Top 10 Social Media Platforms For Business In 2020

Social media is an ever-expanding & ever-changing world. It is a tricky place to be for businesses. But at the same time, very lucrative. As per a January 2020 report 49% of the world’s population, amounting to around 3.80 billion people have active social media accounts. This means that for any brand, a large part of their audience is on social media, making it a good opportunity for the brand to stand out to them. With the right social media marketing strategy, your business can make a lasting, impressive effect on your audience.

But when it comes to creating a striking presence for businesses on social media, a number of questions come forth. The most common & initial of these is ‘Which are the ideal social media platforms for your business? Or How to decide the right social media platforms for your business?’ If you too wonder at these question, your search ends now.

A report by Statista ranks the top social media platforms as follows.

Deciding which social media platforms will be the most lucrative for your business depends on the demographics of your consumers.

Who are your consumers? What do they like? Which social media platforms do they use? What kind of content interests them?

If you can answer these questions, you can figure out the right platforms. But, even so, you need to understand that where there are so many social media platforms available, it is practically impossible for brands to be present all over. So, you should opt for the most popular social media platforms according to your consumers’ demographics.

Taking this into account, we will look at 10 top social media sites that can prove beneficial for a variety of brands. We will also discuss the demographics of each platform’s typical consumer.

Top 10 Social Media Platforms

1. Facebook

Facebook has been around for 16 years now & its popularity doesn’t seem to be diminishing anytime soon. Even today, it stands as the most used social media platform globally with more than 2 billion monthly users. With so many users, almost any brand can find their targeted audience on Facebook. This is why, around 65 million brands of all niches today have a Facebook business page.

Whether you wish to increase your sales & traffic or enhance awareness & connect with your audience, having a Facebook page can help you. From the image above, you can deduce that Facebook as a platform is more popular amongst the people of Generation X & Y compared to Gen Z. Both men & women from all backgrounds of life seem to be using it almost equally.

You can make use of these aspects of Facebook to create a unique identity of your brand among your audience. But keep in mind that your Facebook page is not for advertisements. You should use it to connect with your customers, through creative & engaging posts. Try to engage in conversations with your audience. This will help you gain loyal customers while at the same time increase the chances of your Facebook page ranking better. This is because Facebook’s algorithm favours engaging content.

If you wish to advertise your products through Facebook, you can opt for Facebook advertising. Over 6 million brands use it to promote the products & services of their brands. With its features, you get to target your advertisements to the customers who are most probable to convert. You can also use Facebook messenger to stay connected with your customers.

2. YouTube

YouTube isn’t just a popular social media platform but also the second largest search engine after Google. It is a platform that runs completely on videos. And that’s why, it stands as a chance for you to make use of perks that video marketing has to offer. With good videos on YouTube, you can easily grab the attention of your target audience. It is especially useful if you wish to enhance your traffic & conversions.

Unlike Facebook, YouTube has greater popularity amongst the younger audience, typically those we call Generation Y & Generation Z. It is also more popular among men compared to women. The reason to YouTube’s success if the fact that video content is easier to understand & retain compared to other forms of content. Also, like Facebook, almost any brand can use YouTube to gain popularity among the masses. And though many people seek YouTube for informative videos, one thing worth remembering is that it is still an entertainment platform. To rank your videos better on YouTube, you can use some smart YouTube SEO techniques like incorporating keywords in your Title & video descriptions. If PPAP can trend, you definitely can! And if your videos can rank well on YouTube, that affects your ranking on Google as well.

There are 2 other factors of YouTube that can help your brand. First is influencer marketing & YouTube is the hub of influencers. You can find good influencers of your niche, collaborate with them & create awareness amongst your audience. Another feature is the YouTube advertising feature, that allows you to advertise your products or services with a small video that typically appears before the starting of any YouTube video. These ads are targeted and can help you advertise your products & services.

3. Instagram

Instagram is the social media sweetheart for marketing these days, especially for brands that target the younger demographic. Being a visual platform, it promotes the sharing of photos and videos. With more than a billion monthly active users, Instagram is a platform with immense potential for brands. The reason we say that is because 80% of all Instagram users follow some brand or another. So, if you are a brand with a younger demographic, especially targeting women, Instagram is THE PLATFORM for you to be.

Instagram runs on creative content. So, if you can create engaging visual content, you can make the most out of Instagram. And it’s easy to track growth on Instagram with features like Instagram Insights. With a business account on Instagram, you can creatively tell you, consumers, your brand’s story. Not just that, you can run campaigns & create more awareness amongst your followers about your brand. You can also collaborate with influencers of your niche to promote your brand and its services better.

