Top 20 Social Media Sites for Growing Your Brand

The primary reason clients purchase products from a business is because they trust its name. Once a company establishes credibility with its target audience, it’s easy to see the value of its offerings. Thus, business owners need to prioritize building a reputable brand name.

Social media sites play a critical role in building such influence hence an excellent starting point for businesses looking to reach their target audience. Branding statistics show 80% of customers are more likely to evaluate their purchase decisions through social media sites. What’s more, customers use the same sites to buy products. They spend 20-40% more money on companies that use social media. It begs the question, which are the best social media sites to grow your brand?

1.      Facebook Messenger

Initially, the Messenger was part of Facebook’s many features. However, in 2011 Facebook made Messenger a standalone application and introduced additional features. The app allows users to send direct messages to friends, and businesses can leverage this function too.

Since Facebook has advertising campaigns specially designed for Facebook Messenger, marketers can initiate conversations with potential buyers. Once a user clicks on an ad, they are directed to send a Facebook Message to your business page, and if they do, the marketer can follow up. This platform is particularly useful for businesses looking to generate leads.

Apart from using Facebook Messenger adverts, marketers can also set up automated messages for their business pages. Thus, if a user sends messages to the company’s Facebook page organically, Messenger sends an automated text.

2.      YouTube

This video-sharing platform is the second-largest social media site in the world. With two billion users spending more than a billion hours every day, it is one of the most effective social media sites to grow your brand.

What sets YouTube apart from other social media sites is that Google owns it. As such, it has access to Google’s advertising platform, which businesses can use to grow their brands. Additionally, you can use keywords to optimize searches for your company’s ads. This means you don’t have to allocate funds to run YouTube ads.

3.      Facebook

The platform boasts 2.23 billion monthly active users. With such a large number of active users, Facebook is one of the best social media sites for growing your brand and achieving other goals, including driving traffic to a website, generating leads, or making online conversions.

A feature that makes Facebook stand out is that it allows businesses to use different content formats, including videos, texts, live videos and stories, and images. What’s more, the platform’s advertising channel is also pretty advanced, letting marketers target its audience by gender, interests, age, purchasing behavior, employment, relationship status, among other metrics. This feature enables marketers to target their exact audience and display ads where they are more likely to scroll.

4.      WhatsApp

Initially, this messaging app was designed for use by family and friends. A Business App was later launched with small business owners in mind to enable businesses to interact with customers through tools that sort, automate, and respond quickly to messages.

The app does not have business tools or API, but businesses can use it to launch small-scale targeted campaigns using its click-to-chat link. The link enables potential clients to start conversations with your company. What’s more, the lack of corporate presence and advertising on this social media site provides an opportunity for early adopters to stand out.

5.      Instagram

With more than a billion monthly active users, Instagram grew in popularity due to its stunning photo filters. Being another product from Facebook, the platform has similar benefits, but marketers can exploit some features to gain organic benefits.

This is because you can grow followers organically, unlike Facebook, where you need to pay for advertising campaigns to increase reach and grow a following. It is this feature that makes Instagram an excellent platform for businesses that don’t have an advertising budget.

Additionally, most of the content on Instagram is visual (photos and videos). Businesses can leverage this feature to grow their brand as followers remember 80% of what they see, not what they read or hear.

6.      TikTok

While it’s a relatively new social media platform, TikTok has become the most popular site attracting more than 500 million monthly active users. The app allows users to create short videos (usually 15 seconds), but users can create multiple clips of up to 60 seconds and share them. TikTok also has a live streaming option and filters to help improve video presentations. Brands can leverage this tool to market their products to a target audience by:

• Creating the brand’s channels and uploading videos relevant to the business
• Paying to advertise using TikTok’s campaign options
• Use influencers to reach a larger audience

7.      Twitter

While the platform is primarily used to share news, politics, and entertainment, businesses can also use it to grow their brands. A feature that makes Twitter stand out is its ability to allow users to share real-time information. It is this exclusivity that makes this platform the best for sending social customer service requests. Statistics show more than 80% of social customer service requests occur on Twitter. Companies that are already using inbound marketing can use the platform to attract new customers.

8.      Tumblr

In the advent of so many social media sites, Tumblr is still one of the best social media sites for growing your brand. It functions like a blog and social network for posting and sharing videos, images, audio, and short pieces of writing.

In that sense, the platform is similar to Facebook but with a few benefits. First, you can access Tumblr blogs directly through the Web, but content on Facebook can only be accessed by its users. Thus, content posted on Tumblr can be indexed by search engines, increasing a brand’s visibility. Then, there’s the fact that, the platform is mobile-friendly and offers free and premium blog designs. Marketers using Facebook and Tumblr can integrate posts made on the platform into the Facebook timeline.

9.      WeChat

The site has grown from a mere messaging application to full-fledged platform users can use to make offline payments, shop online, transfer cash, make reservations, and more. WeChat is particularly useful to marketers looking to grow their brand in Chinese markets as the site is most popular here. The app also provides a comparatively more extensive reach with 1.09 billion monthly active users.

