Match a buyer to the platforms they are most likely to use, based on evidence about that buyer and ignoring trends.
Choose your social media platforms by first working out where your buyer already spends time, and only then deciding where to post. Plenty of small businesses do it the other way round: they pick whichever app everyone is talking about this year and hope to find buyers on it. That is the most common platform mistake a small business makes, and it is easy to see once you watch it happen to someone.
Mei Ling (an invented example), who you first met in Digital marketing foundations, makes custom birthday cakes in her Punggol flat. Last year a friend told her TikTok was where everyone was now. She set up an account and put up twelve videos in a month. Some of them got decent views, mostly from teenagers leaving comments about the frosting, but not one of those viewers ordered a cake. The people who order from her are mostly parents planning a party for their child, and those parents were spending their time on other platforms.
Once she thought honestly about her buyer, she pictured a parent in their thirties with a party coming up in a few weeks. This parent saves photos of cakes on Instagram, asks a parents' group on Facebook or WhatsApp for recommendations, and now and then watches short videos late at night once the kids are in bed. TikTok did appear in that picture. The decisions to buy happened on Instagram and in the parents' groups.
Go back to the buyer you described in Digital marketing foundations. Your buyer is a person narrow enough to picture, with a problem your business solves. Find out two things about that person: where they already spend time, and what mood they are in when they open each app. Whether a platform is growing tells you neither.
Mood counts for as much as presence. Someone opens LinkedIn on a weekday between meetings, with work on their mind. They open TikTok on the MRT home because they want to be entertained. On a Saturday they search YouTube to learn how to do something. They scroll the Facebook group for their estate to find out who sells good kueh nearby. The same person might do all four in one day, and each time they are ready for a different sort of post.
Treat the notes below as a broad sketch. Platforms keep changing their features and who uses them, so test each note against the evidence you gather yourself.
TikTok shows each viewer a feed of short videos picked for them, a lot of it from accounts they don't follow. Most people go there to be entertained, and its users have tended to skew younger than Facebook's. Instagram combines photos, carousels, Reels and Stories. People use it to keep up with friends and also to browse brands, food and places. YouTube works as a search engine as well. Viewers come with a question and stay for the answer. Shorts run next to longer videos, and a longer video can go on picking up views for years. Facebook has an older audience. Its groups and local communities are where it is strongest, which counts if you sell to parents or to people living in one estate. LinkedIn is the place people go to think about work. It fits a B2B consultant, a recruiter, or a financial adviser building a professional profile.
None of this tells you where your buyer is. It tells you what sort of post each platform expects. For audience details, go to each platform's own business help pages, which change as the platforms do, and don't rely on a chart that has been circulating for two years.
Your best evidence is free. Ask five customers, or five people who fit your buyer, which apps they open every day and which accounts they follow for products like yours. Five replies won't add up to a statistic, but a pattern often shows up. Because the answers come from your own buyers, they tell you more than any survey of Singapore users in general.
Make the question short and specific, and ask about what people do. "Which app do you think a bakery should use?" asks for an opinion, so you get a guess. "Where did you last see a cake you wanted?" asks about behaviour, so you get a fact.
Mei Ling sent five past customers this on WhatsApp: "Quick question for a small project. Which two apps do you open most days, and do you follow any cake or baking accounts? Where?" Four of them listed Instagram among their two apps. Three brought up a Facebook parents' group. One answered TikTok, but used it for fun and had never bought anything seen there. Asking took her one afternoon, and it spared her another month of posting where her buyers weren't.
Your second source is what businesses like yours already get on their accounts. Pick three or four accounts in your category in Singapore, either competitors or similar businesses in a different neighbourhood, and go through every platform each one uses.
Skip the follower counts and the likes, and read the comments. Real comments sound like a buyer and come from someone near a purchase: "Do you deliver to Sengkang?", "How many days in advance do I need to order?", "Can this be made eggless?" Replies made only of emojis, or general praise from accounts with no posts of their own, tell you very little. Suppose a competitor's Instagram is full of delivery questions while its TikTok is full of strangers writing "so satisfying". Its buyers are asking their questions on Instagram.
Priya, who runs the maths tuition centre from Content and copywriting, went through the accounts of four centres near her. On their Facebook pages, parents were asking about class timings and trial lessons. On TikTok, for the centres that had an account, students were joking around in the comments. Both platforms have a use for those centres, but the people who pay are on Facebook.
When you compare accounts, look for the platform where buyers ask questions close to buying, and set that beside what your five people told you.
Your activity follows straight from this. You will put Mei Ling's question, in your own words, to five people who match your buyer, and write down exactly what they say.
Message five customers, or people like your buyer, and ask which two apps they use most and which accounts they follow for your category.
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