Social Media Networks for Business: How to Choose the Right Social Media Networks for Your Business
Updated: Dec 2, 2023
What social media platforms are best for your business or digital brand?
This blog post contains the necessary steps you can follow to ensure you select only the best social media platforms for your business.
Over the years, I've tried dozens of social media platforms, communities, and forums for my clients and my brand.
A lot of businesses just jump to any social media platform without having a plan and following it.
You see, I’ve tried dozens of social media networks and most did not work out so well.
What did I do to start seeing great results with social media?
I simply cut off the dozens of networks down to 3 platforms that my business profile was doing well.
How to Choose the Right Social Media Channel for Your Business?
What are 3 major factors that need to be considered when selecting the social media networks for your business?
App statistics and usage.
Content type.
How many social media accounts should your business have?
What is the first step for selecting the right social media tool?
The first step is to know and understand the demographics of each social network on your radar.
Social media is a powerful marketing channel today. With Facebook’s 3 billion users, X's (formerly Twitter's) 500 million, LinkedIn’s 900 million, and Instagram and TikTok's 1 billion active users, social media is a goldmine for business and marketing.
According to research, users spent an average of two hours and 151 minutes per day on social media platforms in 2022 which rose from 147 minutes in 2021.
That’s powerful, especially for businesses.
Let’s look at some of the top social media networks according to user demographics, usage, age, and other useful statistics.
And at the end of this post, I researched and included the 12 best social media channels for business today.
First Step: Understand Social Media Usage Statistics to Inform your Approach
Let’s look at the usage statistics from some of the top social media platforms for businesses; X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok.
Facebook Usage:
Facebook Demographics 2023:
44% of the population uses Facebook daily in the United Kingdom.
The daily average user spends 23 minutes on Facebook.
The age range is 25 to 34 is the most active on Facebook in the UK.
The number of users aged 65+ has increased from 2019 to 2020 went up by 9%.
52% of Facebook users in the UK are women and 48% are men.
Largest age group by usage: 25-34 (26.3%).
Gender: 56% male, 44% female.
Time spent per day on the platform: 38 minutes.
Facebook marketing statistics for businesses:
Over 200 million small businesses are on Facebook
75% of high-income earners are on Facebook
The average Facebook Page posts 1.68 times daily
More than 1 billion users message a business on Facebook weekly
Instagram Usage:
Instagram has 1 billion monthly active users and 500+ million daily.
Largest age group by usage: 25-34 (33.1%).
Gender: 51.4% females and 48.6% males
While 36% of men and 44% of women use Instagram in the United States
Average time spent: 29 minutes per day on the app
Instagram marketing statistics for businesses:
35% of users surveyed will purchase Instagram
Users aged 16 to 24 prefer Instagram to any other social media platforms
India has more Instagram users than any other country
Instagram business accounts grow their followers by 0.98% each month on average
Instagram business accounts post 1.71 feed posts daily
X (formerly Twitter) Usage:
Twitter has 187 million daily active users
Largest age group by usage: 30-49 (44%)
Gender: 62.9% of Twitter users are male while around 37% are female
Average time spent per session: 3.53 minutes
Twitter's marketing statistics for businesses:
"A 10% increase in Twitter Spaces discussion rooms has resulted in a 3% increase in sales volume.” according to Twitter
40% of users purchase after coming across it on Twitter.
The United States amounts to 25.47% of Twitter’s traffic
79% of marketers use Twitter Spaces
Using 1-2 hashtags can attract 21% more engagement on your tweets
LinkedIn Usage:
LinkedIn has 738 million users as of 2021
Largest age group by usage: 46-55
Gender: 49% female, 51% male
63% of LinkedIn users access the platform monthly, and 22% weekly
70% of LinkedIn users live outside of the U.S
LinkedIn marketing statistics for businesses:
LinkedIn Ads attract a 33% increase in purchase intent for brands
89% of marketers use the platform to generate leads
62% of B2B marketers said LinkedIn generates leads for them
Videos get 5 times more engagement on LinkedIn
Live videos on LinkedIn get 24 times more engagements
Pinterest Usage:
Pinterest has a total of 450 million monthly active users.
