How Many Social Media Channels Should Your Brand Be Using?

I sent an invite to a past colleague of mine to be a friend on Facebook just recently and he sent me back an interesting email, which in essence said. ” I only have time for one social media channel (it happened to be LinkedIn), so don’t be offended if I politely refuse, but if you want to communicate through LinkedIn, I am more than happy to”

This was both refreshingly honest and revealing about the social media “avalanche” that invites us to participate and sweeps past us every day.

So this begs the question, how many social media channels should you be using for your company? There isn’t a simple answer to that question but it is more a matter of the resources that you have available, both in time and money to engage in Social Media effectively.

Some of the big brands engage in more than ten. See the Report on the Top 100 Brands Engagenment With Social Media and my insights from the report.

So how many “Social Media” Channels are some of the top brands using?

Company Number of Channels Resources
Starbucks 11 6 Staff in The Social Media team
Toyota 7 3 Staff
SAP 10 35 Staff
Dell 11 Not Available

“So these are the big brands and they have the resources” I hear you say, well that is true, but that shouldn’t stop your company or organisation starting to use social media, because the benefits are significant,organic and viral.

Your customers are participating in these channels and they want to talk to you. Are you listening to the conversation?

Source: Jeff Bullas Blog