largely the same - they become 99 percent consumed on the move. However, mobile consumption also means shorter attention spans, a point that should not be forgotten and is sometimes forgotten when storytelling via social media.