If you are seeking more sales, you can make use of the ‘Shopping’ features on Instagram, that allows users to purchase products they like from your website. Marketing on Instagram works best for Fashion, Lifestyle and even Tech brands.

4. TikTok

TikTok flourished rather rapidly amongst the masses. Launched in September 2016, TikTok’s popularity took off almost immediately. By the time the September of 2018 arrived, TikTok had already became the most downloaded apps, leaving Facebook & Instagram behind in its wake. With over a billion users worldwide, it’s specially made a huge impact on the Indian audience. This means that it stands as a great opportunity for Indian brands to reach their audience.

But one thing that you need to understand here is that TikTok is a youth-centric entertainment platform. 41% of all its users are younger than 25 years of age. So, it is not appropriate for all brands to try and make a significant impact on their audience here. Also, the algorithm of TikTok promotes engaging content, so if you wish to make the most of it, you need to ensure your content is entertaining for the audience. Besides, though a trending platform, TikTok doesn’t really match the advanced advertising & Marketing features of its rivals like Facebook, Instagram & YouTube.

On the positive side, TikTok is a rather addictive platform, which is a major contributor to its success. So, even though you cannot use it for sales, what you can do is collaborate with TikTok influencers. This way you will be able to reach your audience in an engaging way. Also, it’s a great way to reach out to the influencer’s audience & promote your brand.

TikTok stands as an untapped resource for brands like fashion & lifestyle brands trying to become popular among the younger generation. The only catch is creating content that pleases your audience & if you taking the help of a professional, this shouldn’t be a problem either.

5. Reddit

Though Reddit is almost as old as Facebook, of late it has emerged as a popular social media platform amongst Generation Y. Reddit’s platform is quite different than most social media platforms. It doesn’t run only on visually appealing content, but rather on information & knowledge. You can submit images, questions or links on Reddit & spark conversations about the same. There are also subreddits, which are niche-specific forums. Clearly, this platform isn’t for all types of brands, but those who can figure out a good way to use it, can actually gain positive outcomes.

You can use interaction & learning as a tool to increase your brand awareness on the platform. Try posting questions about various features of your product & get answers from your audience. This is a great way for you to get honest feedback on your products. You can also reply to questions relevant to your brand’s niche & surrounding your own products. Reddit is also a good place to look for content ideas.

Reddit is a great platform for you if you are a Tech brand. This is because Reddit is practically the hub for tech enthusiasts even more than YouTube. A lot of subreddits revolve around this niche. And a lot of time people have used Reddit references to make Tech purchases. So, if you can figure the right way to use Reddit to your advantage, it can be a lucrative investment for you. You can also invest in Reddit advertisements that allow you to post promotional content on the platform, but we won’t suggest you do that initially. Rather try to get as much organic traffic from Reddit as possible.

6. Snapchat

Another trending platform among the youngsters is Snapchat. Snapchat is completely youth-centric with more than 70% of ist users being younger than 34 years old. People use this platform to share snaps or photos to their friends or on their story. It too is a majorly visual platform, thus making it ideal for fashion & lifestyle brands. What makes it a great option to explore is the fact that it has less competition & more opportunity. This platform has the potential to become a trending one in the coming years.

You can opt for any of the multiple strategies to post content on Snapchat. You can use it in a fun way to post behind the scenes snaps of your team. This makes your brand look more humane & relatable to the social generation that you wish to target. You can also use it to promote your products & services on it. Or if you wish to try to something different, you can let a Snapchat Influencer (yes, there are influencers on Snapchat too!) take over your account for a day or a week. What this essentially does is that you get a lot of creative content from the influencer on your account. Also, since these influencers would be previously talking to their audience about this takeover, you stand a great chance to gain the attention of a lot of people from their audience too.

7. Twitter

Though an old social media platform, what puts Twitter so down in the list is its limited audience. But that doesn’t stop it from becoming a major platform to look for better social networks for businesses. With more than 330 million monthly active users, Twitter is a great platform to increase awareness about your brand. What sets Twitter apart is its 280 characters limit for tweets. This means you have to be accurate in your posts, cutting out the noise.

Twitter is majorly popular amongst young men & women globally. A peculiar feature of Twitter is that it is an ‘ALWAYS UPDATED’ platform. Things change very quickly on Twitter. And if you want to make a lasting impression on your Twitter audience, you too need to be the same. You need a social media marketing strategy that allows you to stay updated because here the challenge is to stand out. Just like Instagram, on Twitter too you can rank your tweets better by using keywords.

