Most human beings in this world rely much on the Internet, especially social networking sites. Today, businesses can take advantage of this trend to digitize their business activities and grow their brands more effectively. So, which are the best platforms to invest your time and endeavor in? Let’s figure it out with Designveloper!
Social networking sites have attracted a massive number of users over time. According to Statista, Facebook dominated this realm with over three billion users as of April 2024, followed by YouTube (2.5 billion) and Instagram (2 billion). This makes social media platforms increasingly crucial for businesses of all sizes. For them, these platforms provide a powerful way to build brand perception, engage with customers, and ultimately drive sales.
But with so many social media platforms available, how do you know which ones are right for your business?
Here, we’ll offer you five key tips on choosing the best social networking stes to reach your audience:
Each platform appeals to different user bases. So the first step to select the best platforms is understanding who your target audience is. Research where your potential customers prefer spending time online. For example, younger audiences might be more engaged on Instagram or TikTok while professionals tend to be more active on LinkedIn.
By crafting a solid marketing strategy and understanding your audience, you can not only gain more likes on Instagram or views on YouTube but also effectively communicate your message and showcase your business.
What do you expect to acquire through social media? Do you want to increase brand perception, improve website traffic, or generate leads? Each social network has its own strengths, so choose accordingly. For instance, Twitter is excellent for real-time engagement and creating a buzz while LinkedIn idea ideal for B2B marketing and professional networking.
At Designveloper, our ultimate goals are to increase engagement and reach, build brand awareness and credibility, and generate leads with conversions. That’s why we mix up different types of content to keep our audience engaged across platforms like industry news & updates, thought leadership pieces, and educational content. So, we choose Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Next, think about the type of content you excel at creating. Is it visual content like photos and videos (perfect for Instagram and YouTube), or written content like articles and updates (ideal for LinkedIn and Twitter)?
For example, Facebook enables the most creative freedom when it comes to content. Therefore, we often use language that is engaging and conversational when writing for Facebook, yet still conveying our key messages. Meanwhile, Twitter is a fast-paced platform and allows for quick, short-form content. So we often focus on concise and witty language for informative and engaging content.
Maintaining an active presence on social networks requires your consistent effort. Posting regularly, responding to comments, and participating in conversations takes time. So, you should be realistic about the resources you have available for posting frequency. In particularly, you need to consider how much time you can dedicate to each platform and choose accordingly.
Don’t be afraid to try different social networking sites before choosing the best ones. You can start with the most popular platforms and see how they align with your target audience. Further, you should track the results by analyzing which social networks generate the most conversions or engagement. Based on your data, adjust your social media strategy and focus on the most effective sites.
You’ve understood how to choose the best social media platforms for your business. And now, in this section, we’ll discover the top 10 candidates in this realm:
Headquarters: California
Facebook is the most popular social networking sites with more than 3.065 billion active users every month as of April 2024. The huge user base makes it useful for every type of business. It’s because when using this tool, you will be able to appear in the feed of the large number of users here.
Further, Facebook brings all the handy features to users, frequently release updates to remove bugs, and add new features. This turns Facebook into a convenient place for different users. Therefore, your business can shoot at multiple targets at once. Increasing web traffic, generating leads, and showcasing products are some examples here.
Features
Headquarters: California
The moment when Twitter was born, Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg immediately considered it a strong competitor. There are many reasons behind this; however, the main point is that Twitter has a whole different approach and it works perfectly.
Instead of being a place where people can easily connect with each other, Twitter, on the other hand, always focuses on utilizing short ideas and topics. Many celebrities or famous figures take this advantage to communicate with their fans fast via tweets. For this reason, there are a whopping 335 million people using Twitter monthly.
Recommended reading: How to Choose the Right Social Media Platform for Your Business?
Headquarters: California
Instagram is a social networking platform that only allows users to post images or short videos there. Similar to Twitter, this app helps people easily search for images with hashtags.
Apart from that, Instagram is a completely different world. It has two feeds, one is for photos posted by people you follow and the other is personalized as what you frequently searched.
The interface is designed to be as simple as possible but still elegant and aesthetic enough to be one of the most beautiful social networking sites at the moment. According to Statista, the number of monthly active users on Instagram is 2 billion as of April 2024.
Recommended reading: 8 Steps on How to Create a Social Media Platform
Headquarters: Shenzhen
Perhaps, you have never heard of this platform but it is one of the most popular and used social networking sites in China. It even set a world record for the platform that had the most users online at the same time.
QQ can be considered a super app since you can perform multiple activities (payment, mail exchanging, music streaming, etc.) other than just connecting with people. For this reason, it attracts 554 million active users monthly in 2024.
However, since the number of people using mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets is increasing day by day, QQ’s parent company – Tencent – changed its strategy and shifted its resources to building WeChat, the new king of the Chinese social networking industry.
Recommended reading: Social Media Strategy for Small Businesses: Complete Guide [2023]
Headquarters: Shanghai
TikTok is another China-based social networking app that has been attracting billions of users worldwide. A bit like Vine, a then-famous platform in the mid-10s, TikTok is a video-sharing app where users can lip-sync to music, TV shows/movies’ script, meme, etc.
You might feel familiar when heard of its features. That’s right, TikTok is similar to Musical.ly. However, the California-based app was merged with TikTok in 2018. This move helped TikTok acquire a large base of users living oversea, especially US users.
This app became popular in China right after its launch in September 2019 with the name Douyin. One year later, it entered the global app market via App Store and Google Play by the name TikTok. Until now, it appeals to more than 1.5 billion active users per month.
