Whether you are running a small business, are a road warrior business where you are traveling all the time, or you have a home-based business, one of the most critical areas you will need to look at is how you are going to market your business.

Social Media is an essential marketing platform for your business. Our top 6 social media platforms to market your small business include: 1) Facebook, 2) Twitter, 3) YouTube, 4) Instagram 5) Pinterest, and 6) LinkedIn.

Each one of these social media platforms has different targeted audiences and uses so it is important that you understand why your business should be on one and not on another.

Table of Contents

• Tips About Using Social Media For Your Small Business
• Top Social Media Platforms To Use For Your Small Business
  • Facebook Is Still A Major Social Media Platform
  • Twitter Is Still Popular
  • YouTube Is a Great Way To Get Your Visual Message Out
  • Instagram Has A Great Following
  • Pinterest Is A Viable Social Media Platform
  • LinkedIn Is More Than Just Finding Jobs
  • Listen To Our Podcast About Navigating the Global Market: Unveiling the 6 Top Social Media Platforms for Small Businesses Below or By clicking here.
• Related Questions
  • Why Use Adobe Spark for Your Social Media Graphics?
  • How Do I Run A Successful Business While On The Road Traveling?

Tips About Using Social Media For Your Small Business

Are you a small business owner looking to leverage social media platforms and leverage their power to reach more customers? In today’s digitalized world, having an effective online presence is essential for any successful business.

Social media offers numerous opportunities for entrepreneurs and companies of all sizes—you just need to know how to use it the right way to get the most out of it!

Here are of our basic tips to remember when deciding what social media to use:

• Be Where Your Customers Are: The best social media platform for you to market your business is the social media platform where your customers are.
• Set Up Company Pages – Whenever you can set up a company page, use those pages as a branded page for your business. Separate your kid’s photos and family vacations from your business page. People who do not know your family does not care if Johnny lost his first tooth today.
• Be Social – Socials means to be social. To be social is to interact with others that you meet on the social media platform.
• Use Marketing Programs – To help to save your time, you can consider using programs like Hootsuite to schedule your posts in advance or the Tailwinds App for Pinterest. This will help to save you a lot of time posting content.
• Content and Design Are Important – Content and design are as important on Social Media as on a blog or your website. Do not just throw anything out there, hoping people like it, but make sure it tells your story and your business brand.

Top Social Media Platforms To Use For Your Small Business

Are you looking for a way to reach customers, attract new ones, and promote your small business? Social media can be a powerful tool to help you do that – if used correctly.

With an ever-growing selection of platforms available, it can be difficult to decide which ones will work best for your business. That’s why we created this guide!

Below are some of our top social media platforms and why we consider them to be critical. You do not need to be on all these social media platforms, but you should be active on the platforms where your customers are.

Facebook Is Still A Major Social Media Platform

Facebook is by far the largest social media platform in the world. The exception would be countries like China, where Facebook is banned or very difficult to get on without a VPN.

Facebook allows you to connect with friends, family, and others across the globe. Many people use Facebook to call and message friends around the world. This is because Facebook has 2 billion (yes, that right, 2 billion) active monthly. To put this into perspective, 69% of U.S. adults use Facebook.

Facebook has a vast reach, and depending on what you are trying to accomplish could be the perfect social media platform for you to use for your business. The downside is there is so much content on Facebook it can be hard to be noticed unless people are your friends or specifically looking for you and your brand.

Twitter Is Still Popular

Twitter is a social media platform that allows brands to communicate a concise message. This is because Twitter limits the number of characters (about 280 characters) or how long the “tweet” can be for a given message.

Twitter has more than 336 million active users each month. It is not as big as Facebook, but still, there are a lot of people who are on Twitter each month. In the United States, the reach of Twitter is about 22% of the U.S. adult population.

YouTube Is a Great Way To Get Your Visual Message Out

YouTube remains one of the most popular video platform-sharing systems in the world. YouTube has more than 1.8 billion active users each month. In the United States, 73% of the U.S. adult population say they have watched or used YouTube. That’s a lot of people who are watching YouTube videos.

