Whether you are an experienced social media marketing or a business owner who wants to use the best social media platforms for marketing, you must know about social media channels. This will help you to increase your brand reach on social media, engage with the right audience, and attain your social media goals. Of course, it is not only the size of social media channels, but it is also whether the social media platform is right for your business? Does it match with your brand image? Is your target audience using that social media site? What are the popular social media platforms for your business?
To make things simpler for you, here we have discussed the most popular social media platforms for your business. Some of these may be familiar to you, others might be unknown to you. It is worth reading about the best social media platforms for marketing as they are important for a brand’s success.
Few Popular Social Media Platforms for your Business
Mark Zuckerberg, the Founder of Facebook has got into a lot of bad press over the last few years. Still, we cannot deny the fact that he built the best social media platform for business. In its third-quarter in 2019, Facebook earned about $17.652 billion and a total of $66.529 billion before 12 months.
How does Facebook generate so much money? Through Facebook ads.
Facebook has more than 1 billion active users every day. So, it is not surprising that it has become one of the best ways to find your target audience, build an email list, and find new customers. But that is not the only thing.
It is a great place to interact with your clients once you have grabbed their attention. Many companies choose to create private Facebook groups where paying clients can join, communicate, post questions, and have a personalized experience with the brand.
And while the user base of Facebook has significantly slowed down over the last few years, there is no doubt that it will be one of the best social media platforms for marketing.
Facebook is the right social media account for any business in 2020 and the coming years. Though paid ads can become costly, they are optional. You must have an active account to keep in touch with other users. If you have enough time and money, you can explore Facebook ads.
Facebook Messenger
While it is a part of Facebook, you must download the Facebook Messenger app separately. It consists of a few extra features when compared to Facebook. Therefore, Facebook Messenger is the second number among the most popular social media platforms for your business. It is an app that permits Facebook users to send direct messages to each other, and fortunately, this functionality extends to business pages too. As Facebook Messenger is an important part of Facebook, it has similar access to the large user base of Facebook and ad platforms. You can use this to your benefit!
Facebook has advertising campaigns that are mainly developed for Facebook Messenger. When somebody clicks on an ad, they will be prompted to begin a Facebook Message with your business page and if they do so, your business page can follow up with them through messages from that point of time. If your model focuses on lead generation as opposed to eCommerce or more instant online conversions, then this may be a great option for your business!
Apart from using Facebook Messenger for advertising, you can set automated messages for your business page. This way, if someone sends a message on your Facebook business page organically, then Messenger will send back an automated message to them.
Often, these automated messages include, “Thank you for contacting us! Someone will get back to you within 24 business hours. Thank you and have a nice day!”
It is another most used social media channel for business. Within 2 months of its launch in 2010, this social media channel had more than a million users. Now, the number has exceeded more than 1 billion users every day, making it one of the best business social media accounts.
Initially, Instagram was a platform for sharing photos and still now it keeps that as its main purpose. However, the platform has grown to videos in a feature known as “Stories.” Therefore, Instagram has become a great way for brands to showcase their products, voice, and values.
It is also a visual platform, as you can just publish posts that include videos and photos. This is beneficial for a business as most of the people remember 80% of what they see compared to what they hear or read!
If your business falls within a creative industry of any type or caters more so to females, then Pinterest is the right option for you. This social media platform has about 291 million active users every month. Among those users, 81% are females. 93% active pinners say that they use Pinterest to plan their purchases and 87% say they have bought something because of Pinterest.
Lifestyle, wedding inspiration, food recipes, unique outfit ideas, how-to articles are few top searches on Pinterest. So, if your business falls within any of those industries, you need to use Pinterest as one of your social media sites for businesses.
Additionally, this channel has few organic capabilities that other social media platforms do not have. Organic reach on a post in this social media channel is determined by the keywords used in a post and if they match with what a user has been searching on Pinterest.
Twitter had a unique marketing strategy from the get-go with a character limit. Celebrities, journalists, or businesses even Presidents and Prime Minister use Twitter to share news articles, stories, and humorous anecdotes regularly.
As far as using Twitter for business is concerned, you can find plenty of ways to monetize the platform. One of the important ways of doing so is standing out from your competition. You must constantly engage with your audience, and add extra valuable content with all your posts.
Based on your commitment to social media, Twitter can be a great tool for building brand awareness. Keep in mind that Twitter needs its individual marketing strategy, and you must plan for several tweets in a day.
YouTube
It is a remarkable video-based platform. More than any of its competitors, YouTube has become one of the best platforms for sharing information through videos. Now, it has over 2 billion monthly users. It has become a place where people not only visit for entertainment but to learn many new things. With YouTube, you can create your own video channel and connect with your audience in a different way. You can upload anything in your YouTube channel like recipes, video tutorials, etc. However, the key is to ensure that you optimize your videos for YouTube SEO so that they get maximum views.
If you have a B2B business model or target customers depending on job titles, then LinkedIn is a great tool for you! This social media platform has about 303 million active users every month. As this social media platform is the best for businesses, people generally include the right information about their job positions, employers, and work email addresses.
So, which is the right social media platform for businesses?
There is no correct answer to this question. It mainly depends on your product, audience, and how much time you spend on your social media marketing strategy. As a rule of thumb, businesses must have an active Facebook & Twitter account.