Figuring out which social media channels to invest in for your organization can be a challenge, its sort of like assessing your business plan and brand at the same time – who are we and what do we want to accomplish? Just because you can be on every social media channel doesn’t mean you actually should. Here are four simple tasks that should help you decide which outlets are ultimately the best for you to be on, and which ones to ditch:

1. Define Your Audience

What is the main demographic that your organization targets? Generation is a key factor in determining which channel to focus on, and which to let go. Within the millennial generation alone, there are different social media generations. The older side of the millennial generation is the Facebook generation, I’m said to be that of the Twitter generation, seemingly less than two years under me is said to be the Instagram generation, and those closest to the end of the millennials is the generation of Snapchat and other various newly emerging media outlets. Within the millennial generation, there was also a fad of social media backlash, where people boycotted these channels as a protest to not conform to the social norm of relying on apps like Facebook and Twitter to entertain them and update them about current events. They were pushing to leave their phones at home, get out and experience the real world. Millennials are obviously the main target on most channels, but knowing where other generations are not present in a large part too. If you have an older audience of baby boomers and generation X, Snapchat isn’t the best outlet for you to spend your time on. Know your audience, know their platforms.

2. Assess Your Goals

What exactly are you trying to accomplish through posting and engaging on social media? Are you trying to increase membership? Would you like to engage more with your current audience? Are you trying to sell a product or drive registration to an event? Or do you simply just wish to increase brand awareness? You can have multiple objectives as long as you know what your goals are and keep those in mind when creating the content for your channels.

3. Determine Your Content

What kind of content can you produce and at what rate? Not every channel is right for the kind of content your organization produces. While a photography or radiology association can thrive on Instagram, if your organization doesn’t have a library of images to pull from or weekly Kodak Moments, it might not be the channel for you. The meetings industry can thrive on Twitter, since its seemingly more and more geared towards live tweeting from events with relative hashtags and attaching event photos. Snapchat is also great for the meetings industry, with Geofilters and Event filters becoming easier and more economical to produce for events.

4. Keep A Uniform Voice

Who is in charge of your social media accounts? If it is more than one person, you need to be careful in keeping the same uniform tone throughout all of your posts and channels. You want to make sure the audience is only getting the one true voice or your organization across the board. Different tones and personas can ruin the brand image that your member base has in their head of you. Reinforce your brand, after all that’s the key to marketing overall.

Happy posting!