---
title: Where You Should Actually Be
summary: How to choose the one social platform that actually fits your customer, capacity, and revenue model.
est_minutes: 6
sort: 1
---

The most common social media mistake business owners make is trying to be everywhere.

Instagram. LinkedIn. TikTok. Facebook. YouTube. X. Threads.

They create accounts on all of them, post inconsistently on most of them, and produce nothing substantial on any of them.

The result is a scattered presence that does not build anything. No audience, no momentum, no measurable contribution to revenue. Just the persistent guilt of platforms they are not showing up on.

The problem is not a content problem. It is a strategy problem.

Every hour spent on a platform that does not reach your customer is an hour not spent on the one that does.

Platform strategy is the work of deciding where to focus before you produce a single piece of content. And it starts with three questions: where is your customer, what can you realistically produce, and what does your business model require?

**Why Owners Choose The Wrong Platform**

Business owners choose platforms for three bad reasons.

First: they choose where they personally spend time. If the owner is on Instagram, the business is on Instagram. But the owner's personal consumption habits and the customer's discovery behavior are rarely the same thing.

Second: they chase what is growing. TikTok is growing, so they start a TikTok. Threads launched, so they claimed a Threads handle. New platforms attract attention, but attention is not audience. Building on a new platform before your customer is established there means building in a location that does not yet serve the business.

Third: they follow what competitors are doing. If the competitor has a YouTube channel, the assumption is that YouTube must be working. But competitor presence does not indicate competitor results. Most businesses are as lost on social media as you are.

None of these reasons are wrong in every case. But none of them are the right starting point. The right starting point is the customer.

**The Three Factors That Drive Selection**

Platform selection should be driven by three factors. Each one filters the field.

Factor one: Customer location.

Where does your ideal customer spend time online? Not where they might be. Where you have evidence they are. This comes from your customer profile work. What is the age range? What is their professional or consumer context? What type of content do they consume?

A B2B operator selling to small business owners will find more of their customer on LinkedIn than on TikTok. A product-based consumer brand selling to women aged 25 to 40 will find more of their customer on Instagram than on LinkedIn. The customer profile determines where to look, not the platform's overall size.

Factor two: Content capacity.

What can you realistically produce, consistently, given your current time and resources?

Short-form video requires a face, a camera, and the willingness to be on screen regularly. Long-form written content requires time, writing skill, and a subject matter depth that not every business owner has in content-ready form. Audio-first content requires a consistent recording environment. Static graphics require design capability or a simple repeatable template system.

The platform that requires content you cannot produce consistently is the wrong platform for you right now, regardless of how well it performs for someone else.

Factor three: Revenue model alignment.

Different platforms drive different types of business outcomes. LinkedIn drives B2B awareness and professional credibility. Instagram drives brand familiarity and consumer discovery. YouTube drives deep trust through long-form educational content and has the strongest search-driven inbound behavior of any social platform. TikTok drives mass reach but with lower intent per viewer than search-driven platforms.

Match the platform's behavioral profile to your revenue model. A business that converts on trust and education needs a trust-building platform. A business that converts on discovery and impulse needs a discovery platform.

**Master One Before You Expand**

Once the three factors point to a primary platform, the rule is simple.

Master one platform before expanding to a second.

Mastery means posting consistently for 90 days, understanding the platform's algorithm and content format preferences, building an initial audience, and identifying which content types are generating the engagement and reach that matter.

Most business owners who fail at social media fail because they divide their effort across too many platforms before they have mastered any of them. They produce mediocre content everywhere rather than strong content somewhere.

A secondary platform makes sense when three things are true:

1. You are posting consistently on the primary platform without it feeling like a struggle.
2. You have a clear content repurposing path from primary to secondary, so the secondary does not require original production.
3. You have evidence that your customer exists on the secondary platform.

The expansion decision is not based on ambition. It is based on operational capacity.

**Your Action Step**

Use the Platform Selection Decision Matrix to score your top platform candidates against the three factors: customer location, content capacity, and revenue model alignment. It also includes a current presence audit so you can assess what you are already doing before deciding what to change or stop.

Choose the platform. Then build the plan.
