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Social media is no longer an experimental part of marketing. Social media spending is 16% of marketing budgets and is expected to increase to 24% in five years. Social media is also an essential part of digital marketing which has surpassed traditional with digital ad spending reaching 62% of total ad sales. Today brands must go beyond the top social platforms or simply continue to use current brand social platforms.

Social media plans are more sophisticated with organic, paid, and influencer content. How do you decide among hundreds of social platforms? To simplify the process the table below lists social options in eight categories by key characteristics and top platforms per category based on total users.

To develop or update a social media strategy, focus on social media categories, social media platform content characteristics, and social media platform user demographics. The table and this article provide monthly, daily, and U.S. user stats. For user demographics of each social media platform visit Pew Research Center’s Social Media Fact Sheet. For user demographics of social media websites visit Similarweb.

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Use this guide to help select the best social media platforms for your social media strategy. — Use this guide to select the best social media platforms for your social media strategy in 2024.

Audience Size and Engagement: Total audience size is important when selecting a social media platform within which to invest your time and money. Yet traditional measures of monthly active users or unique monthly visitors only tell part of the story. A user could visit a platform once a month and be included in the audience size. Engagement is another important factor that looks at how active those users are on the platform. How many users are daily users and how much time are they spending per day or session?

Target Audience Demographics: How active is your target audience on each platform? Define the target audience by demographics such as gender, education, income, ethnicity, and age. Look for social platforms popular with your target age group. Look at both monthly active and daily active users by age. A high percentage of Millennials may be monthly users of Facebook but if you look at daily usage, they may be more active on Instagram. If your target is Gen Z, Snapchat or TikTok may have the highest daily usage.

Target Audience Psychographics: Not all people in a generation have the same interests, therefore it is also important to define the target audience with psychographic variables such as values, beliefs, and interests. People interested in crafts, fashion, the environment, or gaming may be active on other social media platforms where those interests are popular such as Reddit, Pinterest, LinkedIn, or TikTok.

Target Business Category: Not all purchase decisions are considered in the same social media channels. Therefore, also consider the type of business. Is the brand B2C or B2B? What industry is it in? Is it a local or national company? Does the brand offer online sales, in-person, or a combination of both? The type of business could make other social media channels more relevant to a plan such as LinkedIn, TripAdvisor, or Yelp.

Target Communication Objective: Finally, consider the communications objective. A plan to build brand awareness may work best with Facebook, YouTube, and Buzzfeed. A plan to improve customer response may work better on Twitter/X and Messenger for customer support and TripAdvisor for customer reviews. A B2B lead generation plan may best leverage Blogs, Podcasts, and LinkedIn. A direct sales plan for a multinational fashion brand could work best with Instagram, Pinterest, and WhatsApp.

Now that you know how to select social platforms what are the top social media platforms? Below I describe the top three or more social media platforms by eight key characteristic categories.

Social Networks: These are the websites and apps that connect people sharing personal or professional interests through profiles, groups, posts, and updates. Facebook has 2.9 billion monthly users (198 billion active daily) and 239 million users in the U.S. It is the largest social media channel of any category. LinkedIn is the dominant business and professional social network growing to 810 million monthly users (559 million active daily) and with 200 million users in the U.S.

Social Messaging: Instant messaging platforms are chat applications created around social networks for communication on mobile phones with fewer limits and more features than traditional texting. Facebook Messenger has grown to 736 million users (390 million active daily) and 188 million users in the U.S. But is still behind Facebook owned WhatsApp with 1.3 billion users (1.1 billion active daily), but only 93 million in the U.S. Other popular messaging apps include Discord, WeChat, and Slack.

Microblogs: Microblogs are a form of traditional blogging where the posts are limited by content length or file size. The leader in Microblogging continues to be Twitter/X with 436 million monthly active users (217 million active daily) and 94 million users in the U.S. Pinterest is a social pin board dedicated to visual discovery, collection, and sharing that limits posts to single images or video. Pinterest has grown to over 431 million monthly active users (112 million active daily) and 85 million users in the U.S. TikTok has grown quickly to 150 million monthly active users (36 million active daily) and 113 million users in the U.S. Another consideration is Instagram’s Threads just launched in July 2023 but Mark Zuckerberg reports that it reached just under 100 million users in October.

