Best Social Media Sites for Small Businesses

Social media can play a significant part in your business' growth. Not only can it help you strengthen brand recognition, it can also generate leads and help you engage with your audience. You can also gain valuable insights through low-cost, targeted advertising. Choosing the best social media platform to grow your business doesn't have to be complicated. Just keep your goals and target market in mind when choosing the one for you.

What is Social Media Marketing

This is essentially putting out ads on social media platforms or making posts on your business page (known as organic posts). Each platform has different paid advertising options, abilities, and costs, but most will allow you to put out an ad with a video or other visual content and will show that content to your target audience. This can drive traffic to your website or store and lead to higher sales, and it is cheaper than other forms of digital advertising when you compare the number of people you can reach for the same price.

Why Does Social Media Marketing Work

The short answer is connection and direct interaction. Marketing through social media allows you to experiment with what resonates for different people any way you group them together (age, location, etc.). Just about everyone is on at least one social media site, and on average, people around the world spend about two and a half hours on those sites, making for a captive audience when you advertise there. Social media allows you to generate leads, build brand awareness, and engage with customers in a way that isn't possible on other sites. This two-way communication is like a digital version of your store where customers can interact with your business and each other to talk about your products and services. Plus, tracking metrics for various data points makes it easy to see what's working where and which direction you should lean for future content.

Best Way to Use Social Media for Small Business

There is no one-size-fits-all plan; you'll need to define your specific goals and your target audience to determine how often you should post on social media. To make things more interesting, each platform has its own algorithm that pushes posts to more people and determines how paid posts are treated in users' news feeds. Generally, you'll want to post at least two to three times per week at minimum, paying particular attention to any trends or hashtags to get your posts the most attention possible. Feel free to experiment here since you'll have access to data analytics on each platform and see how people interact with your posts. You can see which are performing the best so you know which direction to take moving forward. Don't forget to pay attention to what your customers are paying attention to! That information can also help you understand where trends are headed and adjust your strategy or improve your product line. Know your audience, align to key business goals, and create content tailored to each platform you utilize. Lastly, always leverage user-generated content when you can to build your reputation and boost engagement with your audience.

Remember, engaging with customers means more than just posting content. Interact with your followers and customers through comments, likes, shares, and more—get creative! Host live videos, giveaways, and Q&A sessions to help you develop personal connections and, in the end, bolster sales. Keep a strict policy to respond to messages and comments in a timely manner, within 24 hours at the most. Social media is about two-way communication, so have a plan to respond to inquiries from followers. Think of it as someone standing in front of you in your store. You wouldn't leave someone waiting for a response for hours, so you shouldn't make someone online wait longer than necessary.

Top Social Media Platforms for Small Businesses Depending on Your Target Audience

• Facebook: Easily the most-used social media site, Facebook is a highly versatile platform for any business, offering robust advertising options, audience targeting capabilities, and multiple content formats (photo, video, stories, etc.). As far as best practices go, just create engaging content that will resonate with your audience and leverage Facebook insights to improve and drive your marketing efforts; keep in mind that posts with the highest engagement are image posts. The people that use Facebook span all ages, but almost half of users are millennials, with Gen Z as the second largest group. About 20% of users are between the ages of 18 and 24.
• X: Their fast-paced environment makes it an excellent choice to share real-time updates or industry news while engaging in conversations. It can be used for customer conversations (no sensitive information, of course) and to build a brand personality. It can be a great avenue to consider for short posts that you want customers to share or comment on, especially if you use hashtags (which you should). To be relevant on X, you'll need to post 2-3 times a day and pay close attention to trending hashtags. Generally, there are 225 million daily active users, with 60% of all users being male and 40% female (only 8% have a favorable opinion of the platform, though). Just about 40% of users are between 25-34, and 25% are under 25. Users are more likely to live in urban or suburban areas, with most users residing in the U.S.
• Instagram: Ideal for businesses with strong visual content, like fashion, food, and lifestyle brands. With over a billion users, find features like reels, stories, shopping tags, and more. This makes it easy to creatively showcase products and services that drive engagement. Regarding Instagram demographics, over 60% are 18-34, and over half of users have an annual income higher than $75,000. About half live in urban or suburban areas, and, as far as interests, they change with the trends. Best practice is to post content often (3-5 per week) and make them visually appealing, on trend, and engaging.
• TikTok: No other social media site has grown faster than TikTok. Its fast-paced short-form videos are great for posting creative content, with a diversified audience that skews younger than other platforms. Their algorithm favors engaging content, allowing businesses the opportunity to go viral and reach millions of viewers with original campaigns. TikTok users skew younger, and 29% of all users open the app daily. Make your videos short, entertaining, and educational if you can. Bonus points if you show behind-the-scenes content! As far as how often you should be posting videos, gaining traction can take a while, and 1-4 posted videos per day is recommended.
• LinkedIn: For professional services and B2B businesses, LinkedIn is the best platform to be on. With over 700 million users across multiple fields, you can find and create posts about networking, industry news, and business-related content. LinkedIn allows you to establish thought leadership through posts and articles, connect with decision-makers, and follow and participate in related groups. Advertising options are tailored for lead generation and, of course, target specific job titles or industries. When posting (ideally at least one a day), demonstrate your industry expertise to become a thought leader in your space. This will help with recruitment, talent acquisition, professional connections, and much more. Like most other social platforms, users are split about half and half between women and men, and about 30% of all U.S. adults (60% of users are 25-34 years old) have and use their profile. Those most likely to use LinkedIn hold degrees or other higher education, with about 32% having a Master's or Doctorate degree. When posting, you can set location and job title targeting, along with others, to really hone in on your audience for effective marketing.
• YouTube: This video platform has enormous business opportunities to share storytelling content. Create tutorials, product demos, behind-the-scenes footage, and more to entertain and educate. You can also monetize your channel to generate revenue and promote your brand through ads and sponsorships. You'll want to create content that's valuable to your audience and high quality, with optimized descriptions, tags, and titles that will drive your videos to the top of the search rankings. How that's done depends on the algorithm in use when you post (shoot for once a week, minimum), and you can view how your videos are performing with YouTube analytics. Every time, try to encourage user interaction and engagement by asking for comments and subscriptions. To really target your videos, find out the other videos your audience is watching to improve your own. You can use social listening tools or YouTube Analytics to do this. So, who uses YouTube? It's pretty evenly split between genders and remains popular with all ages, with the largest number of users aged 18-49. A staggering 62% of internet users access YouTube every day, and about half of watch time is done on a mobile device. Watch time is split pretty evenly between all ages. In summation, your audience is probably using YouTube regularly, so if you can, it could be well worth your while.
• Pinterest: Those on the Pinterest platform are generally seeking inspiration and ideas, which is excellent for businesses in niche markets such as food, home décor, fashion, and beauty. Visual discovery allows users to save (pin) and share content, which drives referral traffic to your site. The promoted pins feature helps businesses reach targeted audiences based on search behaviors and interests, making it valuable to drive sales. Best practice is to make your posts visually appealing, targeted to what your audience is interested in of course, and make at least one post a week. Most of Pinterest's users are between 25 and 34, about 76% of all users are female, and Gen Z makes up about 42% of active monthly users. Most live in the U.S., and interestingly enough, about 70% of their luxury audience is under 35! Lastly, about a third of all U.S. adults use Pinterest.

Choosing the Right Platform

You'll need to understand your target audience, business goals, and content strengths to choose the best social media platforms for your business. Start with two or three platforms where your audience is the most active and expand from there based on your team's performance and capacity. Quality content, consistency, and engagement are the main things to keep in mind to be successful across any platform.

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