Marketing teams are getting leaner and stretched further with demands. And yet, they continue to try to be on every single social media network and do ALL THE THINGS. That’s a great recipe for disaster and burn out.

But what do you do when the expectation is that you are on every social media network and creating great, original content?

Be efficient

The first step is admitting that it’s not possible. And then you need to commit to being efficient. When I say this, I mean you really, really have to commit and get some tunnel vision when people tell you that you’re doing it wrong.

Think that’s not possible? Then get the numbers together. People will still argue with the numbers, but if you have them, at least you can point to them as you argue.

Get your social media network numbers together

What kind of numbers do you need? Let’s say everyone is telling you that you need to be on TikTok, so your organization is there. But the content takes much longer to put together than other networks. Is it worth the time? Track the time that it takes to put together a post as well as the engagement. Are you really getting the engagement you need to be getting to justify that amount of time? Are other networks getting you more engagement for less work? Think it through like that and collect the data that will either back up your hypothesis or prove it wrong. And if you’re wrong, find the network that isn’t getting you the engagement you need to justify the amount of time you are on it.

It’s very important that you’re not just dropping a network to drop it. Drop it because it’s not working for your organization.

Know your audience

The thing is that there will always be someone yelling, “Why aren’t you on this brand new social media network?” Unless you want to keep adding to your workload, you need to prepare yourself now.

Get to know everything you possibly can about your audience. Put together a persona that tells the story of who your audience is. And most importantly, figure out if they are an early adopter of technology and social media networks. If the answer is definitively not, then you can say that you take a wait-and-see approach to new networks due to the nature of your audience. Make sure you educate your boss on this as there are some people who won’t think twice about working around you.

If it’s a more established network, then you are going to have to come up with other reasons to not be on it. The first is the age range of your audience. I’ve found that this is the most likely reason to disregard a social media network. But it can be anything. You could have an audience that values text over videos or vice versa. Getting to know every single characteristic of your audience that you can will help you get focused on what is best for them. And more importantly, get rid of what is not.

Be real about your limitations

I’ve met so many social media professionals who have no life-work balance. Wherever they are, they are glued to their phone. It makes for constant sloppy, on-the-fly work, which isn’t good for the client or the consultant. Taking solid breaks that include absolutely no work whatsoever, on the other hand, keeps you more focused and more able to do good work. So be honest about how many hours in a day you actually have. And be sure to include regular breaks when you’re tallying those hours.

But more importantly, what kind of work are you good at and what kind of work are you just okay at doing? Or *gasp* what kind of work are you bad at doing? I personally know that my strengths are writing and strategy. I can do video, photography and graphic design. But I will pass on any work that is heavy in those disciplines. That’s probably enough about my faults for our purposes.

So you know your time and skill limitations, but what about your resource limitations? Exactly what software do you have available and what will be available if you take on another network? And is your equipment up to handling the challenges of a new network? If you have a phone from 2015 and a laptop on its last legs, it’s fair to say that your equipment needs to be upgraded. You just can’t take and edit video with your existing equipment. And you can’t really edit video well when you don’t have the software to do it either.

Knowing all of this information can put real numbers to what it would take to be on another social media network. So when someone asks flippantly, you can say, “Because it will cost $XXXX upfront and $XXX in monthly costs.” Amazing how much everyone stops talking about getting you to do more work when there are real numbers to contend with instead of just thoughts and feelings.

How do you deal with a stakeholder thinking you should be on another social media network? What information do you share?