Lesson: Social Media & Branding with Crystal Lee

Step #2 Platforms: Understand which social media platforms reach your customers

We primarily use Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and the main reason why we use those three is because we've noticed that the demographic we're reaching tends to gravitate towards those three platforms. You have to know your audience and speaking the language of the masses you're trying to reach is really crucial. I wouldn't be on LinkedIn, for instance, if I'm trying to reach 14-year-old girls, and we have a teen program so I would probably be using Instagram most given the fact that SnapChat doesn't really have that same broadcasting functionality yet.

I'd say Facebook does have an older demographic and it's predictable because we're starting to see, ever since Facebook eliminated the college only feature, my parents, my grandparents and my aunts and uncles are on it, and I think that's great because it's super-important to be able to reach them. After all, they're the ones that finance a lot of the scholarships and a lot of the extracurriculars to support young women, so they're important to continue keeping in touch with, different demographics because they all help the ecosystem of the pageant in a different way. I personally am really, really keen on bringing in more contestants because I am an advocate for young women. I am a young woman myself and I think that my message is most powerful towards them.

With Twitter, I think Twitter is more international and we have more followers on Twitter than we do on any other medium besides Instagram. Twitter is great because it's short and I see that people open Twitter more often and more frequently. They might not engage for a longer period of time, but the fact is that 140 characters is really digestible. It's really easy to digest and I think that that's why so many people are on Twitter. Between those three we've been able to amass a slow but steady following and I stand by my ethics that I do not purchase any followers no matter what the benefits are because I care about quality not quantity.

So what's really useful is that on Twitter and Instagram, posting on those mediums will allow for that to be posted on Facebook. So I really post most of my content to probably Twitter first and then Facebook afterwards only because there are a lot of people on Twitter who are not on Facebook and the people who are on Facebook would see what's already posted on Twitter, so it makes sense to post on whatever media has the highest following first so that it's almost a top-down approach because the information finds its way through the internet by way of numbers first. I think Twitter is particularly good for conversational engagement. It's a lot easier to just text someone "Thank you, hope to see you at the next pageant," than it is to do it on Facebook. Facebook has a lot of content. It's a great way to figure out what's going on, but I find myself more inclined to absorb information on Facebook. Twitter is organized in a way where it's easy to post information. I'd say that between the two it's more outbound on Twitter and more inbound on Facebook.

Depending on the content of both media, my engagement can differ. A high level view of the demographics for each platform would be Facebook has more of an older generation, easier to use, its desktop version is very functional, so having it on a big screen makes it particularly great for our older users. Twitter is almost ubiquitous. There are many, many users on Twitter and Twitter is for all ages. Instagram is definitely more on the younger side. I'd say if I have to choose between ages, 13 and 30, and there are exceptions with each main platform, but after having used it as Miss California I see those main separations as making each one slightly different.