Best Social Media Platforms For Your Business in 2021
Growing Your Business On Social Media
Some of the best social media platforms for business, like Facebook and Instagram, have become essential tools in the modern marketer’s toolbox. More and more consumers are using these channels to find new companies and engage with their favorite brands. This is based on a number of factors, including the type of business you have, what audience you are trying to reach, your specific goals, and much more..
Below, we’ve put together a quick and simple guide to choosing the best social media for business in the new year.
#1 Choose Social Media Platforms Where Your Audience is Located
In order to choose the best social media platforms for your business, you need to understand your customers.
Specifically, you need to understand who they are and how they spend their time online.
Ask yourself:
- What social media platforms are they using?
- Why are they using those social media platforms?
- How do they prefer to receive information about your type of products and services?
If you do not already know this, then we recommend mapping out a customer avatar first.
#2 Choose Social Media Platforms That are Specific to Your Content-Type
There are two types of content — macro content and micro-content.
The 3 different types of macro content consist of video, audio, and written content.
Therefore, if you have macro content, the best social media platforms to publish that content would be:
- YouTube for video content,
- Apple Podcasts for Audio,
- and WordPress for long-form blog content
Micro-content, on the other hand, is short-form, easy to digest content.
Think of micro-content like the pictures you find on your Instagram feeds while you’re scrolling, or short witty tweets on Twitter.
Now, there are several different types of micro-content social media channels, like Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and so on.
So, in order to choose the best social media platforms for your business, you need to pick the ones where your audience is located.
Also, when it comes to Macro vs Microcontent, you should keep in mind that Macro content has a much longer shelf-life than Microcontent.
For example, a single blog post that we published has been generating 300–400 views per day at LYFE Marketing.
Platform #1: Facebook
Facebook is not the newest and coolest social media platform.
But the fact is that it is still the largest social media platform by far in terms of users. It has over 2 billion monthly active users, 3/4 of Facebook users visit the site on a daily basis. Half of Facebook users visit the site several times per day.
Here’s a counterargument we hear a lot from our clients.
“I am targeting a high-income, highly educated, professional affluent audience. I don’t want to advertise on Facebook. How about LinkedIn?”
Well here’s the truth:
According to Pew Research, 74% of people who have college degrees and are making above $75,000 per year have Facebook accounts.
Only 49% of people making over $75,000 per year have LinkedIn accounts.
It doesn’t matter what you’re selling, Facebook is a worthwhile investment for your company.
Best Features for Your Business
In addition to providing you the ability to connect with a great number of people from diverse backgrounds, there are a few unique features that Facebook can offer your business.
What makes Facebook one of the best social media platforms for business is its targeted digital advertising platform.
With Facebook ads, you are able to target those who are most likely willing and ready to purchase your products or services.
This ensures that your business gets your ad content in front of the right users at the right time.
Another reason why Facebook is one of the best social media platforms for business is its eCommerce integrations.
Facebook makes it easy for users to purchase from your company through the social media platform.
Making a purchase is as easy as clicking one button.
Now that Facebook has allowed brands to interact with customers through Facebook messenger, you can also provide shipping updates and other order notifications through the Facebook platform as well.
Platform #2: Instagram
Instagram is another platform that feels like it’s non-negotiable.
Maybe it’s because it’s owned by Facebook, or maybe it’s because it also has another 1 billion users.
To determine if Instagram will be one of the best social media platforms for your business, let’s look at the demographics.
If you’re targeting a younger demographic, Instagram will be great for you. 72% of all teenagers use Instagram and 67% of all young adults under the age of 30 use Instagram.
You will also find about half of the people under the age of 50 years old on Instagram, and even a quarter of people between the ages of 50–65 on Instagram.
Because of the younger demographic of Instagram users, there are fewer users with a college education and high income compared to Facebook. Only 43% of people with college degrees use Instagram, and only 42% of high-income earners use Instagram on a daily basis.
Because of the younger demographic of Instagram users, there are fewer users with a college education and high income compared to Facebook.
Only 43% of people with college degrees use Instagram, and only 42% of high-income earners use Instagram on a daily basis. Because of this, some professionals believe that while Instagram is an exciting platform, you will often find yourself competing for “cheap attention”.
Basically, people are mindlessly scrolling on Instagram, and in order to be successful, you’re going to have to be very engaging to capture people’s attention. Ultimately, Instagram is a great platform to reach consumers at large. But, it may not contain the most sophisticated audience for specific industries, like engineering or information technology, for example.
Platform #3: LinkedIn
LinkedIn got its start as a business and employment-based social media platform.
It’s full of professionals across a wide spectrum of industries, especially B2B companies. LinkedIn currently boasts just over 300 million users are active on a monthly basis. So, in terms of audience size, it’s 4x smaller than Facebook and 2x smaller than Instagram.
However, this fact is actually correlated with a major strength behind LinkedIn — it’s the news feed.
Because LinkedIn’s newsfeed is not as competitive as other giants like Facebook and Instagram, businesses are able to reach more of their connections and followers without paying for advertisements.
For context here, because Facebook and Instagram news feeds are so crowded, they rely on specific algorithms and rules to determine if they will actually show your content to your followers.
We know, crazy right?
We mean, you’d think that people who chose to follow you would automatically see your content. But no, it simply increases their chances of seeing your content on those platforms. Anyway, the cool thing about LinkedIn is that it is not as stingy with its news feed.
Not yet anyway. Which provides businesses and professionals an opportunity to build massive awareness and engagement on their platform. Now regarding LinkedIn’s demographics, here are some noteworthy things. LinkedIn is mostly used by professionals between the ages of 30–49 years of age. However, about a quarter of professionals above the age of 18–29, which we’d really say 22–29 use LinkedIn.
Platform #4: Twitter
With an average of about 330 million active Twitter users worldwide, this channel is yet another one of the best social media platforms.
Twitter is a real-time social media platform. It’s like sending text messages to the whole world. And it’s one of the only social media platforms where you don’t necessarily have a bunch of videos or photos to stand-out.
Tweets can be up to 280 characters, which allows you the ability to craft a short, sharp, and concise message. And because it’s limited in characters, it forces you to be creative with what you have to actually say.
So what are the hard stats on Twitter? Here they are:
Twitter has over 330 million active users, so about the same as LinkedIn and once again nowhere near Facebook and Instagram.
38% of people in their category actively use Twitter, and surprisingly 32% of all teenagers use Twitter as well. You can also find about 26% of its users between the ages of 30–49. Only 32% of high-earners use Twitter regularly, and likewise, only 32% of people with college degrees use Twitter regularly.
Platform #5: Pinterest
Pinterest is a great social media platform with major search engine capabilities.
Most people use Pinterest to find inspiration or helpful content. For example, if you wanted to try a new cooking recipe, you could jump use Pinterest to find the food you’re interested in cooking.
While this is just an example, it’s really how most people use Pinterest. Pinterest is full of home décor, fashion, food, and most importantly, shopping.
Now, here are the stats.
Pinterest has over 322 million monthly active users. And here’s a new stat we haven’t talked about on gender. Pinterest is mostly used by women. In fact, there are 3x more women on Pinterest than men.
When it comes to purchasing decisions around fashion, home décor, and so on, women are normally the predominant decision-makers. This is backed by the high-income profile that Pinterest has. 41% of people with high incomes use Pinterest on a regular basis.
And 38% of people with college degrees use Pinterest as well.
So if your business primarily targets consumers, especially women, then Pinterest is a hard platform to avoid.
