What social media platform should you use?
Facebook
Number of users: Facebook recently reported 1.49 monthly billion users with Asia accounting for 28%, Europe for 24%, USA and Canada for 17% and the rest of the world for 30% of those users.
How your visitors use it: Facebook is the largest platform for sharing worldwide, and when it comes to brands, users can share products and content that resonates with them. The social media platform also offers brand pages where users can interact with and review brands based on their experiences.
What you can do: Long-form content – with no character or word limit – gets the most Facebook shares and likes, so start writing! Encourage your fans to post reviews or stories about their experiences with your site on your brand page. Facebook is also a great platform to offer insider tips, troubleshooting ideas, meetup and event invites, and promotional offers.
Twitter
Number of users: As of Q2 2015, Twitter reported 304 million active monthly users with a majority of those users prevailing from Asia, North America and Western Europe.
How your visitors use it: Twitter was made for short commentary – 140 characters or less – and users can use it to talk about and interact with brands about their products or services.
What you can do: Encourage your users to tweet out a pre-written tweet about your brand letting others know why they love it, or create a hashtag to help start a conversation. Be sure to retweet others to show appreciation and respond if asked a question or tagged in a tweet. If appropriate, brands can post about what’s trending to increase visibility. The rule of thumb for Twitter is not to just talk about yourself, but to start and continue a conversation.
YouTube
Number of users: YouTube claims to have over one billion users worldwide with 70% of visitors coming from outside the U.S. and is broadcast in 54 languages.
How your visitors use it: YouTube offers users the opportunity to watch videos for free, or create and upload their own. Videos are easy to comment on, rate, and share on social media and blogs.
What you can do: Create videos and upload them! YouTube is a great platform for creating longer videos (as opposed to other video services such as Vine), like product overviews, tutorials, interviews, and more. People who are active on YouTube are looking to watch creative, fun and informative videos, so you have more flexibility on this medium – think outside the box to help engage their attention!
Pinterest
Number of users: Pinterest has 72.8 million users, 85% of which are female in the U.S., however, in Britain it skews more even, with 56% of its users being male.
How your visitors use it: Users pin products and content they like from the Internet so they can come back to it later. They can also organize their pins into boards around a topic or theme.
What you can do: Make content and product descriptions more pinnable – and more likely to drive traffic – by pairing them with beautiful images, a helpful description, and a link back to your website. Remember that pins are forever, so make sure URLs with pins are active.
Yelp
Number of users: Yelp boasts over 83 million monthly unique visitors, most of which come from within the U.S. but is slowly gaining popularity internationally.
How your visitors use it: Yelp is a place where users can leave reviews of businesses they’ve interacted with, both positive and negative.
What you can do: While you might not be able to persuade users to leave flattering reviews, you should encourage customers to leave reviews when you’ve provided them with an outstanding experience. Make sure you are monitoring comments and responding accordingly, especially to any negative reviews.
Number of users: More than 300 million users post on Instagram – 70% of them internationally.
How your visitors use it: Instagram is where users can share images they take, as well as like and comment on images from people and brands they follow. It offers integrations so users can automatically post images to other social networks as well.
What you can do: It’s a simple way to showcase your products and drive traffic to your site, but be careful – users are not looking to be advertised to. Make your Instagram feed organic, authentic and thought-provoking. Use beautiful images and informative captions. Encourage your followers to post pictures featuring your brand on Instagram and tag you to help extend your brand reach.
Number of users: LinkedIn has 380 million users worldwide and is used in over 200 countries and is translated in 19 languages.
How your visitors use it: This social site for professionals lends itself easily to connecting with other thought leaders.
What you can do: Post articles about your brand or area of expertise to help establish yourself as a credible source of information, as well as a potential employer to those job-hunters also on LinkedIn. But remember, businesses cannot post as themselves, it can only from individuals. So choose one or two employees or advocates to help post about your company or industry on your behalf.
Google+
Number of users: Google+ has 300 million monthly active users with many users residing in the U.S. followed then by India.
How your visitors use it: Google+ offers users the ability to connect with others, create groups to interact with, share content, and join communities based on shared interests.
What you can do: Creating a Google+ profile gives users another way to find and connect with your brand online. You can post content online, and create and manage circles to help get the word out about what your business has to offer.