Here are 15 of the best social media platforms

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Whether you're a seasoned social media merchant, a merchant wanting to venture into social media marketing, or a business owner wanting to leverage social media, it’s useful to understand the most widespread social media sites around. this can permit you to maximize your whole reach on social media, interact with the proper folks, and bring home the bacon for your social media goals.

Of course, it isn’t solely concerning the dimensions of social media sites. It’s conjointly whether or not the social media website could be right acceptable to your business and you. will it suit your whole image? Is your audience exploiting that social media site? what number of social media sites are you able to manage at once?

To make things easier for you, I did some analysis and compiled info concerning the twenty-one high social media sites in 2018. Some are acquainted with you, and others may sound foreign to you. it would be price reading additional concerning the social media sites that may be nice for your whole however that you just haven't explored.

1. Facebook – 2.23 billion Users

Facebook is the biggest social media website around, with quite 2 billion individuals victimization it monthly. That’s nearly a 3rd of the world’s population! There are unit quite sixty-five million businesses victimization Facebook Pages and quite six million advertisers actively promoting their business on Facebook, which makes it a fairly safe bet if you wish to own a presence on social media.

It’s simple to get started on Facebook as a result the majority of content format works nicely on Facebook — text, images, videos, live videos, and Stories. however note that the Facebook algorithmic program prioritizes content that sparks conversations and important interactions between individuals, particularly those from family and friends. If you wish to find out more about succeeding with the updated Facebook algorithmic program, Brian Peters, our Strategic Partnership seller, shared the secrets of the new algorithmic program and what you'll do to thrive on Facebook.

Also, keep in mind to optimize your content for mobile as ninety-four percent of Facebook users access Facebook via the mobile app.

2. Instagram – 1 billion Users

Instagram may be a photograph and video-sharing social media app. It permits you to share a good variety of content like photos, videos, stories, and live videos. it's additionally recently launched IGTV for longer-form videos.

As a brand, you'll have an Associate in Nursing Instagram business profile, which is able to give you wealthy analytics of your profile and posts and therefore the ability to schedule Instagram posts exploiting third-party tools.

3. WhatsApp – 1.5 billion Users

WhatsApp may be an electronic communication app utilized by individuals in over one hundred eighty countries. Initially, WhatsApp was solely utilized by individuals to speak with their family and friends. Gradually, individuals started human activity with businesses via WhatsApp. (When I used to be in the capital of Thailand to shop for a replacement suit, I communicated with the tailor via WhatsApp.)

WhatsApp has been building out its business platform to permit businesses to possess a correct business profile, supply client support, and share updates with customers concerning their purchases. for little businesses, it's the WhatsApp Business app whereas, for medium and huge businesses, there’s the WhatsApp Business API.

4. Pinterest – 250 million Users

Pinterest could be a place where folks head to discover new things and be galvanized, quite not like most social media sites where engagement is the primary focus. per Pinterest, seventy-eight % of users say that content on Pinterest from brand area units is helpful (much more than that on different sites). this provides your complete associate a distinctive chance to form their buying selections.

As Pinterest users need to be galvanized to undertake or get new things, having a presence on Pinterest may facilitate placing your complete on their minds.

5. Telegram – 200 million Users

Telegram is comparable to most social electronic {messaging|electronic communication} apps and is usually identified for the way secure it is as a messaging app.

There are unit many ways that brands will create use of wire, besides providing one-on-one client support. As an example, brands will produce chatbots for the wire platform or creative use of Telegram’s channel feature to broadcast messages to an infinite range of subscribers.

6. Medium – 60 million Users

Medium is an Internet commercial enterprise platform with a social network part. It’s liberated to publish on Medium and liberated to browse most articles. Some articles square measure reserved for less than paying members.

Besides commercial enterprise original content on Medium, it’s quite common for brands to republish their diary posts from their company diary onto Medium to increase their reach. (That’s what we’re doing here at Buffer.)

7. YouTube – 1.9 billion Users

YouTube may be a video-sharing platform where users watch a billion hours of videos daily. to get started, you'll produce a YouTube channel for your complete wherever you'll transfer videos for your subscribers to look at, like, comment on, and share.

Besides being the second biggest social media website, YouTube (owned by Google) is additionally typically called the second-largest program once Google. (So if you wish you're complete to air YouTube, I might suggest reading au fait YouTube SEO.)

