Produce a written platform choice backed by what your customers told you and what you saw.
Put three sets of notes in front of you: what five customers told you about the apps they open, what you saw in the comments on competitors' accounts, and your honest count of weekly hours. Those three kinds of evidence are enough to make a decision about which social platform to use. The aim is to turn them into a decision that fits on one page and that you can check later.
The main danger at this stage is still choosing by feel. Usually that means picking the platform you enjoy using yourself. A scorecard keeps you honest because you give each reason a number before you see the total.
Compare three platforms. The customer messages you collected in Lesson 1.2, "Where your buyers actually scroll", should have named at least two of them. Only add a third if you have a reason for it, such as a competitor getting real buying questions there.
Priya runs a maths tuition centre for upper primary pupils. They asked five parents which apps they open, and the parents named Facebook and Instagram. Priya had also noticed two competitors posting on TikTok. They added TikTok as the third candidate so they could test that instinct instead of ignoring it.
Set up a sheet with one row per platform. The columns are platform, buyer presence, format fit, your skills, time needed, total and notes. Score each of the four middle columns from 1 to 5, where 5 is best.
Buyer presence: are the people who pay you on this platform, and are they active there? Base the score on your customers' answers and on competitor comments. Only give a 5 if several customers named the platform and competitors get buying questions there. Format fit: does what you sell suit how the platform works? A cake that looks good being cut suits short video. A service that needs explaining may suit longer posts, or a platform such as YouTube, where viewers find videos through search and also through recommendations. Your skills: can you make the kind of post that works there today, or learn to make it during the course? It's fine if you're uncomfortable on camera at this stage. Module four, "Script short videos people watch to the end", covers formats where you never appear. Time needed: score this so that higher is better. A 5 means it fits easily into your hours. A 1 means it would take up most of them. Use the hours count from Lesson 1.3.
Add up the four scores. 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 between them.
Priya scored Facebook 5 for buyer presence, 3 for format fit, 4 for skills and 4 for time, a total of 16. Instagram got 4, 4, 3 and 3, a total of 14. TikTok got 2, 4, 2 and 2, a total of 10. The TikTok total surprised Priya because it was the platform they had heard the most about.
Your primary platform is the one you post to on a fixed rhythm and check every day. Your secondary platform is optional. It gets content reused from the primary, with captions and covers adapted to suit it. At this stage it never gets a separate plan of its own. Choose one secondary at most. If your hours are tight, having no secondary is a perfectly good decision.
Priya made Facebook their primary platform because parents were asking questions there every week. They made Instagram the secondary and planned to post their short videos there as Reels as well. TikTok stayed on the list for later.
Under each choice, write one sentence that names the evidence for it. To test the sentence, ask whether a stranger could check it. "Facebook, because parents are on it" can't be checked. Within three months you'll also have forgotten what it was based on.
Priya wrote two sentences. For Facebook: four of the five parents asked use it daily, and the two nearest centres get trial-class questions on their posts every week. For Instagram: three of the five parents named it, and Facebook videos can be reused as Reels for about 20 minutes' extra work each. Anyone could check either sentence against Priya's notes.
Next, put a review date in your diary about three months from now. On that date, 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 if someone at a networking event tells you a different app is where everything is happening now.
Your finished page has five parts: your buyer described in one line, the scored sheet for three platforms, your primary and secondary choice, one sentence of evidence for each choice, and the review date. It should fit on one screen or one sheet of paper. If yours runs longer, you're probably arguing with yourself on the page, and you should let the scores 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. Then write one paragraph naming your primary and secondary platform and the evidence for each.
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