Blogs: Blogs are websites that contain posts or articles in reverse chronological order that include hyperlinks and usually allow commenting. WordPress is the top blogging platform with 297 million monthly visits and 65 million in the U.S. Wix is the second-largest blogging platform with 52 million monthly visitors and 17 million in the U.S. Other blogging platforms to consider are Blogger and Squarespace.

Media Sharing: This category is for social media channels developed mainly for sharing image or video media. YouTube is the lead video sharing site with 2.6 billion monthly active users (319 million active daily) and 246 million users in the U.S. Instagram (owned by Facebook) is a quality photo sharing social channel that has grown to 2 billion active monthly users with 1.4 billion active daily and 158 million users in the U.S. Snapchat is a photo- and video-sharing messaging service in which media and messages are only available for a short time before disappearing. Snapchat’s monthly active users total 557 million active monthly with 319 million active daily and 107 million users in the U.S.

Ratings and Reviews: Reviews are reports that give someone’s opinion about the quality of a product, service, or performance. Ratings measure how good or bad something is expressed on a scale. Yelp is the innovator in crowdsourced ratings and reviews representing a broad range of interests. Yelp has 141 million monthly visits with 131 million in the U.S. For travel related businesses TripAdvisor has 169 million monthly visitors with 92 million in the U.S. Other ratings and review platforms to consider are Google My Business (Google Business Profile), Angi, and Amazon.

Social Bookmarking: Social bookmarking sites are online services for users to save, comment, and share bookmarks of web documents or links. Social bookmarking sites have expanded into content discovery and curation tools. Reddit is the top social bookmarking platform with 861 million monthly active users (36 million active daily) and 223 million in the U.S. Buzzfeed is a content discovery platform with 97 million monthly visits to its website and 52 million in the U.S. Buzzfeed also creates content with popular channels on Facebook, Snapchat, and YouTube and offers native advertising opportunities for brands generating 2.4 billion cross-platform content views a month.

Social Knowledge: Social knowledge platforms are web-based information exchanges where users search for topics or ask questions and get answers from real people. This includes social sites such as wikis and question and answer websites. Wikipedia is the crowdsourced encyclopedia with 4.5 billion monthly visits a month and 650 million in the U.S. Brands cannot create their own pages but should monitor for misinformation. Quora is the question and answer site that focuses on higher quality content and attracts 806 million visits a month and 330 million in the U.S.

Podcasts: Podcasts are a series of episodes of digital audio or video content delivered automatically through subscription. The number of podcast listers has grown to 505 million monthly active users. There are 164 million podcast listeners in the U.S. (48 million weekly listeners). iTunes is the innovator in Podcasting. Other social platforms to consider are SoundCloud, iHeartRadio, Audible, and Spotify.

This is not a comprehensive list of social channel options, but it does provide a list of the top platforms by category to choose the best for your social strategy in 2024. What social platforms have you found to be the most effective? For more details on selecting the right social media platforms see this article about Selecting Social Media Platforms Based On Strategic Fit.

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On July 5, 2023, Meta introduced a new social media platform Threads. Threads is an app from Instagram where users post threads of short pieces of text, photos, videos, and links, reply, and follow other users they’re interested in. Like other social networks users have profiles, but what’s unique about Threads is that it’s quick and easy to create a new account by importing your Instagram account and profile.

Meta Introduced Instagram Threads on July 5th, 2023 as a new app for short text conversations.

Because Threads limits posts to 500 characters, photos, links, and videos under 5 minutes, I consider it a microblog. It is designed more for sharing text updates to participate in real-time public conversations comparable to Twitter (X) versus its parent photo-focused sharing app Instagram.

The Threads feed includes threads posted by people you follow and recommended content from creators you haven’t discovered yet – an AI algorithm like TikTok’s For You. After requests from early users, Threads recently introduced a new Following feed tab to see chronological posts from people you follow similar to Twitter’s (X’s) For You and Following tabs.

The First Week of Signups Were Impressive.

Brands, celebrities, and influencers found the Instagram connection especially appealing in being able to bring their Instagram followers with them. It’s less of a barrier than building everything up from scratch like other new social platforms. This could be part of the reason for the platform’s early success of reaching 100 million users in less than a week (Twitter(X) has 368 million). This surpassed ChatGPT for the fastest adoption of any online service.

Early celebrity and influencer adopters included Oprah, Shakira, Kim Kardashian, and Mr. Beast. Early brand adopters were Rare Beauty, William Sonoma, Netflix, and Gymshark. Early publishers to join included Vogue, Vice, and Rolling Stone. While advertising is sure to come, the early days on the platform are like the early days of social media where everyone was vying for followers via organic posts and reach. Brands like Anthropologie used promotions such as giving away gift cards to grow followers and engagement.

