What Social Media Platforms Should Your Business Be On?

Published April 7, 2022

This question comes up a lot during conversations about social media marketing. The answer to this question changes depending on the type of business you are and no “be where your audience is” is NOT the correct answer for the majority of businesses.
Business man with combed back brown hair makes a confused, thoughtful face while staring at a laptop.

What type of resources do you have?

The main way to identify the correct answer for your business is, to be honest about the resources you have. Are you a larger brand with a budget able to hire multiple creatives that excel in creating different content types and are you able to engage on any platform? If so then awesome, this blog article probably isn’t for you as you can handpick any platforms to focus on.

If you’re like most brands with a smaller marketing budget and limited resources, the answer is simple. Be on the platform that comes easiest to you. If you’re continually dreading hopping on that platform to see results and engage with other profiles you aren’t going to be successful. If the primary content type takes a lot of effort for you to create you probably won’t be putting effort into social media marketing for very long. Not familiar with the primary content types on each social media channel uses? No problem we got you covered!

What social media channel is right for my content creation strengths?

Let’s start with some of the top platforms out there. Here are the social media networks with the most users as of January 2022.

Facebook

Facebook is still on top with the most active users out there. It makes sense as this corporate giant was one of the original social media platforms to take off and survive. Some may say it is dying out and organic reach is a lot harder to get these days, but it’s a great platform for most businesses because of the flexibility in content type and demographics. Many older individuals have a Facebook account which isn’t always the case with platforms further down the list.

Facebook content is very flexible. It doesn’t have a short character limit so both medium and short-form text-based posts are allowed. Both short-length and longer videos can be posted (up to 240 minutes currently). Here are some current guidelines for dimensions and lengths. Facebook also works well for still images and allows multiple images in one post. Overall Facebook is still a great option for businesses because of its flexibility of content types and a higher saturation of the older demographics.

Instagram

Instagram is another social media platform owned by Meta. This platform is different than Facebook because it is led by visuals. Videos or an Image are a must for every post type on Instagram. So if videos or photo content isn’t your strong suit for either you or your product/service this is going to be a platform you want to avoid.

YouTube

YouTube is both a platform that works as a hybrid of a social media platform and search engine. Comments offer some community building and engagement as well as your video content showing up as search results if done right. Many people are also utilizing podcast recordings as a cross posting option for users who want to watch the conversation and not just listen. Here are some other top YouTube stats to know!

Twitter

Twitter is a great quick thought based platform with a 280 character limit. This will be the key to if this platform is right for you. I’ve gotten tweets with over 250K organic reach. The tweet below was successful as it was related to marketers and didn’t take long to read.

LinkedIn

I’m not the biggest fan of LinkedIn because it can often feel inauthentic and salesy. I won’t disregard its potential to reach an audience of professionals and can be built into an extremely valuable platform. LinkedIn is similar to Facebook in regards to multiple content types working on the platform. It is also the only platform where posting a PDF isn’t frowned upon by marketing professionals.

TikTok

TikTok is the social media channel with the most momentum. This is another video based platform, so if you’re not seeing yourself or your product on camera much then this might be a struggle for you. This platform is different than Instagram and Facebook as the organic reach on the platform is extremely strong. So it might be worth the try to dabble in the short form vertical video content if you’re up for it.

Bringing it back around, we suggest being on a platform you enjoy being on and creating for. Because if you’re not active on the social media channel, it is going to be a massive uphill battle for your business. If you have more questions specific to your brand’s situation feel free to shoot over an email!

 

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