What social media platform is best for your business?
Social media platforms are used for marketers to connect their brand with consumers, boost website traffic, increase brand awareness, and generate leads. As new social media platforms are created and new features emerge, it’s a challenge to know which platforms could be best for your brand, so here, we broke it down for you.
Instagram is a photo sharing social media application with almost 1 billion active users, as of January 2020. It offers a photo-based feed, two types of videos (reels and IGTV), quick stories, and recently added in app shopping. You can also go “live” on Instagram to show off a new product or grand opening of a location, and allow customers to chime in with questions or comments. People are able to follow your account to keep up with the latest happenings at your company.
Facebook is a networking social media platform that allows both businesses and consumers to connect. With over 2.6 billion active users, as of Q1 2020, Facebook is one of the most used platforms by marketers to advertise to potential consumers. For businesses, the platform offers pages, ads, groups, and messenger to connect with customers. Facebook allows you to create a community with the people who “like” your page.
Twitter is a microblogging social media and networking application and also one of the most active social platforms available with 166 million active daily users. You create “tweets,” or short messages of up to 280 characters, to share with your followers. The platform is perfect for sharing company updates, tagging other companies you work with, retweeting positive customer interactions, and providing an elevated level of service with quick responses to inquiring customers.
Snapchat
Snapchat is another photo sharing social media application that gives businesses 8 different ways to advertise to consumers. The platform allows you to post up to 10 second videos that disappear once viewed. In addition, there is Snapchat’s Discover, a page on which brands can post on to reach consumers. The app is geared to younger users, typically ages 15-25.
Pinterest is one more photo sharing social media platform providing businesses the opportunity to share individual images and groupings of images or story “boards.” The platform allows you to link photos back to a website, reinforcing your company’s brand and driving traffic. There are about 459 million monthly users on Pinterest as of January 2021, primarily female. It is great for small and medium businesses who create products they sell directly to consumers.
LinkedIn is a networking social media platform that allows businesses to connect with consumers and potential employees, but also for businesses to connect with other businesses. They offer InMail for businesses to advertise. LinkedIn is an excellent resource for sharing articles, videos, and photos. It is considered the most professional of the social media platforms.
YouTube
YouTube is a video based social media platform on which businesses post videos, how-to’s, product launches, Q & A’s, and go live to share content with consumers. They also offers a range of different video advertising capabilities and supports monetizing your channel once specific criteria are met. The second largest search engine, YouTube is one of the fastest growing social media platforms with 3 billion searches per month.
There are other social media platforms like TikTok, Reddit, Vimeo, Discord, and so many more that have niche audiences but Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn are the 4 most used social media platforms among all ages and are the best to reach a large customer base. All of these platforms allow photos and videos to be shared and three of them can also be used as microblogging platforms. It takes time to gain a community but by using hashtags and posting regularly it is easy to gain a following.