YouTube is a video-sharing platform which means you need to make a video or have the ability to make a decent video before you can post it on YouTube. Making a good quality video and consistently share on YouTube can take a lot of time and effort.

In the last few months, I started to post videos on YouTube, and I can tell you that posting videos on YouTube takes time. You have to think through what you post, ensure it has the right recording, and that the video is clear and professional. This all takes time and skill, especially if you do not have these skills.

Instagram Has A Great Following

Instagram is a platform that allows users to share photos and videos and do some live streaming Facebook purchased it in 2012, so it is quite easy to connect your Instagram with your Facebook account.

Today Instagram has a billion, yes, that is right, one billion active users per month. About 37% of the U.S. adult population in the United States uses Instagram. That makes Instagram a major player in social media.

Instagram is a visual platform. So to be successful on Instagram, you need to have compelling visual content.

Pinterest Is A Viable Social Media Platform

I always put Pinterest as a top social media platform since I feel like, for some businesses, it is an essential social medial platform. Pinterest may not be for all social media marketers, but it is worth a mention.

Pinterest has more than 320 million monthly active users. A lot of those users are women. So if your brand is targeting women, home, and family, then Pinterest should be a place for you to be socially active.

This is because 71% of global Pinterest users are women. And 85% of those women will use Pinterest to help them plan major life decisions such as getting married, having a baby, finding a recipe, etc.

In the United States, about 28% of the U.S. adult population uses Pinterest. This is slightly more than those who use other platforms like LinkedIn or Twitter.

I like Pinterest, especially for bloggers, is that Pinterest acts more like a search engine than other social media platforms. Meaning when you do a google search for specific topics such as, let’s say, “Motivational Art Quotes,” chances are that on the first search page you see, Google you show you some links to some Pinterest pins and boards.

LinkedIn Is More Than Just Finding Jobs

Linked In is a B2B (business-to-business) platform. Many feel it is just a platform for people looking for a job or a change in their career path, but Linked In has started to become more of a social media platform where content and other brand information are being shared.

Linked In has 675 million monthly users, and as a social media platform, it is growing yearly. 57% of the people on Linked are men, 43% are women, and about 27% of the U.S. adult population is on LinkedIn. If you are a B2B, then LinkedIn could be the right social media platform for you for reach your target audience.

LinkedIn’s biggest market is the United States, with 167 million users. But LinkedIn is gaining traction in Europe with 211 million users and 179 million users in the Asia Pacific.

Trying to decide what social media platform is right for your business can at times, be a bit confusing. But the most important thing to remember is that the best social media platform is where your customers are, as that is where you should also be marketing your business.

Listen To Our Podcast About Navigating the Global Market: Unveiling the 6 Top Social Media Platforms for Small Businesses Below or By clicking here.

At A Bus On A Dusty Road, we talk about everything about travel, life, and ex-pat living. We are all about “Living Life As A Global Citizen.” We explore social, cultural, and economic issues and travel.

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Related Questions

Why Use Adobe Spark for Your Social Media Graphics?

We like to use the Adobe Spark program for all our social media graphics. We love a lot of features of the Adobe Spark program, but one that we appreciate is how user-friendly Adobe Spark is. We also love how all our graphics look very professional with just a few clicks of a button. This is because Adobe Spark offers many of the same great features as other premier Adobe design and graphic programs.

To find out more about Adobe Spark, you can read our blog on Why Use Adobe Spark for Your Social Media Graphics? by clicking here.

How Do I Run A Successful Business While On The Road Traveling?

We have outlined our top 10 tips for traveling and running a successful business while traveling on the road. Out top 10 tips are: 1) Make sure your business category works on the road, 2) fully know and understand all your legal issues, 3) have the skills you need to be successful already in place, 4) have a concrete plan, 5) make sure your data is digital, 6) have all the correct tools, 7) have any support or admin support you may need already in place, 8) do a short travel test run before going on a longer trip, 9) make sure you are healthy and 10) Have the income and money you need to travel already in place.

To discover more about this you can read our blog on 10 Tips to Travel and Run a Successful Business While On the Road by clicking here.