Choosing a platform.

Where choosing a platform begins

The question “where should we run our social media” sounds like a question about platforms, but in reality it is a question about your audience and your product. The same topic on different services calls for a different language, a different volume and a different frequency - and where one business grows, another never finds a single customer.

Before choosing, answer three things. Who your customer is and where they spend their time. What you are able to produce regularly - text, video, photography. And what job the channel does: sales here and now, brand awareness, or support for existing clients.

The mistake that costs the most is trying to be everywhere. Five platforms with one post a month work worse than one with a clear rhythm.

Let’s look at four platforms of the Russian internet, each with its own role, and how to choose between them.

VK: the universal platform

VK is the platform with the widest reach and a full set of tools: communities, discussions, polls, a shop, newsletters, built-in advertising and detailed statistics.

The audience here is diverse in age and geography, so the platform suits almost any mass-market product: from local services to retail. For a business tied to a city, it is usually the first choice.

Its strength is the ability to gather everything in one place: a product showcase, customer support, a community around the brand and advertising to that same community. The ad account lets you show ads to competitors’ subscribers and members of themed groups.

Its weakness is fierce competition for attention and an audience used to entertaining content. Dry corporate posts do not get read here. What most often stops communities from growing is covered in our piece on SMM mistakes.

Zen: the platform for long explanations

Zen works differently: people read here rather than scroll. The format is long-form material - reviews, deep dives, photo reports. The audience comes for substance and is willing to spend time on it.

That makes the platform a good fit for complex products where the purchase decision needs explaining: services with a long sales cycle, equipment, construction, medicine, education. Where a short post cannot answer the buyer’s question, a long article can.

The second plus is that material lives a long time. A publication keeps bringing readers months later rather than vanishing within a day like a short post. In essence it is closer to a blog than to a social network.

The price is effort. Producing substantial material regularly is harder than posting photographs. If there is nobody inside the company who can write, the platform will quickly go quiet. Where to start planning is described in our article on content strategy.

Rutube: video and depth

Rutube is a video platform: reviews, tutorials, recordings of live streams, long conversations. The audience here is smaller than on VK, but it arrives deliberately and watches to the end.

For a business it is the right place when the product needs to be shown in action. Equipment, the working process, before-and-after results, training materials - everything that is hard to explain in text but clear on video within a minute.

There is practical value beyond the platform itself too: a video can be embedded on the website, attached to a commercial proposal, sent to a client in reply to a question. One video covers several jobs at once.

The entry barrier is higher than on the other platforms: you need filming, editing and a script. But the material is long-lasting as well. Why video gets a bigger response than text is covered in a separate article.

Telegram: short and businesslike

Telegram is a platform of direct contact. There is no algorithm-curated feed: subscribers see what they subscribed to, and they decide for themselves whether to keep reading or unsubscribe.

Hence its particular feature - every subscriber is highly valuable and every mistake is costly. Frequent posts without value lead to unsubscribes faster than on any other social network.

The platform works well for news, time-sensitive offers, closed communities and customer support. A separate strength is bots: booking a service, answering frequent questions and placing an order can all work without a manager’s involvement.

For products where decisions are made by business people, Telegram often turns out to be the main channel. For mass-market retail, it is more of an addition to VK.

How many platforms to run

There is no universal number, but there is a working rule: start with one main platform and one supporting one. The main one is where your audience is and where you can produce content regularly. The supporting one covers a different job: for example, VK for attracting customers and Telegram for retaining them.

Expanding makes sense once the first platform is working steadily: there is a posting rhythm, the response is growing, enquiries are coming in. Adding a second platform before that point simply dilutes an already limited resource.

Remember the restrictions too: some international services are banned in Russia for placing advertising, and you cannot plan budget there. The current rules are covered in our piece on the specifics of social media advertising.

How to speak on different platforms

The main mistake when working with several channels is posting the same thing everywhere. The audiences differ, and so do their habits.

One piece of material should be broken into parts. The full deep dive goes to Zen. A practical takeaway is drawn from it and turned into a VK post with a poll or discussion. The key idea in two paragraphs goes to Telegram with a link to the full version. A demonstration of the process is filmed as a video for Rutube and embedded back into the article.

This approach takes one round of preparation instead of four while respecting the format of each platform. It also makes planning easier: one big topic a week is enough, rather than four independent ones.

How to check the choice is right

After two or three months of regular work it becomes clear whether a platform is working or not. Look not at subscriber numbers but at three things: whether enquiries are coming in, whether the response to posts is growing relative to reach, and whether new clients recognise you.

If there are no enquiries at all, the cause is usually one of two: the audience is wrong or the content does not answer the buyer’s questions. The first is solved by changing the platform, the second by changing the approach to publications, and the two should not be confused. How to read response metrics is described in our piece on engagement.

Choosing a platform is a decision for several months ahead, and changing it every two weeks is pointless. If you are unsure where to start, we work through this as part of social media promotion: we look at where your audience is and choose a format for what you can realistically produce on a regular basis.