In today’s digital landscape, leveraging social media is crucial for business success. This guide, based on an expert webinar, explores five key platforms—Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, and YouTube—to help you maximize your business’s potential by understanding their unique features, demographics, and best content types.
——————————————————————————–
1. Facebook: The Foundation for Searchability
Why It Matters: Facebook is highly important for businesses because Facebook business profiles allow users to easily find your business information. Interestingly, many people will actually use Facebook as a search engine to look for recommendations and business details. Furthermore, Bing pulls business information and reviews directly from Facebook, which helps your business get found online. This is why it is considered one of the more important platforms.
Key Feature: Facebook has many unique groups, which can be local or dedicated to specific business topics (such as carpet cleaning or financial planning). Joining these local groups and interacting within them is a great strategy to put your business in front of the local community.
Demographics & Content: Demographically, Facebook is most popular among both men and women aged 35 to 44, representing one of the higher age ranges discussed among these platforms.
The content type that works best is short-form video, which is considered the “king” because it is very popular and people are watching it more than any other content type. Infographics and charts also work well, as do GIFs or memes. Giveaways are effective and are primarily meant to grow your social media presence and gain brand visibility.
2. Instagram: Cultivating a Hyper-Engaged Audience
Why It Matters: Instagram is recognized as one of the best platforms for cultivating a hyper-engaged user base. This means users are highly likely to interact with your brand by consuming information, commenting on posts, and actively engaging with your content.
Demographics & Content: Instagram is most popular among women and men aged 18 to 34.
The king content type on Instagram is short-form video, exemplified by Reels, which the algorithm favors. Images still work well, reflecting the platform’s origins. Live stream is a feature specific to Instagram and one the platform is known for, allowing businesses to show services or offer tips in real-time. Polls and questions are great because of the hyper-engaged user base, and they work especially well within Instagram Stories (though Facebook also has this feature, it is more commonly viewed on Instagram). Memes, giveaways, and contests also work well to drive interaction.
3. X (Formerly Twitter): The Hub for Instant Updates and Social Listening
Why It Matters: X shares the trait of having a hyper-engaged user base similar to Instagram. However, the core difference is that X is very text-driven, rather than focusing on images and videos. X is ideal for social listening, which involves actively seeking out and replying to customer feedback about your brand. It is also invaluable for providing instant updates, making it useful for news outlets, sports teams, and school systems (for example, communicating weather closing information).
Demographics & Content: The demographics for X are distinctive: 63% of users are men, typically aged 25 to 34. The user base is primarily composed of upper to middle-class Americans, with only 20% of users making less than $35,000 per year.
Content that works best includes polls and questions (emphasizing interactivity), infographics and charts, memes and GIFs, along with standard text-based posts.
4. LinkedIn: The Professional Networking and Hiring Platform
Why It Matters: LinkedIn is paramount for professional purposes, notably for job postings. An impressive 61 million people search for jobs on LinkedIn every week, making it potentially the largest platform for online hiring. It is also highly effective for distributing business-to-business (B2B) updates and news. Promoting events, such as webinars, is particularly useful here, as you can target other business professionals.
Demographics & Content: LinkedIn is slightly more popular among men, with the typical demographic ranging from ages 24 to 35. It caters mainly to high-class citizens; 98% of LinkedIn users have a college degree or higher (including Associates or Bachelors).
As LinkedIn is a professional and data-based social media platform, charts and polls and questions are the content types that work best.
5. YouTube: The Global Visual Search Engine
Why It Matters: YouTube is a colossal platform, serving as the second most popular URL in the world (second only to Google, which owns it). Its influence is profound, demonstrated by the fact that one-third of Internet users watched a how-to or tutorial video in a given week.
YouTube is highly beneficial for businesses in music, sports (a growing industry on the platform), or gaming. For service providers with very niche offerings (like carpet cleaning), posting tutorial or how-to videos is an excellent way for people to visually learn how to do something and discover your brand. Crucially, YouTube content is indexed by Google: videos will appear in Google searches (e.g., searching “how to tie a tie” will bring up a YouTube video first), and when people click through to your website, it helps increase your ranking on Google.
Demographics & Content: It is difficult to isolate a specific demographic, as YouTube is watched by users across the lifespan, from children as young as six up to men and women aged 60.
Any sort of video content works best, including short-form video, long-form video, and live stream. For example, webinar videos can easily be posted on YouTube.
——————————————————————————–
Final Takeaways for Your Strategy
1. Prioritize Facebook: Every business should have a Facebook page primarily because it helps you become searchable, especially on Bing, and acts as a search engine for recommendations and business information.
2. Know Your Audience: Understanding your business’s target audience will tremendously help you with social media. If you are a smaller business with limited time, knowing your demographic is essential for maximizing your energy. For instance, if your demographic is primarily in their 30s, you should put more energy into Facebook rather than Instagram.
3. Customize Your Content: Remember that different platforms call for different types of content. Not every type of content will work on the same page; a short-form video that succeeds on Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube may not necessarily be effective on X.
Click here to learn more: A Guide to Social Media Webinar