As most human beings are living in a world that relies much on the Internet, especially, social networking sites, businesses can take advantage of this setting and grow their companies effectively. So, which are the best platforms to invest your time and endeavor in? Let’s figure it out with people from Designveloper!
The 7 Best Business Social Networking Sites that You Should Know
Mark Zuckerberg and his team are doing a very good job when successfully delivering the most well-known website globally: Facebook. After 15 years of operation, the platform has been changed a lot to be its finest version.
1. Facebook
It’s needless to say that Facebook always spends a huge effort polishing itself and meeting user expectations. In other words, people from Facebook release updates frequently to remove bugs and errors or add new features. For instance, when Snapchat became famous because of its story feature (content that will disappear within 24 hours), Facebook was aware of this trend at once and put it on their product. As a result, this social networking site was able to defeat many used-to-big names of the industry, Myspace, and Bebo, for example.
Without any doubt, Facebook is the number one social networking site at the moment with more than 2.41 billion active users per day.
Headquarters: California.
Active monthly users: 2.5 billion.
Important statistics:
- Market capitalization: $495 billion
- 7th most valued brand in 2022
- Photo content is uploaded about 300 million times/day
- Facebook has 60% of Internet users.
- There are 80 million businesses has a Facebook page
Significant features:
- Sharing content: photos, text, video, etc.
- Helping users connect with each other with personal profiles, groups or pages.
- Chatting via Facebook Messenger.
Pros:
- Helping users easily connect with others.
- Helping businesses, public figures, etc. promote themselves.
Cons:
- Many people are addicted to this platform.
The huge base of use makes it useful for every type of business. Because when using this tool, you will be able to appear in the feed of the large number of users here. However, to take advantage of this platform effectively, you will need a good strategy and an experienced marketing team since Facebook can be a Dracula-like money sucker.
From the beginning, to build this whopping amount of users, Facebook always tries their best to bring all the handy features to us. And thanks to them, businesses can shoot at multiple targets at once. Increasing web traffic, generating leads, and showcasing products are some examples here.
So, what kind of business should focus their energy on this channel? We would say that each of them can more or less use Facebook to promote their brand and drive revenue. But if you focus on the millennial, try using another one side by side since users at this age don’t use Facebook as frequently as other platforms.
2. Twitter
As of the first quarter of 2019, there were a whopping 330 million people around the world using Twitter monthly. So, what makes this social networking site so attractive?
Instead of being a place where people can easily connect with each other, Twitter, on the other hand, always focuses on utilizing short ideas and topics. Many celebrities or famous figures take this advantage to communicate with their fans fast via tweets.
At the same time, people from Twitter also dedicate themselves to creating algorithms that help users find what they are interested in by using hashtags.
Headquarters: California.
Active monthly users: 330 million.
Important statistic:
- 63% of Twitter users are 35 – 65-year-olds.
- It was downloaded 11.7 million times in 2019.
- 67% of B2B SMEs are using Twitter as a marketing channel.
- The total revenue of Twitter in 2019 was $1.01 billion.
- Twitter is currently valued at $24.6 billion.
Features:
- Now you can make your tweets more alive with gifs.
- Users can chat with each other in this app.
Pros:
- Its search engine is really powerful.
- We can get the latest news quickly.
Cons:
- You can only write content with a maximum number of 280 characters.
- Users cannot download images from this platform.
- It’s hard to find quality comments in a thread.
The moment when Twitter was born, Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg immediately considered it a strong competitor. There are many reasons behind this though, however, the main point is that Twitter has a whole different approach and it works perfectly: a place where conversations happen.
Their users can comfortably look for and discuss topics they are interested in with hashtags. This way, businesses can reach more target audiences if they use the right hashtags. (Tips: adding 1 or 2 hashtags works more effectively than 3 hashtags in a tweet).
Furthermore, thanks to the simple UI/UX, users can easily communicate via tweets and messages. As a result, businesses have another powerful way to provide better customer service.
Recommended reading: 8 Steps on How to Create a Social Media Platform
3. Instagram
Instagram is a social networking platform that only allows users to post images or short videos there. Similar to Twitter, this app helps people easily search for images with hashtags.
Apart from that, Instagram is a completely different world. It has two feeds, one is for photos posted by people you follow and the other is personalized as what you frequently searched.
The interface is designed to be as simple as possible but still elegant and aesthetic enough to be one of the most beautiful social networking sites at the moment.
Headquarters: California.
Active monthly users: 1 billion.
Important statistics:
- Instagram is the second most engaged platform.
- There are 71% of American businesses use Instagram.
- 83% of Instagram users said that they found new brands on this social networking site.
Features:
- Before posting photos and videos, you can apply filters or other editing tools to your media.
- Users can comment on photos/videos or like them with a double tap.
- Instagram users can send each other direct messages.
- People can post stories. These photos will disappear within 24 hours.
Pros:
- Businesses can use it to promote their products easily.
- Users can easily edit their photos/videos with simple tools.
