Social media may seem like a fad today, but it\’s here to stay. Today, social media marketing platforms are the top tools for sharing information and creating connections. As of December 2020, Facebook witnessed 2.8 billion monthly active users and Instagram has exceeded 1 billion users. It is clear that interaction on these platforms is still growing. But apart from being just a networking tool, these platforms have proved to be the most lucrative territory to do marketing in.
These platforms have become a central place for people to get information and engage with others on a global scale, but using them to promote your business is more than just connecting with like-minded activists or reading updates from similar minded organizations. There are many places where people gather and exchange information, and knowing each one of them could be a great resource if you spend the time to learn how to use and navigate them.
It offers business owners a chance to spread the word about their brand, product or service. With the onslaught of social media networks on the Internet today, it can be hard to decide which social media platform is right for your brand. Choosing a platform should take your target audience into consideration.
Check out these 10 social media platforms lists, one must consider developing a presence on and get involved with hot trends!
Best Social Media platforms for Business:
- Snapchat
- Tiktok
- YouTube
- Quora
- ClubHouse
- Tumblr
- Google My Business
It\’s impossible to know in advance which platform will be best for your business, but doing a comparative analysis of various social media marketing platforms will help you make an informed decision.
Facebook:
Facebook isn’t going anywhere; it’s been around for 17 years and shows no signs of stopping now. If you can’t imagine a world without Facebook, you’re in good company. Although Facebook has had a rough year over the past half-year as new privacy problems have surfaced, it still remains one of the heaviest hitters when it comes to social media. Because of this, it’s inevitable that marketing on Facebook will continue into 2021.
Video is the fastest growing segment of the social media landscape. If you haven’t already, then you should try and shift towards more video content on Facebook.
How to earn through facebook?
It’s no secret Facebook advertising works. Many businesses are seeing fantastic results from the platform now more than ever.
Facebook Ads are amazing for many reasons. They’re easy to set-up, traffic is high quality, and they carry the highest conversion rate of any advertising network on the net. The cost per lead generated by Facebook advertising is now similar to that of Google Adwords. This is very exciting news, since it means that we now have two dominant and proven platforms for paid traffic generation on which we can rely.
In 2010, Instagram was a simple iPhone app with fewer than five million users; now, it\’s one of the world\’s most-used social media platforms, boasting over 1 billion active users and more than 20 million businesses as users. Social media marketing will continue to evolve in the next five years, so it is important to stay up-to-date with the latest changes.
In fact, there are more users on Instagram than there are on Twitter and Pinterest combined. If you are a business owner, you probably know that Instagram is an extremely powerful platform for growing your brand and getting new customers.
How to earn through instagram
As we know, Instagram is emerging as one of the critical marketing platforms for businesses with a wide range of applications. More and more companies are recognizing the potential of this micro-blogging site and integrating it in their marketing strategies. It has broadened the opportunities to reach out to potential customers across the globe and that too within a matter of seconds.
Apart from running ads or boosting your post to reach your target audience, there are still ways you can grow and monetize on Instagram. Businesses can achieve this through
1. Collaborations
2. Paid Brand Promotions
3. Affiliate Marketing
4. Offering Consultations, and
5. Selling Products
Check out this post on Instagram for an in-depth understanding of how to effectively use these strategies to make some extra money.
LinkedIn is the professional social media platform that helps users to share their achievements with their professional network. Considering the strong growth of LinkedIn, I am 100% sure it’s going to dominate the business market in 2021 and will become a preferred social media channel for B2B marketers.
It is currently the most used social network for professional audiences. In the last quarter, LinkedIn has grown by 31% reaching more than 700 million members. The audience base of LinkedIn consists from almost 20% of business professionals working for large sized companies.
Snapchat
If you are an influencer, or your major audience is somewhere between 13 to 25 years old, you need to be active on Snapchat. Snapchat has many young and active users who spend a lot of time on the app – an average of about 50 minutes per day. It is the world\’s 13th most-used social media platform.
It is not as powerful as Instagram yet, but it definitely is valuable, especially for brands that want to reach young audiences. If you like visual content and are targeting millennials, this is one platform you’d better start using now. Due to the young user-base, a lot of updates are introduced on Snapchat and it makes the platform very competitive.
Have you ever wondered whether Twitter is a waste of time? Well, Twitter can boost your online presence!
Contrary to the popular belief, Twitter is not just another social network. It’s a great tool for staying connected with your customers and building your business reputation. It currently has an average of 330 million active users.
Twitter is one social media platform that most marketers ignore. The social networking site was created with the objective of providing updates about your personal life to either friends or family but as time passed by, a lot has changed. People started trending the site and also started to use it as a progression platform where they can share their views and opinions on certain topics.
It has become an inseparable part of the online businesses. Twitter has transformed itself from a simple micro-blogging platform to a platform where you can promote yourself or your business across thousands of followers.
Tiktok
For owners outside India, this platform is a gold mine. It saw an average of 680+ monthly active users.
The old saying goes “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” But what if the connections that made your business successful were connected in ways to help grow your audience and popularize your brand? That is something the social media platform TikTok is offering with its massive database of followers.
TikTok is an ever-growing platform and no one can fight the fact that it has huge databases who constantly keep coming back to see new content.
