For brands and businesses, social media can deliver a broad range of powerful benefits — and in many cases, they can be leveraged at little to no cost. Just a handful of the business-building ways that social media can serve a company include:
- Building brand awareness
- Connecting and communicating with customers
- Amplifying SEO efforts
- Growing followers and email lists
- Driving increased revenues
Further, for businesses that advertise on social media, the platforms offer a powerful opportunity for them to reach specific segments of consumers with very high levels of targeting — and thereby significantly increase the ROI of their marketing dollars.
Choosing the right social media platform for your business objectives
For these reasons and more, social media has become a tool that a vast majority of modern businesses tap into. In fact, according to Statista, a leading provider of market and consumer data, over 90% of today’s marketing professionals at companies with 100-plus employees use some form of social media to accomplish their marketing goals. But with unique focuses and varying audience sizes, some social media platforms can be much better at accomplishing certain business goals than others.
Looking for guidance on how to choose a social media platform for your business? Consider these quick rundowns of today’s best social media platforms for business, along with which business goals and objectives they’re best at accomplishing for brands:
With nearly 3 billion monthly active users globally, Facebook is the No. 1 social platform in the world. It’s also something of a jack-of-all-trades among social media platforms, allowing users to post comments; share photos, videos and links; play games; stream live video; send instant messages; post classified ads to sell their belongings; and much more. For these and other reasons, Facebook is the leading social platform choice for most businesses looking to reach broad audiences of current and prospective customers.
Best for:
- Building brand awareness
- Boosting website visits
- Building and maintaining relationships with customers
- Generating business leads
- Building brand loyalty
- Creating a consumer community
YouTube
Focused on video content — all of which users can search, view and share — YouTube is the second-leading social platform in the world, boasting over 2.5 billion monthly active users. Further, more than 80% of U.S. internet users report having used YouTube, putting it in the lead among social platforms in this category. While businesses can create their own YouTube channel to house all of the videos they create, they can also upload one-off videos to the platform at any time without creating a channel. Either way, YouTube offers a great avenue for sharing brand-focused videos such as tutorials on product features and usage, demonstrating the value of a brand’s offerings, sharing brand-related news and other content via video, and more.
Best for:
- Driving brand awareness
- Generating leads
- Boosting brand SEO
- Providing how-to and other educational videos
- Communicating brand identity and personality
- Extending the reach of marketing messages
With a primary focus on the sharing of photos and videos via smartphone, Instagram enables its users to quickly and easily follow and interact with friends and businesses online. It also boasts roughly 2 billion monthly active users worldwide, offering ample opportunity for businesses to pique consumers’ interest with posts carrying high levels of visual appeal. And by tapping into Instagram Shopping, brands can set up in-platform shops where visitors can make purchases directly — without ever having to leave the platform — making it a great option for brands looking to boost their online sales.
Best for:
- Driving brand awareness
- Building and maintaining relationships with customers
- Generating leads
- Building brand loyalty
- Boosting website visits
- Communicating brand identity and personality
TikTok
One of today’s fastest-growing social media channels, this platform focused on short-form videos (currently ranging in length from 15 seconds to 10 minutes, per platform standards) is wildly popular among younger consumers. But it’s not solely for the Gen Z crowd — it’s quickly gaining relevance among users of a range of other demographics, too. As the most downloaded app of 2021 and 2022, TikTok now boasts 1.05 billion monthly active users, with eight new users joining the platform every second. And while TikTok offers brands a great opportunity to gain exposure to new audiences, to find success with the unique platform, it’s crucial that businesses understand it and employ it in the right ways.
Best for:
- Building and maintaining relationships with customers
- Engaging in public conversations with consumers
- Building brand loyalty
- Creating a consumer community
- Communicating brand identity and personality
- Reaching younger audiences
Another visually oriented platform, Pinterest serves as something of an online corkboard, enabling its 450 million monthly active users worldwide to collect and organize visual media on themed “boards” where they can “pin” images and links. Users’ friends on the platform can see, like, comment on and “repin” the individual items and categorized boards in users’ digital collections, presenting a great opportunity for brands to gain significant word-of-mouth exposure to new audiences. It also offers budget-friendly tools for brands looking to boost their traffic, pins and views to reach larger numbers of potential customers.
Best for:
- Building brand awareness
- Boosting website visits
- Generating leads
- Boosting brand SEO
- Gaining insights about your target audience
A social channel geared toward business professionals and used in 200-plus countries and territories worldwide, LinkedIn boasts more than 900 million members, most of whom employ the platform in an effort to network, grow professionally and advance their careers. Its audience covers the full spectrum of modern industries, making it an especially powerful marketing tool for brands with a B2B focus. It’s also a great place for brands to find business partners and share their industry expertise, helping them to be seen as experts in their fields.
Best for:
- Driving brand awareness
- Helping with business development
- Reaching a professional audience
- Sharing job opportunities
- Following industry trends and news
Boasting nearly 238 million monetizable daily active users globally, Twitter is a social-networking site built to facilitate the quick sharing and reading of news and opinions. It allows users to post short messages — known as “tweets” and limited to 280 characters in length for non-subscribers and, as of early 2023, 4,000 characters for subscribers — that are shared with anyone who follows the user on the platform. For businesses, Twitter offers a great avenue for engaging with consumers, following and commenting on industry developments and current events, and sharing short updates and links to more in-depth blog posts.
Best for:
- Following industry trends and news
- Reaching a wide audience
- Communicating brand identity and personality
- Getting customer feedback
- Engaging in public conversations with consumers
- Boosting public relations
Ready to ramp up your brand’s social media efforts — and to see them drive more results for your business? The Brandon Agency’s team of social-savvy marketing experts knows all the ins and outs of all the top social platforms for business … and has the experience needed to move the needle for your business and its bottom line. To learn how you can put our team of social media professionals to work for your brand, contact us today.