Cons:
- It discourages website traffic since links are unclickable.
- You cannot reach many of your followers unless promoting products with their advertising tools.
Instagram was really something else in this social networking industry. Long story short, it doesn’t allow users to post only text to the feed, you must prepare one or more photos/videos and attach them with your text.
Despite the weird requirement, the number of Instagram users is increasing day-by-day. A piece of research by Oberlo shows that there were 500 million active users accessing this platform a day.
Thanks to its creative team, Instagram offers you many methods to approach the audience. Photo posts, video posts, and in-app massage are some significant features here, that is, let alone Instagram. And since the fact is that Instagram concentrates on the visual, businesses, especially, ones that sell clothes, furniture, or the similar could attract more customers here. And do you know that one-third of Instagram users use this app to purchase items?
Hashtags itself is another useful feature for both users and businesses. Just by tapping on it, you can see other posts including that very keyword effortlessly. As a result of its handiness, many other social networking sites are using it too.
As a business, you can use Instagram to tag products’ prices on photos, promote products, build your brand, etc.
Recommended reading: Social Media Strategy for Small Businesses: Complete Guide [2023]
4. QQ
Perhaps, you have never heard of this platform but it is one of the most popular and used social networking sites in China. It even set a world record for the platform that had the most users online at the same time.
QQ can be considered a super app since you can perform multiple activities (payment, mail exchanging, music streaming, etc.) other than just connecting with people.
However, since the number of people using mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets is increasing day by day, QQ’s parent company – Tencent – changed its strategy and shifted its resources to building WeChat, the new king of the Chinese social networking industry.
Headquarters: Shenzhen.
Active monthly users: 807.1 billion (2018).
Important statistic: not available.
Features:
- Music streaming
- Payment
- Mail exchanging
- Messaging
5. Tiktok
TikTok is another China-based social networking app that has been attracting billions of users worldwide. A bit like Vine, a then-famous platform in the mid-10s, TikTok is a video-sharing app where users can lip-sync to music, TV shows/movies’ script, meme, etc.
You might feel familiar when heard of its features. That’s right, TikTok is similar to Musical.ly. However, the California-based app was merged with TikTok in 2018. This move helped TikTok acquire a large base of users living oversea, especially US users.
This app became popular in China right after its launch in September 2019 with the name Doujin. One year later, it entered the global app market via App Store and Google Play by the name TikTok.
Headquarters: Shanghai.
Active monthly users: 800 million.
Important statistic:
- In 2019, this app was downloaded 46 million times in the US.
- TikTok’s 2019 revenue was $176.9 million.
- TikTok users spend an average amount of 45 minutes/per day using this app.
6. LinkedIn
At first, LinkedIn was a platform for employees who wanted to stay connected with their former colleagues. And now, it becomes a virtual place where people network and find jobs or find talents.
However, LinkedIn is not all about networking, it also helps you promote your business to top talents here (most of them are CEOs, COOs, or high-level employees). High chances are that they might be interested in your products or services.
To use this channel efficiently, first of all, your company page should publish valuable and relevant content. Besides, let’s ask your co-workers to connect with the page so that its presence will appear more to the huge user base here.
7. YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing platform that now works similarly to social networking sites. Besides movies, music videos, etc., you can communicate with your audience more effectively compared to other text-based or photo-based platforms.
Like Facebook, YouTube can help multiple types of businesses. If you’re a retailer, it’s possible to collaborate with famous YouTubers, and ask them to introduce or review the product with their subscribers. And in case, you are a B2B company, instruction or Q&A videos would be an incredible way to promote your services or products.
And in the situation that you are not fond of making videos for some reason, using display ads may be a great approach.
Since YouTube is in the same system as Google, so you can use Google Adsense to set up the ad as well, and of course, you will be able to target very exactly.
Bonus 4 other business social networking sites you might want to join
- Tumblr. At first, the SNS looks like a personal blog but, in fact, it allows everyone to contribute various kinds of content such as text, photos, links, videos, and even audio to this site.
- Reddit or the front page of the Internet appears like a forum but it does not target or promote just 1 topic. There are thousands of them on this social networking site. People can submit questions, links, images, etc. and others will discuss or vote it up or down. Reddit is also a good place to seed your website if the content is relevant.
- LinkedIn works like a marketplace where recruiters hunt for their candidates. At the same time, LinkedIn also helps job-seekers find the perfect company. However, nowadays, it becomes a social networking site so that people or company can promote their brands whether it’s personal or business.
- Pinterest is more like a huge collection of images contributed or pinned by people from around the world. It helps users find ideas, beautiful images, tips or tricks, etc.
Final Thoughts About Social Networking Sites
The 5 sites above can help you a lot when it comes to marketing and customer service. However, there are still many limitations to deal with. Spams, public negative criticisms, costs to run ad campaigns, etc. might be some major downfalls you should pay attention to.
Hey, if you are seeking software outsourcing to build some profitable social networking sites, Designveloper might be the one. Let’s get in touch with us and discuss this idea now!
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