How to mitigate platform risk in your social media strategy

So you can avoid catastrophe, without stretching your team too thin.

The past 7 days have been tumultuous on social media.

LinkedIn had a major glitch that completely throttled everyone’s impressions and engagement. Big-time accounts were getting below 100 impressions on their content.

There were some conversations around an algorithm update — and while that may be true, the doomsday situation we saw last week was likely the result of a glitch.

The fun didn’t stop there.

Over the weekend, Elon sent the Twitter timeline into a frenzy by limiting tweet reading capacity for users — not posting, reading.

This lefts hundreds of thousands of users unable to consume content on the platform. So if you run and brand (or are a content creator) and were publishing to Twitter that day, there was a good chance your audience didn’t see it.

The lesson here?

Platform-risk is real. Your company is on rented land with any social media platform you use.

That said, I think a lot of the fear-mongering around platform risk is overdone.

Even looking at these two examples:

1) LinkedIn engagement, while down YoY, is back up from the engagement apocalypse last week.

2) Twitter seems to be functioning fine now, and the limit in reading access was done for a reason.

As with most issues, people love to be polarized. What better way to spend your life than arguing with internet strangers? Lol.

Today I want to quickly walk you through a level-headed approach to mitigating platform risk. I’s not rocket science. I promise.

Diversification 101

The way you mitigate platform risk is by diversifying platforms.

Think of it like investing. You’re a lot safer investing in the S&P 500 or some other index fund than you are investing your entire net worth into a penny stock (or some shitcoin you found in a Reddit forum).

Having a strong presence on more than one social media platform protects your company in a situation where one goes down.

For example: Say you have a Twitter account and an Instagram account. If Twitter goes down (or the more likely scenario — sees a decline in reach over time) you still have Instagram to shift your energy over to and sustain your business.

That said, there’s a problem with diversification that nobody talks about.

Growing a presence on just one social platform is a time and resource-intensive process. You can’t just ‘wing it.’

And every new platform you add in siphons focus away from the others.

Taking a ‘keep the lights on’ approach to a social platform where you post daily, just copy-pasting content from other channels, is outdated. In 2023, this does not work.

Funneling more focus into fewer platforms will drive your business forward.

So you need to find a balance. How can you diversify your platform selection to avoid catastrophe in the case of an outage or overnight algorithm change, while preserving enough resources to actually be successful on the platform?

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Here’s a playbook.

For early- or growth-stage companies, you only need a social presence on ~2 platforms.

Two platforms gives you enough redundancy so that if one declines, you can funnel focus into the other and sustain your business without worry.

And it also keeps you focused enough that you don’t have a social ‘team’ of 1 posting to 7 different accounts every day.

Pick 1 of these platforms as your main platform. This should be the platform where:

1) Your target audience is active.

2) Your social team has the skills + resources to execute well.

Pick the other as your #2 option. The key here is to pick a platform with similar content formats to the main platform.

For example, if you run social for a B2B company, your 2 platforms might be LinkedIn and Twitter. Both have a heavy B2B audience, and both are writing-heavy.

There is a lot of cross-compatibility. You could take a LinkedIn post, and with a few minor changes, post it to Twitter as a long-form tweet. And vice versa.

If your company is direct-to-consumer, you might operate on Instagram and TikTok. Both use short-form videos, so you can use a lot of the same creative on either platform.

Sure. You could be on LinkedIn and TikTok — but it takes more effort to make a LinkedIn post into a video for a TikTok than it does to copy a Twitter thread over to LinkedIn.

You want to minimize the friction it takes to repurpose content in a way that is platform native.

Your #1 goal as an early-stage social media team is to identify:

A) The platforms with the highest ROI

B) The content formats with the highest ROI

To recap:

1) Diversification matters, but not so much that you should sacrifice focus

2) Pick 2 platforms for your company

3) 1 will be the main platform. This is the platform you create all of your original content for

4) The other will be a support platform. You still want to grow and be intentional here, but a lot of the content on this platform will be repurposed.

5) Ideally, your support platform will require a similar content format to your main platform

Hope this helps.

That’s all I’ve got for you today.

Meme of the Day.

Tech News

• Pay Day: Creators rejoiced as Twitter announced ad revenue sharing with creators on the platform. Some woke up to tens of thousands of dollars in payments.

• Crypto King: Cryptocurrency Ripple surged by more than $21 billion in 3 hours after a favorable court ruling, which may signal better times ahead for the crypto industry.

• The Empire Strikes Back: Leaked emails say Amazon is putting together an AI team to compete with OpenAI.

• Tech Savvy: A growing number of school graduates want to study Computer Science in college thanks to the AI boom, says UK university admissions chief.

What else is brewing

• The World Health Organization made its long-expected decision to label aspartame as a possible carcinogen, but it also said the sweetener is safe for consumption under the daily limit (the equivalent of nine-to-14 Diet Cokes a day)

• Alex Mashinsky, the former CEO of bankrupt crypto lending firm Celsius Network, was arrested and charged with fraud.

• Disney CEO Bob Iger said he’s considering selling some of the company’s traditional TV assets, which include ABC and FX, because he thinks traditional TV is dying.

• Job opening at the Fed: St. Louis Fed President Jim Bullard is stepping down to become the dean of Purdue’s business school.

• Tampa…so hot right now.

Quote of the Day:

“Social media will remain a powerful marketing tool, but it will evolve beyond likes and followers. Authenticity, storytelling, and meaningful connections will be the driving forces behind successful social media campaigns”.

Thanks for reading.

Until next time!

Owais

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