Largest age group by usage: 18 to 44
Gender: 76.2% are female and 17.2% are male
The platform has 23 million Gen Z users
Time spent daily: 14.2 minutes
46% of adult women in the United States use Pinterest
Pinterest marketing statistics for businesses:
50% of users in the United States shop on Pinterest
Businesses can reach 8 million users through Pinterest Ads
45% of users in the U.S. have an income of over $100k annually
85% of users have purchased on Pinterest
Pin Ads have a 32% higher ROAS (return on ad spend) than other social networks
YouTube Usage:
YouTube has 2.70 billion active users
80 million users use YouTube's premium
52% of internet users use the platform at least once every month
India accounts for 467 million YouTube users
The United States follows with over 240 million users
YouTube is banned in China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Turkmenistan, and South Sudan
YouTube marketing statistics for businesses:
YouTube Ad revenue is $14 billion in 2023
YouTube Shorts gets over 50 billion views daily
Mr. Beast earned $54 million on YouTube in 2022.
The platform is the second most popular in Influencer Marketing
Need to target a female audience? Try Pinterest; over 76% are females!
Need the male audience? Think LinkedIn; 51% are males.
Need to target marketers or the B2B space? Try Twitter and LinkedIn.
Gen Z audience? TikTok and Pinterest would be great.
You should carefully examine the usage, demographics, and business tools each platform offers. And how it can help your business grow.
Second Step: Examining Platform's Content-Type
Now moving to the next step, what type of content do you want to publish?
What type of content works in your industry?
What content type does my target audience resonate with the most?
Different Social Media Content According to Top Social Media Networks
Here are the content types most businesses publish on major social networks:
Stories
Polls
Shorts
Reels
IGTV
Articles
Infographics
Podcasts
Quotes
Live streams
Text images
Short & Long Videos
Tutorials
Challenge or Giveaways
Memes
Behind the scenes (BTS)
User-generated content
Recipes
Select 5 content types your business should be publishing; or rather, your target customers consume daily.
Here's how to figure out the best social media content type for your business...
Simply stalk your competition to see what they are doing.
Find and list your top 10 competitors. These could include huge brands, personal brands, or startup businesses.
The next thing to do is to check and see what they’re doing on various social networks.
What social media networks are they publishing on?
What networks generate the most engagements for them?
Are they on TikTok? LinkedIn? Or in Facebook Groups?
Locate their social media pages and see what they’re publishing. You can then see what works in your industry.
Are your competitors posting videos, articles, infographics, IG content, or snap stories?
These could also be live content, LinkedIn posts, or Twitter content.
Notice which are frequently posted, and reposted and which attract engagements.
This will also help you know which social media platforms to use.
Get the idea?
At this point, you have a list of your competitors and also have a list of the types of social media content that work for them.
What's next?
One question I often see in online forums is "How many social media platforms should my Business be on?
How Many Social Media Networks Should Your Business Be On? (1, 2, 5 or All?)
One of the most frequently asked questions is; "how many social media platforms should my business be on?".
Should you create 1, 2, or 5 social media accounts for your business?
Most times, marketers just create accounts on so many social networks for more results but it doesn't work that way.
The last social media report by social media examiner reveals that marketers spend an average of 6 hours weekly on Twitter alone.
Now think about having 3 or 5 social media networks!
You’d have to go on each platform daily to keep it up and get the results that you want but that’s wrong!
You may be considering automation but you can not automate every aspect of social media.
“I can just automate my posts on these platforms and won’t have to spend any much time on these networks”
CAN YOU AUTOMATE ENGAGEMENTS?
Yes, some A-I tools promise this but I haven’t seen one that does engagements like a human.
I mean, imagine sending the same replies to 10 different comments on your Instagram.
People might think your account is a bot!
I’ve seen brands go out of business this way.
Having to run multiple social media accounts isn’t a great idea especially when starting.
Rather, select 2-3 social media accounts and harness.
Ideally, 2 to 4 accounts on social networks are perfect for a start depending on the type and size of your business.
Finally, which social media platforms are best for marketing business?
12 Best Social Media Platforms for Marketing & Businesses
Facebook - 3 billion Monthly Active Users (MAU)
Instagram - 2 billion MAU
X (formerly Twitter) - 500 MAU
WhatsApp - 2 billion MAU
SnapChat - 500 million MAU
Reddit - 400 million MAU
TikTok - 1 billion MAU
YouTube - 2.5 billion MAU
Pinterest - 400 billion MAU
LinkedIn - 400 million MAU
Quora - 300 million MAU
Threads (Instagram's Twitter Alternative) - 23 million MAU
Have any questions for me?
Use the comments section let's chat :(