At first, LinkedIn was a platform for employees who wanted to stay connected with their former colleagues. And now, it becomes a virtual place where people network and find jobs or find talents.
However, LinkedIn is not all about networking, it also helps you promote your business to top talents here (most of them are CEOs, COOs, or high-level employees). High chances are that they might be interested in your products or services.
To use this channel efficiently, first of all, your company page should publish valuable and relevant content. Besides, let’s ask your co-workers to connect with the page so that its presence will appear more to the huge user base here.
YouTube is a video-sharing platform that now works similarly to social networking sites. Besides movies, music videos, etc., you can communicate with your audience more effectively compared to other text-based or photo-based platforms.
Like Facebook, YouTube can help multiple types of businesses. If you’re a retailer, it’s possible to collaborate with famous YouTubers, and ask them to introduce or review the product with their subscribers. And in case, you are a B2B company, instruction or Q&A videos would be an incredible way to promote your services or products.
And in the situation that you are not fond of making videos for some reason, using display ads may be a great approach.
Since YouTube is in the same system as Google, so you can use Google Adsense to set up the ad as well, and of course, you will be able to target very exactly.
Headquarter: California
WhatsApp is one of the most popular social networking sites and communication tools. According to Statista, it attracts around 2 billion monthly active users. Apart from an app for individual users, WhatsApp provides another version for businesses.
While not a traditional social media platform, WhatsApp Business provides a powerful and unique way for businesses to connect directly with customers. It goes beyond simple messaging, enabling you to create a business profile that showcases your brand, product offerings, and even contact information.
Headquarter: Shenzhen
WeChat, also known as Wexin, is a Tencent-developed tool that supports social networking, mobile payment, and instant messaging in China. The tool provides a diversity of features beyond just messaging. Just imagine it as a perfect combination of Facebook, WhatsApp, and other mobile payment apps.
You can register a WeChat account using Chinese phone numbers, thereby being under the regulation and supervision of Chinese authorities. However, those registering with non-Chinese numbers can be subject to a different privacy policy and terms of service.
Headquarter: California
Pinterest is a visual discovery platform where you can share and discover ideas through images and videos, often called “pins”. It functions like a digital bulletin board, enabling you to curate collections (boards) on different topics like home decor, recipes, travel destinations, and more. Accordingly, you can save pins you find interesting, and click through them to access the original source (e.g., blogs or websites).
At Designveloper, we understand the power of social networking sites for reaching target audiences and achieving marketing goals. We currently leverage a multi-platform approach, using Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram to interact with potential customers. We’re also strategically expanding to Medium and YouTube to the near future.
But building a strong social media presence goes beyond just having accounts and posting content on different platforms. It’s about crafting a targeted strategy that draws attention, encourages engagement, and drives results. Here, we share our experience and insights on how to effectively position your business in social media:
The foundation of any successful social media strategy is a deep understanding of your target audience. Accordingly, we employ a three-pronged approach:
Once you know who you’re targeting, it’s time to capture their attention and keep them engaged. Here’s how we achieve this:
Timing is crucial in social media. We leverage analytics tools like Hootsuite and Buffer to identify the optimal times to post for each platform. This ensures our content reaches the largest audience when they’re most active. Further, we establish a consistent posting schedule to keep our profiles fresh and engaging.
Social media success isn’t an accident. We actively track and analyze performance using key performance indicators (KPIs) like clicks, views, engagement rates, and conversions. These metrics provide meaningful insights into how effective our campaigns and content are.
Further, we use analytics tools like Facebook Insights, LinkedIn Analytics, and Google Analytics to collect data and generate detailed reports. These tools help us better understand how individual posts and campaigns perform, enabling data-driven adjustments to our strategy.
We also proactively listen to our audience’s feedback through comments, direct messages, and surveys. This allows us to modify our strategy promptly.
Building a strong social media presence isn’t always easy. Here are some challenges Designveloper has faced, along with the solutions we’ve applied:
Problem: Maintaining consistently high-quality content is an ongoing challenge. The content must be engaging, useful, and suitable for each customer segment. However, producing high-quality content requires much time and effort.
Solution: We’ve addressed this by building a dedicated content creation team that collaborates closely with other departments to ensure diverse and informative content. In addition, we invest in ongoing training and workshops to keep our team’s skills and knowledge updated.
Problem: Engaging with a growing audience and responding to a high volume of comments and messages can be demanding.
Solution: We leverage social networking management tools like Hootsuite and Sprout Social to track and manage all sites in one place. This helps us to streamline communication and ensure timely responses across platforms.
Problem: Accurately gauging the impact of of social media campaigns requires ongoing analysis of metrics like engagement, conversions, and ROI.
Solution: We address this by using professional analytics tools like Google Analytics and Facebook Insights to collect and analyze data. Further, we hold regular meetings to evaluate and adjust strategies based on real data.
Problem: Social media algorithms often evolve. This affects post reach and visibility.
Solution: To stay ahead of the curve, we closely monitor algorithm changes across social networking sites and adapt our strategy accordingly. We also test different content formats to determine what resonates best with current algorithms.
Brand Consistency
Problem: Ensuring all content and activities align with your brand identity is a big challenge.
Solution: We’ve handled this by creating a comprehensive brand guideline document and training our team. All content undergoes careful review before posting. This ensures it reflects Designveloper’s brand values and vision.
The 5 sites above can help you a lot when it comes to marketing and customer service. However, there are still many limitations to deal with. Spams, public negative criticisms, costs to run ad campaigns, etc. might be some major downfalls you should pay attention to.
Hey, if you are seeking software outsourcing to build some profitable social networking sites, Designveloper might be the one. Let’s get in touch with us and discuss this idea now!
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