Step 6: Choose your social media platforms

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Step 5: Research your competitors
Analyzing your competitors' social media activity provides insights into what works and what doesn't. This is an especially important step if you didn’t previously have a strategy in place during your audit. Competitor data can be just as important.

During this step, you’ll want to identify the platforms they use, the israel girl whatsapp number content formats they use and any major content themes you can identify, and what resonates with their audience (which you can identify via visible engagement metrics). By reviewing comments, you can also uncover common pain points, FAQs, and opportunities to better serve your audience.

Put together a benchmarking analysis as well so you can see how you line up with your competitors. You can do this in a spreadsheet by listing out data like:

Top performing post types and formats
Platforms with the highest engagement
Follower count
Average engagement
You’ll also want to pay attention to how your current social media presence compares to your competitors. Do you have more or fewer followers? More or less engagement? Do you share similar types of posts? What can you do to improve your performance? This will help you identify gaps — platforms, post types, content formats, etc. that your competitors aren't using but that your target audience is interested in.



Next, you need to select the social media platforms that will be best for your business. Here’s how to hone in on the right platforms:

Look at what your competitors are using: Are there certain platforms that all of your competitors appear to use? Those might align well with your audience.
Evaluate platform demographics: Compare the demographics of major platforms to your target audience to make sure they align.
Consider your industry: Which platforms are most relevant? Visual and ecommerce businesses may gravitate towards platforms like Instagram and Pinterest while B2B companies can benefit directly from LinkedIn.
Assess content formats on each platform: Identify the content types that perform best on each platform (i.e., short videos on TikTok, image posts on Instagram) and determine which formats make the most sense for your business and content ideas.
Focus on quality over quantity: You don’t need to be on every platform. Choose fewer platforms for better engagement versus trying to have a presence on all platforms. This will also allow you to tailor content for each platform instead of repurposing everything universally.
While there are many overlapping qualities between platforms, each one is particularly strong for a particular use case. Here's a brief look at what those are for the major social media platforms.