Twitter also provides Advertising features to promote your brands & products better. You can also map your growth using the Twitter Analytics feature of the platform. Twitter is a great way to connect & communicate with your customers.

8. Pinterest

Pinterest is a flourishing platform that a lot of brands avoid when they shouldn’t. For starters, Pinterest is a place where consumers go in search of new ideas or to get inspired by new trends. It is a great place for creative brands. Like many other, Pinterest too runs on visual content, majorly photos & short videos, but you can also find infographics. There are multiple categories for varied niches.

More than 80% of the Pinterest audience is female & it is thus a platform best suited for brands targeting women. Niches that can make the most out of Pinterest with visually pleasing images include decor, fashion, lifestyle, art, wedding, travel, etc. Now we aren’t just talking about engagement & brand awareness, Pinterest can give you a lot of sales too. Let us through some digits at you about Pinterest.

72% of all Pinterest users use it to decide what they want to buy.
98% of consumers try something new they found & liked on Pinterest.
87% of viewers purchased products they saw on Pinterest.
93% of people plan their future purchases with Pinterest.

This means that if you can rank your products better on Pinterest, you can attract a lot of sales. And it is fairly easy to do so. Pinterest’s algorithm uses keywords & tags to categorize the media on the platform. According to the keywords people search for, specific images & videos with similar keywords appear. Then according to the user’s choice of content, they are shown similar content. With some strategic tagging & SEO techniques, you can make sure your images rank on Pinterest.

To ensure the better promotion of your brand on Pinterest, you can even opt for Pinterest advertising. Herein, your promoted posts will appear more prominently on the feeds of your target audience. With the Buy Button feature of Pinterest, users can also buy products through the platform.

9. LinkedIn

It won’t be wrong if we called LinkedIn ‘The Professionals’ Facebook’. It is a social networking platform that almost all brands to connect with professionals of their industry. This platform helps you make lucrative connections that can help you in business. Being more formal compared to other social networking sites, it only makes sense that it is more popular amongst the millennials. Though it has a smaller user base of only 303 million monthly users, LinkedIn is more targeted than other sites on this list.

Though when it comes to marketing, B2B companies benefit more from LinkedIn than B2C companies. In fact, 80% of all the leads for B2B companies come from LinkedIn. So, if you are a B2B company, you must never overlook the potential of LinkedIn. With the right strategy, you can generate leads for your brand via LinkedIn. You can also join various groups relevant to your niche & drive engagement through them.

LinkedIn also gives you the option of advertising your brand through targeted & objective-based advertising. This means that depending on your goal from increasing engagement to enhancing traffic or even increasing sales, you can opt for a different strategy & target the right consumers.

10. Quora

In more than one way, Quora is a lot like Reddit. It too is an information-based question & answer platform that aims at sharing knowledge. If you understand this, your brand can make use of Quora too to promote your products & services. After 2015, Quora has seen a rise in its user base that rose up to 300 million by September of 2018.

The demographics show that Quora is mostly used by men & the major audience on the platform is fairly educated. People ask questions on Quora in almost every niche. With the right strategy, any brand can use Quora to enhance engagement & drive traffic.

Just like Reddit, the consumers on Quora are there for information & not to see advertisements. So, straight out promoting your products can be a bad idea. Instead, try to answer questions relevant to your niche. In the answers, you can drop links to your website or content with relevant keywords. This way you can promote your brand without being too obvious about it.

Social media marketing is a lucrative strategy for your business, only if you know how to do it right. To do so, the best & rather suggested option is to take the help of a professional like us. We understand the world of Social Media Marketing inside out and know how to make it work for any & every brand. We hope you found this blog insightful & if you have a question or two on your mind related to the subject, don’t leave them in the comments below or send us at hell0@walnutfolks.com. Our experts will get back to you as soon as possible.

Demographics image:

https://sproutsocial.com/insights/new-social-media-demographics/

https://www.oberlo.com/blog/tiktok-statistics

https://financesonline.com/reddit-statistics/

https://foundationinc.co/lab/quora-statistics/

https://sproutsocial.com/insights/quora-for-marketing/

https://www.precisionmarketinggroup.com/blog/quora-for-new-users

References

https://www.lyfemarketing.com/blog/social-media-sites-for-business/

https://buffer.com/library/social-media-sites

https://www.lyfemarketing.com/blog/best-social-media-platforms/

https://www.webfx.com/social-media/which-social-media-platforms-are-right-for-your-business.html