How to find out if you're wasting your time on the wrong social media

Are you wasting time on the wrong social media?

There’s a marketing saying, ‘fish where the fish are’. There’s no point promoting into a vacuum.

It used to be hard to know what marketing activities were actually working. Now it’s easier, particularly if you’re trying to work out how to get people to your website. There are essentially four ways people will come to your website:

1. By searching on Google & other search engines

2. By typing in your domain name

3. By following a link or referral from someone else

4. From social media

Social media is great for ‘customer acquisition’ – telling new people about your business. So it makes sense to use social media to generate interest and build your business. Except...

Except some social media channels are better than others at sending visitors to your website, and your business. Fish where the fish are. Of course it depends on the market you want to target.

Last week some-one I ran a marketing workshop and a business owner talked about how much time she spent on Instagram, creating the perfect posts, choosing just the right photo, or thinking about a reel or story that might work. She used Facebook ‘a bit’ but thought Instagram would be better for generating website traffic.

She had just realised that thinking isn’t the same as knowing. A quick look at Google Analytics showed her that the vast majority of new visitors to her website were coming from Facebook rather than Instagram. A strong message to switch her efforts.

I know that many people are daunted by Google Analytics. There’s no need to be. You don’t need to use all its capabilities – just glance at a few key statistics. You don’t need any technical knowhow to sign up to this powerful, free service so it’s really worth doing because it holds so much important information.

If you’re interested in knowing which social media channels are performing best for your business (assuming you’re using more than one channel), spend a few minutes on Google Analytics. Once you’ve signed up, log in and look at the main men, until you find Acquisition and then scroll down to find Social, then Network Referrals.

You may be surprised by what you find. Or you find what you're expecting which will help reinforce the need to invest your efforts on certain social media channels. I'm interested to know what you find, or if you've used Google Analytics and then changed any of your marketing as a result?