Regardless of whether the digital marketer is a seasoned social media marketer, a marketer looking to venture into social media marketing, or a business owner looking to leverage the power of social media, it is wise for them to understand about the most popular social media sites present.

This will at least help them maximize the brand’s reach on social media, engaging with the right people along with achieving social media objectives.

Which kind of ads are executed on social media?

Here are the kind of ads that are run daily on social media:

• Photo ads.
• Video ads.
• Stories ads.
• Messenger ads.

Is it about the size of the social media sites?

It is never about the size of the social media sites all the time. It is also about whether or not the social media site is the right fit for the business and for clients too. Does that particular social media marketing platform fit the brand image or not? Is the target audience using that social media site yet? And how many sites can a business manage in an instant?

Which social media platforms are best for advertising?

When deciding where to place the ads, it should be understood that each social media platform has its own unique audience. Hence, marketers need to find out where their ideal customers are. They should also try meeting them there.

If the brand is already active on social media, which platforms are already performing well organically should be determined. It will serve as a good indicator of where the brand should be in its advertising efforts. If you are going to do marketing for crypto related companies, you might also consider using Social media platforms like Reddit, Telegram and Discord. These channels are performing the best for crypto wallets and exchanges, as well as, NFTs and other crypto projects.

To make things easy, experienced social media marketers have researched about top social media sites for advertising this year. Some of the platforms are those marketers are familiar with. It should be also be understood that marketers do not need to be on each social media site:

Facebook

Being the largest social media platform in the world, Facebook is a reliable choice as it is among the best social media platforms for advertising. The platform is popular amongst a lot of demographics, which indicates that there is a good chance the target audience engages with the platform too.

Apart from allowing Facebook users to connect with each other and share content online, the platform also offers merchants the opportunity to advertise their products and services online. Here are some ways Facebook ads can help marketers:

• Building brand awareness by raising the reach and getting products/services in front of prospective customers.
• More consideration by driving more traffic to the website, harnessing lead generation via opt-in emails, blog posts and content along with reaching potential customers via messenger.
• Raising conversion through setting up a Facebook shop, giving customers a much more seamless shopping experience, driving traffic to both online and physical stores. This raises conversion rates.

Additionally, Facebook advertising gives merchants the chance to target customers based on their location (within a 5-mile radius), occupation, interests, previous activity and several other data points which are valuable.

Pricing for Facebook ads differs on various factors, especially the audience a business/brand/company/agency wishes to target. Moreover, it also depends on the budget that has been set for the ads.

But as a rule of thumb, the more ad spending an entity carries out; the more efficient Facebook’s algorithm becomes at sending that money and raises the ad performance over time.

Instagram

Instagram is a social media app renowned for glossy pictures and videos. The platform is ideal for brands with products that are visually appealing and incorporated into visual media.

Additionally, with an engagement rate which is 58% higher than Facebook’s and 2000% higher than that of Twitter in 2016, Instagram holds one of the largest user bases. Though that is only mostly younger than other advertising platforms.

Hence if a business and target audience are fitting both the characteristics then advertising on Instagram will be a good option for that very business.

However, organic posts and stories can be great ways to raise traffic to the website, Instagram ads can be linked directly to the product page or another landing page, allowing for quick and easy engagement with the products.

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing platform. Its users watch almost a billion hours of videos daily. Apart from being the second largest social media platform, YouTube is often known as the second largest search engine after Google (who happens to be its parent company).

Those who wish to use video marketing to promote their business then YouTube is for them. They can learn how to create a YouTube channel for their brand. To make sure the videos are discovered by more people, marketers must read about YouTube SEO and do some YouTube advertising to raise their reach.

WhatsApp

Owned by Facebook’s parent company Meta, WhatsApp is a messaging app used by more than a billion people across 180 countries. Initially, people originally used it to send text messages to their loved ones. Now businesses are communicating with their customers easily through the app.

The business platform of WhatsApp allows businesses to provide customer support and share updates with customers regarding the purchases they made. Small businesses can make use of the WhatsApp business app whereas enterprise level businesses can go for the WhatsApp Business API.

Being the most widely used messaging platform, WhatsApp has become a worthwhile customer service channel for most businesses across various sectors.

TikTok

Known as Douyin in China, TikTok is a short-form video sharing app. Despite being launched in 2017, it is one of the fastest growing apps in the world. It recently overtook Google as the most visited site on the internet.

TikTok allows users to create and share videos between 15 and 60 seconds long. Moreover, the app has a wide range of sound effects, music snippets, filters and the like to help enhance user created videos and make them more appealing.

Anyone can find videos relevant to almost all interests, ranging from lip-syncs, dancing, and challenges to Do it yourself tricks and various tutorials. Almost 48% of TikTok users in the United States are aged between 10-29. Hence if the target demographic of a business is young, then TikTOk works best for them.

Khaby Lame is among the top stars of TikTok. Moreover, the platform just added a scheduling option where users can plan and schedule TikTok posts in advance to help businesses grow their brand , ”make a brand name and logo design famous”, and increase their followers.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is undoubtedly the world’s largest professional network, and has a large professional user base. It has been able to target customers based on their job qualifications. Hence, LinkedIn Advertising is largely geared toward a corporate audience.

Considering 69% of LinkedIn users in the United States earn around USD $50,000 or above in a year. The platform has some of the highest quality leads for various industries and has suave and affluent users. However, the nature of the platform makes it best for B2B advertising campaigns also you should know about the marketing tips. Hence, businesses working on B2B products and services get better results on LinkedIn.

There are four kinds of ads on LinkedIn:

• Sponsored content: These ads (usually images, videos or carousels) are displayed in LinkedIn’s newsfeed in order to reach a larger audience.
• Sponsored Messaging: This is LinkedIn’s version of email marketing but sends messages to the LinkedIn inbox instead of email. Users can hence interact either with a human customer representative or a chatbot. However, you can also use an additional email finder tool for LinkedIn to send emails just in case professionals don’t reply to your messages on LinkedIn.
• Text and Dynamic ads: Only visible to desktop users, they are small ads displayed at the top of the screen above the newsfeed of users.

Conclusion

There you have it, social media platforms which at the moment are best suited for social media advertising. Though the list may seem to be small but it is relevant. With demographic shifts going for networks that are more intuitive and value privacy and user safety, the above mentioned social media platforms hence make the cut.