Small Business – Which Social Media Platform Should My Business Use

One of the challenges of a small business, in the digital age, is knowing what social media platform the company should use to promote or engage with customers for the business. Over the last 10 years, the way people interact with companies and the usage of social media has skyrocketed, and in order for companies to stay relevant in this changing market they need to have some social media presence. It is essential for any size business to understand its user base and select the correct social media platform for them.

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Explosive Social Media Growth – 2010 to 2022

Social media has seen explosive growth over the last 10 years. For example, according to Statista, Facebook’s growth has gone from 130 million users in Q1 of 2010 to 266 million users in Q3 of 2022.

But is Facebook really the place where you should be spending your company’s time and financial resources to interact with or attract customers? Which platform is the best location for your resources? Each Social Media platform has its own audience. Each one attracts a different age group, gender group, economic group as well as other demographic groups. You need to understand your customer’s demographics, and then you can select the best Social Media platform for you to events your company’s resources.

Top Social Media Platforms – 2022

Statista did an online survey of adults aged 18-65 to see what percentage of adults in this age range use which social media platforms. Their results show that YouTube is number one, followed by Facebook. Here are 17 of the most popular Social Media platforms by usage.

So which Social Media platform is the best one for you to put company resources into? Is it YouTube, Facebook, or maybe even Yelp? To answer that questions, I have done some research and will list the key demographic statistics for each site. Then you can match the demographics of each site with the demographics of your company and go from there.

Note: Because of this growth and change, it is essential for a business to stay up on social media usage statistics. Something that worked 10 years ago may not work at all today.

Top 10 Social Media Platforms Demographics – 2022

The data used for this comparison is from different sources around the internet. I will include links at the bottom of this article to the resources used so you can dig a little deeper. This article is not meant to be a definitive guide, but a starting point.

YouTube

• Age: 18-34 89%, 35-44 88% *
• Gender: 53.9% male, 46.1% female *
• Nationality: India 467 million, US 247 million, Indonesia 139 million *

Another interesting fact about YouTube, it is responsible for 37% of all internet traffic by an app*, compared to Facebook video using 2.5%.

Facebook

• Age: 25-34 23.6%, 18-24 18.2%, 35-44 18.1% *
• Gender: 77% female, 61% male *
• Nationality: India 329 million, US 179 million, Indonesia 129 million *
  

Instagram

• Age: 18-29 71%, 3-49 48% *
• Gender: 55.6% female, 44.4% male *
• Nationality: India 263 million, US 155 million, Brazil 112 million *

TikTok

• Age: 10-19 25%, 20-29 22.4%, 30-39 21.7% *
• Gender: 57% female, 43% male *
• Nationality: US 140 million, Indonesia 107 million, Brazil 74 million *

Twitter

• Age: 18-29 42%, 30-49 27% *
• Gender: 61.6% male, 38.4% female *
• Nationality: US 83 million, Japan 60 million, India 25 million *

Snapchat

• Age: 15-26 48%, 26-35 30% *
• Gender: 55.1% female, 44.9% male *
• Nationality: India 116 million, US 106 million, France 24 million *

Pinterest

• Age: 50-64 38%, 30-49 34% *
• Gender: 46% female, 16% male *
• Nationality: US 86.25 million, Brazil 27 million, Mexico 17.86 million *

LinkedIn

• Age: 46-55 37%, 36-45 34%, 56+ 29% *
• Gender: 57% male, 43% female
• Nationality: US 31% of traffic to site, India 7% of traffic to site, UK 6% of traffic to site. *

50% of Americans that have a college degree use LinkedIn, and 90% of all LinkedIn users use Facebook. *

Reddit

• Age: 18-29 36%, 30-49 22% *
• Gender: 63.8% male, 36.2% female *
• Nationality: US 47.13%, UK 7.8% *

Yelp

• Age: 18-34 42.41%, 35-54 37.45% *
• Gender: 53% female, 47% male *
• Nationality: US 105.6 million, Canada 6.3 million *

What Should I Post?

Now that you know the where you need to know the what. What type of content is the most popular? In 2010 Video was the most popular type of content, but is video the way for you to go? I will do a follow-up article to answer how to pick the right type of content.

Lilach Bullock in an article posted on coredna.com gives us an outlook on what 2022 content marketing may look like, “2022 might be a tough year for content marketing because so many businesses and marketers have acknowledged the effectiveness of this form of marketing. That doesn’t mean though that you can’t still be very successful and drive amazing results from your content marketing campaigns; it only means you will need a bit more planning, more varied content and more quality content.”

Resources

I encourage you to research the demographics of each social media network on your own as well. Below are links to the resources that I used to create this article.

• Leading social networks ranked by brand awareness in the United States in 2022
• Facebook monthly active users (MAU) in the United States and Canada as of 3rd quarter 2022
• Share of adults in the United States who have a YouTube account as of May 2022, by age group
• Most Successful Content Types by Format