Top 11 Social Media Platforms for Business in 2022

So, you've decided to take the leap and invest in social media platforms for your business—a smart choice!

Social media is one of the most cost-effective forms of marketing available. Its return on investment (ROI) to the business world keeps increasing day by day.

Now is the time to get started!

Who knows... your business might go viral!

But the big question now is, on which social media platform should you invest? Should you invest in all of them? Which social media platforms offer the highest ROI for businesses with the lowest cost?

Top 11 Social Media Platforms for Your Business

1. Facebook
2. Facebook Messenger
3. Instagram
4. Pinterest
5. Snapchat
6. YouTube
7. Twitter
8. LinkedIn
9. TikTok
10. Yelp
11. Google Business

Before we dive into the best social media platforms for business, let's talk a bit more about how social media can boost your online presence.

Why Social Media is Good for Business:

• 81% of the United States population has at least one social media profile, with over half of them having two or more.

• So, it doesn't matter which social media platform you invest in; you're creating awareness for your business. In this space, you have a great chance of reaching customers.

• People don't just use social media; they use it to make purchasing decisions!

• For instance, 70% of B2C businesses have acquired customers through Facebook.

• 93% of Pinterest users use the platform for planning or making purchases.

• And over 83% of Instagram users have used Instagram to shop for products online.

• People not only buy from businesses on social media but also spend 20-40% more money with companies that use social media!

• 71% of consumers who have had a positive experience with a brand on social media are likely to recommend the brand to their friends and family.

• So, increase your customer database even more!

How to Use Social Media for Business:

Social media platforms are excellent for reaching larger audiences.

Effectively using these platforms can allow you to:

• Increase your business visibility
• Advertise your products or services
• Generate new leads
• Drive sales

Things like curated content and following best practices enable businesses to market their services with maximum efficiency.

You can also use social media to provide services to customers by responding to comments and direct messages from your customers.

The best social media platform for business depends on several factors, and there isn't a one-size-fits-all answer. The choice of platform should be based on:

1. Products or Services Offered: Consider the nature of your products or services. Some platforms are better suited for visual products, while others work well for services or B2B businesses.

2. Target Audience: Your target audience plays a crucial role. Some platforms cater to specific demographics or interests, so choose the one(s) where your audience is most active.

3. Platform Alignment: Ensure that the platform aligns with your brand and content. Each platform has its own culture and style, so pick the one that suits your business's tone and style.

4. Goals: Define your goals for using social media. Are you looking to increase brand awareness, drive website traffic, generate leads, or boost sales? Different platforms excel at different objectives.

That said, Facebook is often a top choice for businesses due to its massive user base of 2.41 billion daily active users. It offers extensive advertising tools and allows businesses to reach a broad audience. Whether your goal is brand awareness, website traffic, lead generation, or online conversions, Facebook can make a significant difference if used effectively.

However, it's important not to rely solely on Facebook. Many businesses find success by diversifying their social media presence across multiple platforms. For instance:

• Instagram: Ideal for visual businesses, lifestyle brands, and companies targeting younger demographics.

• Twitter: Effective for real-time updates, customer engagement, and B2B networking.

• LinkedIn: Great for B2B businesses, professional networking, and thought leadership.

• Pinterest: Suitable for e-commerce businesses, lifestyle brands, and DIY-focused products.

• YouTube: Perfect for video content, tutorials, product demonstrations, and storytelling.

In summary, the best social media platform for your business depends on your specific goals, target audience, and the nature of your products or services. It's often beneficial to have a presence on multiple platforms, but prioritize the ones that align best with your business objectives and audience.

Facebook's extensive user base and user demographics make it a top choice for businesses. With over 2.41 billion daily active users, it offers a vast audience. The Facebook Ads platform is also one of the most developed among social media platforms, making it a powerful tool for businesses. Here's why Facebook is often considered the top choice:

1. Extensive Targeting: Facebook allows businesses to target users based on various criteria, including age, gender, occupation, interests, purchase behaviors, relationship status, and more. This level of targeting precision ensures your ads reach the right audience.

2. Advanced Advertising Tools: Facebook provides a wide range of advertising tools and formats, such as carousel ads, video ads, lead generation forms, and more. These tools allow businesses to create engaging ad campaigns tailored to their objectives.

3. Diverse Ad Objectives: Whether your goal is to increase brand awareness, drive website traffic, generate leads, or boost online conversions, Facebook offers ad objectives to align with your business goals.

4. High ROI Potential: Many businesses have reported significant returns on investment (ROI) from Facebook advertising. When properly executed, Facebook ads can provide an excellent ROI, especially when compared to some older social media platforms.

5. Audience Engagement: Facebook's features like Pages, Groups, and Messenger enable direct engagement with your audience. You can build a community around your brand and respond to customer inquiries promptly.

However, it's worth noting that Facebook advertising typically requires a budget. While it provides access to your target audience, achieving significant reach and engagement may necessitate ad spend.