While there are a lot of people who are still wondering just what TikTok is and how it works, the fact is that in the last couple of years it has become one of the most popular apps to date. The number of users is growing at a very rapid pace. If you are not using TikTok, you might be missing out on a whole big business opportunity.
Youtube
Did you know, YouTube is the second leading search engine and by far the best social media platform for video marketing? It’s true. People spend more than 500 million hours watching videos only on this one platform. So, if it were not enough to wrap our heads around the numbers associated with YouTube today, there’s another astonishing number. It’s the fact that 80% of consumers prefer watching videos rather than reading text to make a purchasing decision.
There are a lot of reasons to create videos and share them on YouTube. Going with the most popular reasons would be making your business grow, building a community, generating traffic and getting referrals. YouTube is an ideal platform to engage your fans, clients and audience before converting them to a customer.
Quora
Born out of the desire to crowdsource knowledge, Quora is a question and answer service. The website has become one of the most popular Q&A platforms on the internet and offers some unique opportunities for marketing.
Quora has proven to be a powerful platform for many business owners and entrepreneurs. It is quickly becoming one of the most important resources for high quality link opportunities that\’s broadly appealing to the masses. People trust Quora answers as they feel they\’re being given direct advice from someone who either has their best interests in mind or specialises in the niche they\’re looking into.
If you’re trying to decide whether Quora makes sense for your business, you need to know that Quora is used by more than 190 million people each month. A person spends 2 times longer on Quora than on LinkedIn. It is a good idea to ask questions on Quora for your business. Quora has authority in terms of the number of users and traffic.
If you\’re still unsure of Pinterest, or wondering if it’s worth using to solve your marketing challenges, it’s high time you start exploring more about this platform.
Pinterest can be a great way for your business to expand its reach to a new audience. If you’ve started using Pinterest, but are unsure how to maximize it to your advantage, you are not alone! It can be a little overwhelming when it comes to Pinterest marketing and Pinterest Marketing strategies for businesses.
It’s a great tool for businesses to convert traffic into leads or drive them towards your website. Another interesting fact is that Pinterest users have the highest purchase intent compared to any other social media users.
Clubhouse
Clubhouse, the newest social media platform with an invite-only feature, is proving to be so popular. Clubhouse for business owners is a new social network for entrepreneurs, owners and their communities. It’s designed to be a place where people can get together online, share resources and ideas. It looks like audio-based Reddit or a combination of the popular social hangout sites, Slack and Zoom. But it is very different to anything else on the market right now.
People like to listen and talk as much as they like to text and type. In fact, audio is a powerful way for building trust, belonging, and community online.
Reddit is one of the most powerful social networks, and also the most underutilized one. Although everyone can access Reddit, not every marketer uses it. In fact, a lot of people still aren\’t aware this massive platform can help them drive traffic to their site and improve their search rankings.
Reddit for business owners has the largest audience of any website if measured by time spent on the site. There are currently about 430 million monthly unique visitors to Reddit and it is growing rapidly. If your business can get a piece of that audience, you can get a lot of visibility very quickly.
Tumblr
An unfortunate stigma exists around Tumblr, and that’s the idea that it’s a ghost town. The total number of blogs, and therefore users, is much less than other social networks such as Facebook, Instagram or even Twitter. But this shouldn’t detract from a positive Tumblr marketing tactic.
It’s a blogging platform for original content. It’s different from other social networks in that there’s no explicit goal, but this means you can let your creativity flow more freely.
Tumblr’s popularity doesn’t come from a specific feature, but rather the vibe that it gives off. Users who sign up for Tumblr fall into a sort of club where they can post their art, photography, music, or videos.
It can be used as part of an overarching content strategy — but should still be used alongside other social networks. Add Tumblr to the mix, and you have a well-rounded social media presence.
Google My Business
Google My Business (formerly Google Business Pages) is free and simple to set up. It\’s a great way to connect with people who might want to find your business online. And when you create, advertise, and manage a Google My Business listing, you can show up in: – Search results – Maps – Google business photos – Voice search.
Googling your business name is one of the simplest ways to find your company online. In fact, 70 percent of smartphone users search for local businesses using their phone. That makes it really important to show up in search results for your business—and not just on Google Search, but also on Google Maps and in Google\’s review section, where you can be visible to potential customers.
Conclusion
Which social media platform should you use to market your product or service? That’s the million-dollar question. There are so many and it seems like they’re changing every day. Do you go for the one with half a billion monthly active users (that would be Facebook) or do you go for a platform that gets hotter and hotter every quarter (i.e., Instagram)?
Social media is not a one trick pony anymore, especially when it comes to social media marketing. In your quest to reach your potential clients, you will probably be looking into various platforms and the options available to you. It may seem overwhelming at first but finding your base on each platform can help you navigate this jungle. You can use one tool to cross post on another tool and establish yourself on each. Example: one tweet on Twitter can easily be shared on Instagram, Facebook or Linkedin handles of your business too.
We are sure by now you are brainstorming on how you can leverage these sites to your advantage. The above-mentioned social media platforms are among the most popular ones among businesses and continue to deliver results. These platforms can be really helpful in building your Personal Brand too.
Let us know which among them is the number 1 platform according to you and worked best for your business?