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HGA Takeaway: Choosing the Right Social Media Platforms for Your Audience
HGA Takeaway
Choosing the Right Social Media Platforms for Your Audience
Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube... do you really need to be everywhere? We joined a Peaky Digital Business Academy session to find out how brands can choose the platforms that actually make sense for their audience, content and goals.
One of the easiest traps to fall into with social media is feeling like your business needs to be everywhere.
Instagram needs a Reel. TikTok needs a video. LinkedIn hasn't been updated this week. Someone has mentioned Pinterest. Facebook is still sitting there. Before long, you're trying to feed half a dozen platforms and wondering whether any of it is actually helping the business.
We recently joined Peaky Digital's Business Academy session on Choosing the Right Social Media Platforms for Your Audience, led by Chlöe, Head of Performance at Peaky Digital.
The session looked at how people discover brands, what the major platforms are actually useful for, how social media fits into the wider customer journey and how businesses can build content around what their customers really want to know.
The biggest takeaway? You don't have to do everything, everywhere. Go where your customers are and focus on doing it well.
Takeaway 1
You don't need to be everywhere
There are more ways than ever for businesses to reach customers online, but having access to a platform doesn't automatically mean your brand needs an account on it.
In fact, spreading yourself too thinly can leave you creating lots of content without doing any one channel particularly well.
Before committing to a platform, ask:
Audience: Are the right people actually there?
Behaviour: What are they using the platform for?
Content: Can you create content that fits that behaviour?
Resource: Can you do it consistently and well?
Business goal: What outcome do you expect it to influence?
Being able to create an account isn't a reason to be there.
Takeaway 2
There is no single "best" social media platform
It's tempting to ask whether Instagram, TikTok, Facebook or LinkedIn is the best platform for your business.
The problem is that there isn't one universal answer.
The right choice depends on your audience, objective, content and resources. A platform with a huge audience isn't automatically useful if your customers aren't using it in a way that helps your business.
Try reframing the question
Instead of asking "Should our business be on TikTok?" ask "Is our audience there, what are they doing there and can we create content they'll actually want?"
Takeaway 3
Different platforms have different jobs
One of the most useful parts of the session was looking beyond stereotypes and thinking about what people actually use each platform for.
For Home & Gift businesses, that distinction is particularly useful because a brand selling directly to consumers may need a very different mix from a supplier trying to reach independent retailers, department stores or buyers.
Discovery • Inspiration • Research • Community
A natural fit for visual products, lifestyle brands and ecommerce. For Home & Gift businesses, think beautiful product photography, new collection launches, gifting inspiration, behind the scenes content, Reels, Stories, carousels and customer content.
Ask yourself: Can we consistently create content people will want to watch, save, share or send?
Community • Local Discovery • Retention • Paid Reach
Facebook can still play an important role for established audiences, communities, events and interest based groups. It can also help customers validate a business they've discovered somewhere else.
Ask yourself: Does Facebook play a role in how our audience discovers, validates or stays connected with us?
TikTok
Discovery • Entertainment • Education • Search
TikTok can work particularly well for ecommerce and consumer brands with personality. Product demonstrations, how tos, reviews, trends and user generated content can all give people a reason to discover a product.
Ask yourself: Can we consistently make native video content rather than simply repurposing adverts?
Planning • Inspiration • Search • Purchase Intent
This one immediately caught our attention for Home & Gift. Pinterest works particularly well for interiors, weddings, food, DIY and lifestyle ecommerce, where customers often plan visually before they purchase.
Ask yourself: Does our customer look for ideas and inspiration before choosing what to buy?
Authority • B2B Discovery • Trust • Lead Generation
Particularly relevant if you're selling B2B. For Home & Gift suppliers, LinkedIn can help buyers, retailers and potential partners understand the people behind the brand, your expertise, your successes and what makes your business worth speaking to.
Ask yourself: Can we give people a reason to trust us before they ever speak to the sales team?
YouTube
Search • Education • Research • Consideration
YouTube can be valuable when customers need to understand something before they're ready to buy. Tutorials, demonstrations, reviews, comparisons and explainers can all help customers move closer to a decision.
Ask yourself: What does our customer need to understand before they're ready to buy?