Finally, you'll conjointly advertise on YouTube to extend your reach on the platform.

8. Tumblr – 642 million Users

Tumblr may be a microblogging and social networking website for sharing text, photos, links, videos, audio, and more. folks share a large variety of things on Tumblr from cat photos to art to fashion.

On the surface, a Tumblr diary will look similar to the other websites. numerous blogs that you simply come upon online may be victimization Tumblr!

9. Messenger – 1.3 billion Users

Messenger won't be an electronic communication feature on Facebook, and since 2011, Facebook has created Courier into a standalone app by itself and greatly swollen its options. Businesses will currently advertise, produce chatbots, send newsletters, and a lot of on-couriers. These options have given businesses a myriad of recent ways to interact and connect with their customers.

10. QQ – 861 million Users

QQ is a second electronic communication platform that's very widespread among young Chinese. (It is employed in eighty countries and additionally out there in several alternative languages.) Besides its instant electronic communication options, it additionally permits users to brighten their avatars, watch movies, play online games, look online, blog, and create a payment.

I have to admit I don’t recognize a lot regarding QQ however Carrie Law from ClickZ has written a useful transient introduction to QQ for marketers. It looks like whereas QQ, a desktop-native platform, is accustomed to being the highest social media platform in China, WeChat, an electronic communication app from the constant parent company, has condemned its place.

11. Twitter – 335 million Users

Twitter may well be a social media website for news, amusement, sports, politics, and more. What makes Twitter utterly completely different from most different social media sites is its powerful stress on fundamental measure knowledge — things that unit of measurement happening like a shot. As an associate example, one in each of the method moments inside Twitter history is once Janis Krums tweeted the image of a plane that landed inside the Hudson once he was on the ferry to decide on the passengers up.

Another distinctive characteristic of Twitter is that it exclusively permits 280 characters terribly} every tweet (140 for Japanese, Korean, and Chinese), in distinction to most social media sites that have a much higher limit.

Twitter is in addition typically used as a shopper service channel. per advertisers on Twitter, quite eighty you look after social shopper service requests happen on Twitter. And Salesforce calls Twitter “the New 1-800 vary for shopper Service“. There unit of measurement many social media shopper service tools, like Buffer Reply, on the market presence, to help you to manage social shopper service conversations.

12. Reddit – 330 million Users

Reddit additionally referred to as the front page of the web, may be a platform where users will submit queries, links, and images, discuss them, and vote them up or down.

There are subreddits (i.e. dedicated forums) for just about something below the sun (and above). Subreddits, however, have completely different levels of engagement therefore it’s nice to analyze to check if there are fashionable subreddits that your whole will be a part of. for instance, r/social media tends to be pretty quiet therefore we tend to ar seldom on Reddit.

Besides submitting your content to Reddit and collaborating in discussions, you'll be able to additionally notice content concepts and advertise on Reddit.

13. LinkedIn – 294 million Users

LinkedIn is currently quite simply a resume and job search website. it's evolved into a knowledgeable social media website where business specialists share the content, network with each other, and build their personal whole. it's additionally become an area for businesses to determine their thought leadership and authority in their business and attract talent to their company.

To help you grow your LinkedIn Company Page followers, we've written a weblog post covering an easy five-step strategy.

LinkedIn additionally offers advertising opportunities, like boosting your content, causation personalized ads to LinkedIn inboxes, and displaying ads by the aspect of the positioning.

14. Snapchat – 255 million Users

Snapchat could be a social media app that focuses on sharing photos and short videos (called snaps) between friends. It created the Stories format widespread, which eventually proliferated on alternative social media platforms like Instagram. however, the increase in Instagram Stories appeared to have hindered Snapchat’s growth and marketers’ interest in the victimization of Snapchat for her brands.

15. Baidu Tieba – 300 million Users

Baidu Tieba may be a Chinese online forum created by Baidu, the most important Chinese program in the world. My interpretation of Wikipedia’s description is that Baidu Tieba looks to be the same as Reddit, where users will produce a forum thread on any topic and act with each other.

Which Social Media Platform Is Your Brand?

Regardless of the scale of the social media sites, it’s most significant to think about whether or not your brand’s audience is active on those social media sites. That said, larger social media sites, like Facebook, tend to hide a good variety of interests and topics, which makes it appropriate for many brands.