There are a few scenarios where Facebook might not be the best choice:

1. No Social Media Budget: If you have no budget allocated for social media advertising, you won't be able to take full advantage of Facebook's capabilities.

2. Prohibited Business Types: Some businesses, such as those related to certain industries (e.g., tobacco), may face restrictions or disapproval when trying to advertise on Facebook.

In conclusion, Facebook is an excellent platform for most businesses due to its extensive user base, advanced advertising tools, and precise targeting options. However, the decision ultimately depends on your specific business goals, target audience, and available budget. It's also essential to consider other platforms alongside Facebook to create a diversified social media strategy.

Instagram, owned by Facebook, is another excellent platform for businesses. With 500 million daily active users, it offers a substantial audience. Instagram's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, recognized its potential when he acquired it for $1 billion just 18 months after its launch, and it has continued to grow since then.

Instagram benefits from being part of the Facebook family, giving it access to the same user base and advertising platform, similar to Facebook Messenger. Here's why Instagram is a strong choice for businesses:

1. Visual Appeal: Instagram is a highly visual platform, making it ideal for businesses that can showcase their products or services through images and videos. It's particularly popular among industries such as fashion, travel, food, and lifestyle.

2. Organic Growth: Instagram offers organic growth opportunities. Businesses can increase their followers and reach organically, meaning without paid advertising. This is especially advantageous for businesses with limited advertising budgets.

3. Engagement: Instagram users tend to be highly engaged with the platform. Posts often receive a high number of likes, comments, and shares, which can help boost your brand's visibility.

4. Stories and IGTV: Instagram offers features like Stories and IGTV, which allow businesses to share short-lived content or longer-form videos, providing additional ways to connect with the audience.

5. Visual Storytelling: Instagram allows businesses to tell their brand's story visually, helping create a more personal and relatable connection with the audience.

6. Shopping Features: Instagram has integrated shopping features, making it easier for businesses to sell products directly through the platform.

While Instagram offers many advantages, it's important to note that it may not be suitable for all businesses. The visual nature of the platform is better suited to businesses that can create compelling visual content. Also, like Facebook, Instagram may require a budget for advertising to achieve significant reach.

In conclusion, Instagram is an excellent platform for businesses, especially those in visually appealing industries. Its organic growth potential, visual storytelling capabilities, and access to a vast user base make it a strong choice. However, businesses should align their choice of social media platform with their specific goals, target audience, and available budget. It's also beneficial to consider using multiple platforms to diversify your social media strategy.

Pinterest is indeed a unique social media platform with its focus on visual discovery and inspiration. It's particularly well-suited for businesses in creative industries or those targeting a predominantly female audience. Here are some reasons why Pinterest can be an excellent choice for your business:

1. Visual Discovery: Pinterest is all about visual discovery. Users come to the platform to find inspiration and discover new ideas, whether it's for home decor, recipes, fashion, or DIY projects. If your business involves products or services that can be visually appealing or inspiring, Pinterest is a great place to showcase them.

2. High Female User Base: Pinterest's user base is predominantly female, making it ideal for businesses that target this demographic. If your products or services cater to women, Pinterest can help you reach your target audience effectively.

3. Shopping Intent: Many Pinterest users have shopping intent. They use the platform to plan purchases and gather ideas for future buys. This presents an opportunity for businesses to showcase their products in a way that encourages users to take action.

4. Creative Industries: Pinterest is especially popular in creative industries such as interior design, fashion, beauty, food, and crafts. If your business falls into one of these categories, you can leverage Pinterest to display your work, share ideas, and engage with potential customers.

5. Longevity of Pins: Unlike some other social media platforms where posts have a short lifespan, Pins on Pinterest can continue to generate engagement and traffic for an extended period. This longevity can be advantageous for businesses as their content remains discoverable over time.

6. SEO Benefits: Pinterest can also have SEO benefits as Pins can appear in search engine results. Optimizing your Pins with relevant keywords can help increase their visibility beyond the platform itself.

To make the most of Pinterest, it's essential to create visually appealing Pins, use relevant keywords, and engage with the Pinterest community. Regularly sharing content that aligns with your target audience's interests and needs can help you grow your presence on the platform and drive traffic to your website.

In summary, Pinterest is a valuable social media platform for businesses, especially those in creative industries or targeting a female audience. Its focus on visual discovery, shopping intent, and the longevity of Pins can provide unique opportunities for brand exposure and engagement.

Pinterest: A Platform with Organic Reach

While the Pinterest advertising platform may not be as advanced as Facebook, you can still use paid advertising to increase visibility of your posts and track online conversions.

Additionally, Pinterest offers some organic capabilities not found on other social media platforms. Organic reach on Pinterest is determined by the number of keywords in a post and whether they align with what users are searching for on Pinterest. This gives businesses an opportunity to plan their content to include keywords that are frequently searched on Pinterest.