Instagram Threads features:

Profiles are connected to Instagram accounts and can be public or private.
Post limits are 500 characters with links, photos, videos under 5 minutes.
Users see threads and replies of people they follow in the feed.
Main For You feed is an AI algorithm based on creator discovery.
A second Following feed has been added with a chronological feed.
Users reply to posts or like, share, quote, or repost, but no direct messages.
Designed to be less negative news and politics oriented with no hashtags.

Is Threads The “Twitter Killer?”

It’s hard not to talk about Threads without mentioning Twitter or what is now called X. Many of the features of Threads are very similar to the platform formally known as Twitter with its focus on short content “threads” not unlike short content “tweets” or what may now be called “X’s.” There’s been a public feud between Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk which may be driving this battle between the two social platforms. In fact, Musk’s X Corp. has threatened to sue Meta over these similarities.

Meta is open about pitching Threads as a “friendlier” Twitter (X) that’s not a place for news and politics. Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri said, “The goal is to create a public square for communities on Instagram that never really embraced Twitter and for communities on Twitter (and other platforms) that are interested in a less angry place for conversations, but not all of Twitter.”

Will Threads Be Less Negative?

Some of the features to “tune out the noise” include hidden words to not see posts that contain them and filtering out replies to threads with certain words. You can also unfollow, block, restrict, and report profiles. Many have felt that Twitter has increasingly become a more negative place. In fact, academic studies have found negative tweets increase the probability of retweeting and viral spread.

Musk has also indicated he is taking Twitter into a freer speech direction with less content moderation. Meta is contrasting this with messages that Threads will strive to make a friendly and more positive platform with content moderation. The first indicators did seem to indicate a drop in Twitter traffic (5%) in the first days of the launch of Threads.

Early Signups Don’t Guarantee Long Term Success.

Of course, quick adoption by large numbers of users doesn’t automatically translate into high engagement or long-term use. The social media platform Google+ had high user numbers. Everyone who created a Google account (Gmail, Drive, YouTube, Blogger) was automatically signed up for Google+. But that didn’t translate into everyday use. Google+ shut down in 2019 due to low engagement.

In deciding to make Threads a part of your social media strategy be sure to check current activity levels before investing significant resources. It will take time to get a feel for how Threads will make itself unique from Twitter’s real-time dialogue and driving the news characteristics. If it does grow an audience ads will soon follow. When advertising does become available Threads ads should be integrated easily into Meta Ad Manager.

Threads vs Twitter Stats — Here’s a comparison of Threads vs. Twitter Statistics about a month after the Threads launch.

It will take time to see if early user numbers turn into active daily and weekly users. We’re already seeing indicators that engagement and users might not last. Since the July 7th peak Threads’ daily active users are down nearly 70% to 13 million from 44. The average daily time spent on Threads is just 4 minutes. This is in contrast to Twitter (X) which has roughly 200 million daily active users who spend an average of 30 minutes on the platform daily.

Total users are down as well. Just three weeks after a record high of 100 million users, Mark Zuckerberg reports that over half of Threads users have already stopped using it. Zuckerberg and Instagram CEO Adam Moseri do say they are working on new features to hook users and entice them to come back.

The new Twitter name and logo X.

The new Threads logo from Instagram.

The sudden name change from Twitter to X may motivate more users to join Threads. Initial reactions by many X users have been negative and branding experts indicate it may be a mistake. Insiders report it’s part of Musk’s plan to create an “everything app” that will become a moneyless marketplace, public square, and video content factory all in one. It’s also unsure if the X name will stay as Meta, Microsoft, and other companies own trademarks on X.

What’s The Bottom Line on Threads?

When investing your time and money in a social media strategy try to look past the hype. Even the largest companies have limited budgets and resources. In evaluating any new social platform or current platform it comes back to basic strategic thinking. When deciding to add a social media platform or leave a current one consider these questions:

Who is my target audience? (current users, potential users)
How active are they on Threads/X? (daily active use, time spent)
What objectives am I measured by? (engagement, sales, leads)
Can I achieve those objectives on Threads/X? (more than another platform)
Do I have time/budget for experimentation? (not dependent on results)

What has been your experience with Threads? What do you think the future of the platform will be for social media strategy?

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