You will produce a written platform choice backed by what your customers told you and what you saw.
You now have three kinds of evidence: what five customers told you about the apps they open, what you saw in the comments on competitors' accounts, and an honest count of your weekly hours. This exercise turns that pile of notes into a decision you can write on one page and check later.
The danger at this point is choosing by feel anyway. People collect the evidence, then pick the platform they enjoy using themselves. A scorecard keeps you honest because it makes you put a number on each reason before you see the total.
Choose three platforms to compare. Your customer messages from lesson 1.2, Where your buyers actually scroll, should have named at least two of them. Add a third only if you have a reason, such as a competitor getting real buying questions there.
Priya, who runs a maths tuition centre for upper primary pupils, chose Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Her parents had named Facebook and Instagram, and two competitors were posting on TikTok, so she wanted to test that instinct rather than ignore it.
Set up a sheet with one row per platform and these columns: platform, buyer presence, format fit, your skills, time needed, total, and a notes column. Score each of the middle four from 1 to 5, where 5 is best.
Buyer presence asks whether the people who pay you are there and active. Use your customer answers and the comments you read. Score 5 only if several customers named it and competitors get buying questions there.
Format fit asks whether what you sell suits how the platform works. A cake that looks good being cut suits short video. A service that needs explaining might suit longer posts or a search-driven platform like YouTube.
Your skills asks whether you can make the kind of post that works there today, or learn it within the course. Being uncomfortable on camera is fine at this stage, because module four, Script short videos people watch to the end, covers formats where you never appear.
Time needed is scored so that a higher number is better: 5 means it fits easily in your hours, 1 means it would take most of them. Use your count from lesson 1.3.
Priya's scores, as an example, looked like this. Facebook: buyer presence 5, format fit 3, skills 4, time 4, total 16. Instagram: buyer presence 4, format fit 4, skills 3, time 3, total 14. TikTok: buyer presence 2, format fit 4, skills 2, time 2, total 10. The TikTok total surprised her, because it was the one she had heard most about.
Treat the total as a starting point for discussion. If two platforms are within a point or two of each other, the notes column usually decides it.
Your primary platform is the one you will post to on a fixed rhythm and check every day. A secondary platform is optional, and it gets reused content from the primary with adapted captions and covers. It never gets its own separate plan at this stage.
Priya made Facebook her primary, because parents were asking questions there every week. She made Instagram her secondary and decided to post her short videos as Reels there too. TikTok stayed on the list for later. Choosing no secondary at all is a perfectly good decision if your hours are tight.
Under each choice, write a single sentence that names your evidence. The test is whether a stranger could check it.
Priya wrote: "Facebook, because four of the five parents I asked use it daily and the two nearest centres get questions about trial classes on their posts every week." For Instagram she wrote: "Instagram, because three of five parents named it and I can reuse my Facebook videos as Reels for about 20 minutes' extra work each." Compare that with "Facebook, because parents are on it", which nobody could check and which you will not remember the basis of in three months.
Last, put a date in your diary about three months from now. On that date you will look at what happened on each platform before you add anything new. Module nine, Read your analytics and decide what to make next, shows you what to look at. Until then, the decision stands, even when someone at a networking event tells you that a different app is where everything is happening now.
When you finish, you should have a page with your buyer described in one line, your scored sheet for three platforms, your primary and secondary choice, one sentence of evidence for each, and a review date. It should fit on one screen or one sheet of paper. If it runs longer, you are probably arguing with yourself on the page, and the scores should settle it.
Now do the same for your own business: score your three candidates on the four questions, then write the short decision paragraph with your evidence.
Fill in a platform scorecard for three candidates and write a one-paragraph decision naming your primary and secondary platform and the evidence for each.
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