Takeaway 4
Think about the whole customer journey
A customer doesn't necessarily see an Instagram post, click the link and immediately buy.
They might discover your product on TikTok, search for your brand on Google, check your Instagram, look for reviews, compare you with another product and then come back to your website days later.
That means different channels can play different roles across discovery, consideration, conversion and retention.
| Discovery | Help new people find you. |
| Consideration | Help people understand and trust you. |
| Conversion | Give people a reason to act. |
| Retention | Keep customers connected. |
Give every platform a job. Don't measure every channel against the same objective.
Takeaway 5
Social media doesn't always get the credit
If you're only judging social media by the number of people who click a post and immediately purchase, you may be missing part of the picture.
Social can build familiarity, trust and preference long before the final conversion happens somewhere else.
A brilliant way of putting it from the session
Social builds the desire.
Search captures the demand.
Takeaway 6
Social media is becoming a search engine
This was one of the biggest shifts discussed during the session.
People aren't only scrolling through social media anymore. They're actively searching for products, reviews, recommendations, ideas, inspiration and answers.
And those searches are becoming increasingly conversational. Rather than typing a couple of keywords, people ask full questions in much the same way they would speak.
Think about what your customer might actually type:
"Best housewarming gifts under £30"
"Gift ideas for someone who has everything"
"How to style a small living room"
"Best sustainable gifts for Christmas"
"What should I buy my mum for Mother's Day?"
For Home & Gift brands, that creates a huge bank of potential content. Instead of only posting the product, think about the question, problem or idea that brings somebody to the product in the first place.
Takeaway 7
Your customers' questions can become your content strategy
One of the simplest pieces of advice from the webinar was also one of our favourites:
Ask yourself
What are your customers asking before they buy?
Those questions can become your content strategy.
Talk to your sales team. Look at FAQs. Check the questions that arrive in your inbox and DMs. Look at what customers ask at trade shows. Explore what people are searching for online and within the platforms themselves.
If customers repeatedly need the same reassurance or information before buying, that's a pretty good clue that your content should be answering it.
Takeaway 8
Don't lose the inspiration
If search led content is so useful, should every post become an answer to a question? Not quite.
The session highlighted the importance of balancing inspirational content with search first content.
|
Build demand InspirationalCreates desire, builds an emotional connection and keeps your brand memorable. |
Capture demand Search FirstHelps you get discovered, answers questions and brings new people into your world. |
This feels especially relevant for Home & Gift. Beautiful imagery, styling and storytelling are part of what makes people want a product. The trick is balancing that brand magic with genuinely useful content that helps new customers find you.
Putting it into practice
Imagine you're launching a new candle collection
Instagram: Style the collection beautifully, show the products in real homes and create Reels around the story behind the scents.
TikTok: Create short videos answering questions, showing behind the scenes production or helping customers choose a fragrance.
Pinterest: Create inspirational content around interiors, gifting, seasonal styling and home fragrance.
LinkedIn: Talk to the trade. Share the launch story, retailer successes, stockist opportunities, business milestones and what makes the range commercially interesting.
The product hasn't changed. The purpose of the content has.
The HGA Takeaway
Before adding another social platform to your to do list...
1. Start with your audience, not the latest platform everyone's talking about.
2. Understand what your customers are actually doing on each channel.
3. Choose platforms that suit the content you're genuinely able to create consistently.
4. Give every platform a clear job across discovery, consideration, conversion or retention.
5. Create content around the questions customers ask before they buy.
6. Balance useful, searchable content with the inspiration and personality that makes your brand memorable.
7. Focus on quality over quantity. You really don't need to do everything, everywhere.
One final thought
More platforms don't automatically mean more opportunities
For a small Home & Gift business with limited time and resource, doing two platforms really well can be far more valuable than trying to keep six accounts alive.
Start with your customer. Work out where they're spending their time and why they're there. Then create something genuinely useful, interesting or inspiring for them when they find you.
This HGA Takeaway is based on Peaky Digital's Business Academy session, "Choosing the Right Social Media Platforms for Your Audience", presented by Chlöe, Head of Performance at Peaky Digital. We've pulled out the points we felt were particularly useful for businesses across the Home & Gift industry.
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