Are you scratching your head searching for an effective Social Media strategy or looking for some robust Social media platforms that will lead you to your target audience?
Otherwise, you might be the curious one who wants to figure out what social networking sites are the best ones in 2021?
“Social media is not a media. The key is to listen, engage, and build relationships.”
– David Alston
Most Popular Social Media Platforms
As you already know about so many Social media sites, it can create confusion to choose the right ones among all of them. Therefore, we are here presenting the top 20 most effective Social media lists to explore this year. Let’s dive into it!
Active users (Monthly): 2.8 billion
Facebook, Let’s start with the most incredible social network in the world. Facebook is the most helpful channel to implement your paid campaigning. According to Statista, 18.2% of consumers purchased products through Facebook in 2020.
Generally, we use social media platforms to stay in touch with family and friends and get updated with what other people share. Facebook provides us all those advantages in the best possible way. Here people can read the latest news in several forms, such as live videos, Facebook stories, and written posts.
It is a great place to build brand awareness by implementing organic content, which is a boon to the brands trying to enlarge their digital presence.
YouTube
Active users (monthly): 2.29 billion
Although the fun fact about YouTube is, many people don’t know that it is also one of the social media sites. Still, this video platform is considered the second largest search engine in the world.
Forbes says, 70% of buyers purchase a brand that they have watched on a YouTube video. And this gives you chance to advertise on YouTube to increase your business reach on this platform.
YouTube is the most preferred platform for all the high-ranked marketing firms to open a YouTube channel & create YouTube videos. YouTube also facilitates them to run ads. YouTube ads, when compared to television ads, are less disruptive as they can be watched before or during the original video and are typically shorter in duration. Additionally, the option to “skip” ads is always available.
Some brands build their own YouTube channel to post original content and ensure the proper utilization of the YouTube algorithm. However, the latter demands the perfect combination of budget, efficiency, quality of content, strategies, and luck.
Active users (monthly): 2.0 billion
WhatsApp, now it’s time to talk about the big-gun social media app that comes at 3rd position as per the user base. WhatsApp also wears the hat of the world’s no.1 messaging app. China organized a survey in 2020 that concluded WhatsApp is adored chiefly as a social networking site across the globe.
In 2014, Facebook bought this Social media platform for $19 billion. Ever after that, WhatsApp didn’t start running ads, unlike Facebook Messenger. It may surprise you that every day 175 people from 180 countries send 100 billion messages on WhatsApp. 53% of users open the Social media app at least once a day.
Displaying merchandise in a catalog and streamlining consumer service conversations are two core functions that WhatsApp provides to grow your business.
Messenger
Active users (monthly): 1.3 billion
Messenger is one of the social media sites that Facebook owns. Facebook runs this private messaging app as their ongoing strategy to help people carry on texting privately. Let’s see what keys differentiate messenger from WhatsApp.
Messenger includes inbox ads and sponsored messages. This messaging app doesn’t provide you end-to-end descriptions, along with linking your contacts from Facebook and Instagram.
Beneficial services of messenger that help you build a better customer relationship are automatic replies, sending cross-platform DMs, and greeting messages.
Active users (monthly): 1.22 billion
Instagram ensures its position among the top 5 popular Social media platforms. Although Instagram started its journey as a captivating photo-sharing app, now it carries great significance in social commerce.
Besides dark memes and aesthetic landscape photos, this social site works as a digital shopping mall. Instagram provides you an overabundance of features that you can use to make the pictures of your products beautiful.
Your brand can create a captivating visual identity on this platform by creating a polished feed with IGTV, Instagram Reels, Stories, and Instagram Live. The robust back-end for targeted ads and shoppable posts are two highly beneficial Instagram features for consumer brands.
Active users (monthly): 1.22 billion
Tencent’s WeChat is an exceptional non-American social media app that is the topping social network in China. As China doesn’t allow American social networking platforms,
WeChat isn’t limited to messaging and video calling. Alongside, users can play games, call rideshares, use government services, and purchase products by using WeChat Pay. 73% of people of China ran WeChat on their smartphones – a survey said.
In 2020, Donald Trump banned WeChat from the US, and 88% of American companies trading in China opposed the decision and said it could have a substantial adverse effect on their businesses. 42% of them forecasted that they might have to compromise with profit if it went through.
The brands want to grow their business in China; WeChat marketing is a boon for them because of its unique features such as influencer campaigning, advertising, in-app e-commerce, etc.
Active users (monthly): 765 million
Even though the official number of LinkedIn account holders is 765 million, which makes it rank 7 in this list, this dark horse among most popular social media platforms is increasing its popularity every day.
Since 2016, when Microsoft purchased LinkedIn, most B2B marketers have started implementing the LinkedIn marketing strategy for lead generation.
This social media site has launched an effective organic content named LinkedIn Live that 96% of B2B marketers appreciate. 80% of brands with a professional audience have reported that LinkedIn advertising helps them notably to send promotional messages directly to their would-be clients.
However, LinkedIn is the most reliable social media app dedicated to professionals, and it is much more than just a job board.
TikTok
Active users (monthly): 689 million
TikTok, Okay, finally, we are going to talk about the fuzziest and most controversial social media app. The app was born in 2017. Since then, it is experiencing explosive expansion. TikTok was the most downloaded app in 2020.
TikTok’s uniquely addictive algorithm attracts thousands of teenagers and older people. This short-video creating app was the second-favorite social media platform of America last year.
However, this weirdly excellent app creates some intimation and confusion. Some creative intellectuals think TikTok is a cheap social media app that causes stupidity and wastage of time among teenagers.
Douyin
Active users (monthly): 600 million
Douyin belongs to the same company, named ByteDance, that introduced TikTok to the world. You may find many similarities between Douyin and other Social media platforms like TikTok. Douyin has a Chinese version that is impressively popular.
If you want to touch the hearts of youngsters in China, Douyin should be your go-to social network to promote your brand.
Active users (monthly): 595 million
QQ is the second-favorite social networking site among the citizens of China. Chinese big-gun tech firm TenCent owns this app. in 2019, QQ had 760 million users, but now it is losing its popularity.
It provides text and voice messaging, translation, audio, video calling, group messaging, and video calling services. You will also avail well-developed music listening, gaming, and shopping facilities on this platform.
A gentle reminder: if you want to attract the youngster demographic, you should consider QQ over WeChat because of QQ’s fully developed in-app e-commerce. The first one’s mobile and desktop messaging services engage youth more consistently than WeChat.
Winding up:
You may find thousands of Social networking sites in this era when technology rules! On this ground, creating a list of the top ten most popular social media platforms was just like collecting pebbles by the great seashore.
I tried to get you covered based on the user numbers and scope of promoting your brand on those social media apps. Still, there are so many apps, such as Quora. Reddit, Pinterest, and many more are personally my favorite ones and are beneficial in some other aspects. Maybe we’ll talk about them in some other blog.
However, when you decide to start with a social networking site or hire social media marketing (SMM) experts, choose the niche that genuinely interests you. And, never forget to know both advantages and disadvantages of these social media platforms because social media is a coin that has two sides.
Data reference – statista.com
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