Social media platforms for engagement in 2023 are plentiful and participation on just one can be time-consuming. But if you’re looking to get serious about your marketing and grow your customer base, participating on one or more social media channels is a must. The key is figuring out and knowing what kind of engagement you’ll get from any of the following. These platforms come and go, but currently the major ones include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, YouTube, Pinterest, and TikTok.
Deciding on which platform or platforms to participate on can be challenging, but one thing is for sure. Consumers expect an online presence, so plan to have a social media manager strategy.
Social Media Platforms – A Breakdown for 2023
There are currently 2.963 billion users worldwide, which is up from the 2.74 billion active monthly users reported in our 2021 post. Facebook is pretty much a must for your business to have a presence. While Facebook is popular with all age groups, the largest group here is the 25-34 year olds, pretty equally split between men and women. Still, the 55 and over demographic is the fastest growing segment on the platform, with women users being slightly more than men. If your business sells goods and services to a broad base of consumers, Facebook would be hard to ignore its massive audience and marketing potential. Facebook algorithms make it difficult to stand out organically, so Facebook ads can help you target your customer, drive leads, and make sales.
Ignore the national news on the demise and antics of Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk. This is still one of the places to go for breaking news and to find out what people are talking about right now. If you are of a shorter attention span as so many of us are, Twitter is for you. Twitter enables you to share a quick thought or something about your business without spending a lot of time doing so. Its micro blogging format allows for posts limited to 280 characters or less. If you are a Twitter Blue subscriber, you have a 4,000 character limit. This premium service is only $8.00 monthly.
There are approximately 353 million users worldwide, so it still has a solid following and user base not to be ignored.
Twitter uses hashtags to help group Tweets around a similar topic so that users can do a search on the hashtag and find posts that have to do with that particular topic or interest. As an added bonus, Twitter posts get indexed by the Google search engine to provide additional SEO or local SEO boost.
This social media platform is for business networking. It’s a place where people share expertise, and where you can look for employees or find a job yourself. This site boasts over 900 million members.
One thing is for certain is if you are looking for a white collar job or posting a job, LinkedIn just might be the place for you. Also, there is potential to market business to business services here as well with a LinkedIn paid ads campaign.
This platform shares photos and videos. There are over one billion users worldwide on Instagram. If you are looking to market your business to younger people, Instagram fits the bill. According to the website Statista, as of January 2023, more than half of the global Instagram population worldwide is aged 34 years or younger. About 81% of users use the platform when deciding whether to purchase a product or service. 50% of users visit a website to make a purchase after they have seen the product on Instagram. For example, 55% of fashion shoppers have purchased an item after seeing it on a post. 90% of users follow brands on Instagram. The demographics are almost evenly divided between genders.
Snapchat
Social media platform Snapchat is an image and video messaging service that according to datareportal.com serves over 560 million users daily. It has had consistent growth over the past three years, so it looks like this platform is not going away anytime soon. About 53% of its internet users range in ages 15-25. 57.4% of all Snapchat users are female and 40.9% are male. The average daily active user accesses the Snapchat camera more than 30 times per day. While photos disappear in seconds on this platform, and stories after 24 hours, businesses can use this platform to give users sneak peeks into their business, sponsor a lens or geofilter, and engage with users. Also, this platform provides an opportunity to showcase a business’ playful side to a younger demographic.
YouTube
Video is everything these days, and over one billion hours of video are watched every day on YouTube. 70% of people bought a brand after seeing it on YouTube. YouTube ads targeted by intent have a 100% higher lift in intent to purchase than those targeted by demographics. To illustrate, last year, beauty tutorials increased by 50%, bike repair and maintenance by 90%, and there was a 215% increase in self-care videos. 72% of people on YouTube watched fitness videos last year. The demographics are about evenly divided by gender. Some statistics related to age of who uses YouTube: 74% of adults in the United States, 77% of 18-35 year olds, and 80% of U.S. parents say their children 11 and younger use YouTube.
Like Instagram, Pinterest is a platform for sharing photos and videos. While Instagram is about sharing your own photos, Pinterest is a curation platform where users group similar content by pinning the content to boards. Every photo or video you click on leads you to an external website. About 70% of Pinterest users are women, and about 66% are ages 18-39. Pinterest can help generate web traffic, while Instagram is good for raising brand awareness.
TikTok
On this platform, you’ll find short videos, about one minute long. Challenges are big here. Hashtag challenges cost brands $100,000+. This platform has attracted a younger demographic, typically under the age of 30. At the time of our post in 2021, this social media platform had 689 million users worldwide. As of January 2023, there are 1.53 billion TikTok users worldwide with over 3 billion app downloads.
If you are good at producing or having someone produce short catchy how-to videos of your products and services, TikTok is the place to publish. Popular content is food, fashion and events.
How to Decide Which Social Media Platforms to Be Active On In 2023
This is a simple but maybe not an easy answer: Determine where your customers are.
That means you first need to answer the question: Who are your customers? And your answer can’t be: Anyone can use my product or service.
You’ll need to drill down deeper.
One of the best ways to do this is to create buyer personas, semi-fictional characters based on research into who buys your product or service. Name each persona and describe why they would buy your product or service, their goals, their pain points, their common behaviors, and their common personality traits. In other words, flesh out your persona as best you can.
Now figure out where your persona or personas hang out online. That will guide you in deciding where you should place your social media marketing efforts.