The leading social networking platforms have experienced a lot of shifts in recent years. Although Facebook remains the largest social media platform, TikTok has had the most significant growth of any social media network. Since its inception only five years ago, the video-based platform has risen to fifth place in monthly active users (MAU). Meanwhile, Instagram has had rapid growth and now ranks fourth in MAU. This implies that the number of social media channels available to companies seeking to reach an audience is expanding and evolving. Also, keep an eye on where your demographic could be heading.
Understanding how profoundly each of these platforms penetrates the worldwide online community is crucial for your company’s social media marketing plan. Understanding additional intricacies related to the platform’s growth is also essential. Choosing which social network your company will spend its marketing efforts on is a critical choice that should not be made on a whim.
Let’s have a look at the top 10 social media sites. You might be familiar with many of them.
The uncontested heavyweight champion of social media networks is Facebook. Financial services, e-commerce, retailing, gaming, entertainment, media, telecommunication, technology, consumer products, and automotive enterprises are among the top industries on Facebook.
While the News Feed is gradually suppressing business content, there are still ways to increase interaction without spending money on advertisements. Facebook reached one million subscribers in 10 months and one billion in eight years. As of January 2022, Facebook had 2.74 billion active members, growing to around 500,000 new users per day, or six new users per second. Despite its enormous popularity, Facebook is not the world’s most visited website. Interestingly, its 25.5 billion monthly visitors are behind YouTube’s 34.6 billion and are wholly surpassed by Google’s 92.5 billion.
- YouTube
YouTube is the original video social media network with market domination, ranking second in monthly active users with 2 billion. The video-sharing network, which debuted in 2005, was initially meant to be a dating service. The creators purportedly put ads on Craigslist to persuade women to record films of themselves discussing their ideal spouses.
With 73 percent of US adults accessing YouTube, the opportunity for reach is unsurpassed. Numbers that cannot be overlooked. YouTube offers a wide range of topics, including beauty, gaming, education, and DIY home improvement. Most firms will invest in this platform, as video is the fastest expanding channel for content marketing.
WhatsApp is still the most potent public messaging app, far ahead of Facebook Messenger. WhatsApp was founded in 2009 by two former Yahoo! workers to display “statuses” next to the names of each item in a user’s contact book rather than be an instant messaging (IM) program. Closed chat apps may not appear to be the natural solution for companies. WhatsApp messages, unlike SMS, are free to send. When you use WhatsApp for customer service and retention, you understand the potential for businesses on an underutilized medium is enormous. You have a direct marketing conduit to your audience if you can crack WhatsApp.
WhatsApp is one of only three social networking services with over 2 billion users, a milestone it will attain in 2020. The app’s current growth pace has been incredible, with the final billion users joining in under four years.
Instagram is a social network ideal for product-based companies, influencers, and instructors.
Since the introduction of shopping posts in 2018, the prospective ROI for product-based businesses has increased more than ever – not only can B2Bs engage with a large audience, but they can also link product information and purchases directly from Instagram. Instagram’s introduction of “influencers” was one of its most significant contributions to the world of digital marketing. For better or worse, certain users’ popularity gave their profiles an “aspirational” tilt, resulting in the emergence of a whole new marketing channel that enabled ordinary people to monetize their celebrity.
- TikTok
TikTok is a video-sharing website that exploded onto the worldwide market in 2017 and immediately began amassing adoption statistics that made competitors weep over their keyboards.
TikTok was among the top five most downloaded applications globally two years after it appeared on the social media scene. It was number one a year later. And by no means by a tiny margin. By a remarkable 250 million downloads, the nascent social network surpassed its nearest competition, WhatsApp. TikTok advertises itself as “the top destination for short-form mobile video,” intending to stimulate creativity and offer joy to its users. TikTok has undoubtedly struck a chord despite being the market’s youngest software, with remarkable growth. TikTok has a long way to go along with its competitors with the support of the number of reaches.
- Snapchat
Snapchat is a great place to find user-generated content, behind-the-scenes films, exclusive deals, and influencer takeovers. The photo and video-sharing network became well-known for only displaying users’ submissions for a short period before deleting them. Forever. This gave each Snapchat engagement a sense of urgency that appealed to a newer generation of mobile internet users.
It also helped that the app broke the norm of augmented reality filters and lenses, which imbued Snapchat conversations with a creative irreverence not found on other social networks. Outside of the United States and Europe, Snapchat has seen some very astounding growth in daily active users (DAU).
Reddit is a refuge for niche-obsessed people. Whatever your hobbies are and where your interests lay, you’re almost sure to discover a like-minded group willing to love, teach, and mock you.
Reddit, which was founded in 2005, is one of the oldest social networks on our list, as indicated by its eerie resemblance to old-school discussion forums. This hasn’t hurt the platform’s capacity to recruit new users, as Reddit has regularly maintained a year-on-year MAU increase of 30%. Reddit now has over 2.2 million parts of the site. These are primarily autonomous groups with little regulation and intervention from the platform itself. This autonomy has been critical to Reddit’s success. Users may build vibrant communities around some relatively obscure issues, generating passionate commitment to a site. With over 150,000 communities dedicated to every topic conceivable, Reddit has a unique combination of material and assembly.
With so many niches, there is a place for every brand and business — it’s just a matter of identifying and entering the slots where your potential consumers are active. However, be aware that Reddit is a harsh environment that will not accept blatant self-promotion. Tread carefully as you begin to explore since pundits are ready to jump in and may ruin a company if you get the tone wrong.
Pinterest in 2020, the image-sharing platform saw a record year of growth, attracting more than 100 million new million active monthly users between January and December. Important information for firms trying to advertise business on Pinterest is that the social media network is still in its early stages outside of the United States. Fashion, culinary, décor, wedding, exercise, and DIY-related pins are among the most popular on Pinterest. Furthermore, anything with a lot of images can flourish on Pinterest.
While Twitter’s monthly active user statistics have been stable at around 300 million for some time, a stunning 40% of those people are active on the site numerous times daily, implying that if your target audience utilizes the network, they’re likely quite engaged. This social networking platform is still popular among tech-savvy users and is mainly active in B2-B sectors such as business, marketing, and politics today. Twitter has grown in popularity as a platform for communicating breaking news, digesting bite-sized material, and communicating directly with your audience in real-time. Videos and photos tend to stand out the most, but if you’re leaping on popular subjects and are incredibly clever, a well-timed textual tweet might still work wonders.
Reid Hoffman, Konstantin Guericke, Jean-Luc Valliant, Allen Blue, and Eric Ly founded the company in 2002 and launched it in 2003.
LinkedIn is a social networking site aimed primarily at the business community. It is mainly used for networking opportunities, with businesses advertising job openings and job seekers publishing resumes. LinkedIn’s user base has risen due to the network’s professional character. LinkedIn has about 560 million members. Every month, around 5.3 million new accounts are generated on LinkedIn. This platform’s typical visit time is roughly 10 minutes.
Learning as much as you can about a platform before advertising your company is vital to social media marketing success. Specific platforms are more ideal for one company than another due to differences in functions and features. At the same time, various legacies and cultures draw diverse groups of audiences. Build a strong understanding of all of these aspects, and your next social media effort will be significantly more likely to get the results your company deserves.