Snapchat Chat: Engaging a Younger Audience

Snapchat Chat is an application that allows users to send a photo or video directly to another user or to their Snapchat Story. A Snapchat Chat sent directly to another user is only viewable once, while a Snapchat Chat in a Story (like your business's Story) is viewable for up to 24 hours after being published.

If your target market is primarily comprised of a younger population, Snapchat Chat can be beneficial for your business! With over 350 million monthly active users and 203 million daily active users on Snapchat Chat, 71% of these users are under 34 years old. Specifically, nearly half of the users are between 18 and 24 years old.

Snapchat Chat: A Visual Content Advantage

1. Snapchat Chat shares the advantage of visual content with Instagram, as Snapchat Chat posts must include a photo or video for publication. In fact, Snapchat Chat sees over 10 million video views daily. Are your company's videos benefiting from these daily views?

YouTube: A Visual Content Powerhouse with Google Integration

YouTube is a video platform that allows users to watch and upload videos.

YouTube boasts 2 billion monthly active users, which means sharing content with over 30 million daily active users who are likely watching your videos.

Like Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat Chat, YouTube thrives on visual content. However, unlike other social media platforms we've mentioned for businesses, its unique position belongs to Google! Therefore, YouTube has access to Google's advertising platform, and you can use it to your advantage when running YouTube ads. It also mimics its parent company as you can optimize your company's YouTube video search by using appropriate keywords.

You can optimize your content by including keywords in the video title, description, and tags to rank high in search results.

Twitter: Real-Time Updates and Live Tweets

Twitter is one of the oldest social media platforms with 336 million monthly active Twitter users. You can send photos and videos along with a limited 280-character caption, but Twitter is best known for its real-time updates.

Does the term "live tweet" ring a bell?

Twitter: Leveraging Hashtags and Real-Time Engagement

Twitter is also great for attracting potential new customers through the use of relevant hashtags. Similar to Instagram, you can search for a hashtag and find other posts from consumers and businesses that have used that hashtag. This means you can discover customers who are searching for something your company offers and vice versa!

LinkedIn: A Powerful Tool for B2B and Professional Networking

If your business follows a B2B model or targets customers based on job titles, LinkedIn can be a powerful tool for you.

LinkedIn boasts 303 million monthly active users, nearly all of whom are in the business world.

As LinkedIn is considered a social media platform for business, people often provide more precise information about:

• Employers,
• Job positions,
• Work email addresses,
• And more than what they typically share on other social media platforms primarily used for personal purposes.

LinkedIn's advertising platform may not be as advanced in terms of campaign functionality as Facebook, but it offers you access to a broader range of job-related opportunities. If your business's success depends on placing specific job listings or job titles, this can be crucial.

TikTok: The Rising Star of Social Media Platforms

TikTok is a newer social media platform that has gained immense popularity in recent years. It allows users to create and share 15-second video clips.

Now boasting 1.2 billion users worldwide with 500 million monthly active users, TikTok has surpassed older platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Snapchat in terms of sheer numbers.

The primary way marketers can advertise on this platform is through influencers. Since it is not as saturated as other social media giants like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, many brands are now using TikTok to reach Gen Z, a market that can be challenging to access.

Yelp: Maintaining Your Brand's Reputation

While Yelp might not be the first social media platform that comes to mind, it deserves a place on this list because of its significant role in maintaining your brand and company image.

Yelp attracts 178 million monthly visitors, including individuals looking to understand whether your business offers a positive or negative experience. It provides your business with the opportunity to preserve its reputation by encouraging positive reviews and responding to negative ones. By doing so, you create an organic sense of transparency and trust between your business and consumers.

This can play a crucial role in growing and retaining your customer base.

Google My Business: Enhancing Local Visibility

Google My Business offers free business listings that appear on Google when someone searches for your business. It allows you to advertise your business on Google search, Google Maps, and the Google Store.

This platform is essential for local businesses to enhance their online presence, provide essential information to potential customers, and receive reviews and ratings from satisfied clients. It's an invaluable tool for local SEO and ensuring your business is easily discoverable by local consumers.

Google My Business: A Hub for Essential Business Information

In your profile, you can share information such as your location, contact details, operating hours, and more. You can also add your website link, significantly boosting traffic to your website.

Customers can then send reviews, upload images, and ask questions about your business. Make sure you utilize every section of your profile and keep your business information up to date.

Google My Business profiles make your business easily accessible to both existing and potential customers. Providing all the necessary information they need to learn about your business and connect with you in one place can be highly beneficial.

Conclusion

So, these are the top 11 social media platforms recommended by our experts for businesses!

Take our recommendations and utilize the social media accounts suggested in this post. We guarantee that you will succeed in promoting your business!

Think you know which social media platforms are suitable for your business but lack the time or expertise to manage them effectively? Contact us.