WeChat has penetrated the U.K. and U.S. markets and continues to grow at a rapid rate. Apart from its rapid growth rate, its ability to connect to other applications means marketers can get valuable consumer data to understand consumer behavior and target its audience with personalized communication.

10. Q.Q.

It is another instant messaging platform popular among the younger Chinese demographic. It incorporates instant messaging features, enables users to watch movies, decorate avatars, play online games, and shop online. Some reasons marketers should consider using the platform include:

• Most of this platform’s users comprise young people (less than 30 years old). Young people spend more time on entertainment and more willing to try out new things
• The platform has group chats that allow users who have similar interests to connect. Brands can take advantage of this feature to run targeted campaigns
• Q.Q. is also popular in the workplace as it is easy to use and great for transmitting large files. The working class use it to transfer files instead of emails

11. SnapChat

Snapchat is also an excellent social media platform for brands to market themselves if their primary target audience comprises young adults. This is because the platform attracts 350 million monthly active users and 203 daily active users, and 71% are less than 34 years old. The app allows users to send Snapchat in the form of photos or videos to other users or upload them to their Snapchat Story. As such, companies can use the platform to achieve marketing objectives like:

• Increasing e-commerce sales
• Increasing product knowledge
• Announce upcoming events related to your business

12. Qzone

It is another social media site based in China. Qzone allows users to upload multimedia, play games, write blogs, watch videos, share photos, and decorate virtual spaces. Since its inception in 2005, it has experienced a steady growth attracting 632 million monthly active users.

Users primarily use the platform to share their experiences during travel and keep in touch with friends. As such, the platform is ideal for travel brands who want to share content and find out what customers think about their company.

13. Pinterest

Over the last few years, Pinterest has shown great potential to increase a brand’s visibility and boost conversions. With more than 250 million MAUs, it is the go-to platform when you want to discover new things. Pinterest notes that most of its users find content from brands useful most of the time. Thus, marketers can use the platform to shape an audience purchasing decision.

14. LinkedIn

It was among the first social media sites before Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram became the leading social media platforms. Over time LinkedIn has transformed into a networking tool exclusively for professionals changing the way candidates get hired for jobs.

Followers don’t visit this social media site for entertainment; instead, they want to learn about the industry and find out what other professionals are up to. Businesses can use the platform to establish authority and leadership in their industry. They can use advertising tools like ad displays and personalized ads to expand reach.

15. Telegram

Most local businesses use messengers to accept orders, contact clients, respond to questions and complaints. Telegram, a social messaging application is also an effective tool that marketers can use to grow a brand. The primary advantage of Telegram is that doesn’t need a specialist to use; bots perform most of the tasks without additional efforts. Apart from providing one-on-one support, brands can use the platform to create send messages to an unlimited number of subscribers.

16. Reddit

Social media marketers often champion for the use big platforms like Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest to reach audiences. The truth is, while most social media activities happen here, the internet still has social niche communities equally relevant to your target audience. Reddit is a perfect example of such social media sites, which are often underestimated. The platform ranks sixth in the United States and 17th globally, with an average daily user time of 11:29. While it does not attract as much traffic as Facebook or Instagram, it ranks next to LinkedIn and Twitter.

17. Line

This multi-purpose messaging app is based in Japan, but it’s also popular in other Asian regions. It allows users to play games, request for taxis, play games, shop online, and make payments. Line has considerable following marketers can leverage to increase visibility and reach their audience. They can achieve this by creating accounts on the platform and sharing news or promotions that appear on their follower’s timeline. A feature that makes Line stand out is that it attracts a diverse group of users, unlike other social media sites whose main user group is young people. Therefore, marketers can use the platform to attract older individuals (more than 40 years old).

18. Medium

This platform is primarily an online publishing media but has a social network aspect. Marketers can publish and read content for free, but some articles are reserved for paying members. Apart from publishing original content brand, can republish blog posts from their websites to extend reach.

19. Baidu Tieba

It is one of the largest social media sites to grow your brand in China. This is because it is the largest search engine in this market boasting a market share of 78% and 59% on mobile and desktop searches respectively. Baidu offers more advertising options than just paid searches. Marketers can use display ads and in-feed ads too.

20. Viber

It’s a rather new social media platform that mimics Messenger and WhatsApp but offers a range of advertising features that can help brands grow. Viber uses a blended business model consisting of in-app purchases, new and traditional advertising channels. Brands usually partner with the platform to host community group chats, serve ads and create e-commerce integrations to reach audiences using mobile devices. Marketers can leverage user analytics on Viber to optimize their ads and keep users more engaged.

You don’t need to restrict your marketing efforts to specific social media sites to grow your brand. Marketers can choose either of the sites highlighted to increase reach. Note, it’s not just about using a trending social media site but ensuring your target audience is active on that site.