Is Instagram worth it? Could you spend half your social media budget on Facebook and the other half on YouTube and LinkedIn? Would Pinterest work for you? These kinds of questions plague small businesses and marketing teams alike.
Here are our top 5 social media sites you should care about in 2022 to help you decide which social media platforms are suitable for your brand this year.
- Instagram
Founded in 2010, Instagram is home to influencers, brands, bloggers, small business owners, friends, and everyone else in between. There’s no question that a significant segment of your audience spends time on the platform.
Instagram has become a popular social media platform among teens and young adults, especially in the United States. Instagram usage slowly drops with age but remains consistent for both men and women, so if your customers are under 40, you can’t overlook it.
A cohesive theme will help you stand out on Instagram when you use beautiful imagery, stunning visuals, unique designs, selfie-style videos, and videos that speak directly to your audience.
You should prioritize Instagram if your target audience is under 40 years old, you run an e-commerce business, or you run a lifestyle business, you should prioritize Instagram.
- YouTube
Youtube currently ranks second on the world’s most popular search engines after Google, its parent company. You should utilize this social media platform if your business could benefit from video tutorials and walkthroughs, visually-driven instructional content, product reviews and interviews, etc.
A massive 73% of U.S. adults use YouTube regularly, with a heavy concentration of people between 15 and 34. Among men and women alike, YouTube is widely used, and its popularity increases as income and education rise.
YouTube works best with video content. With this platform, you can use both long-form and short-form video content on this platform. It would help if you made it a priority to keep your viewers’ attention throughout your video, whether you’re teaching them about emerging marketing tactics or streaming video gameplay. If you represent a physical product, you may also want to consider unboxing videos and “with me” content that lets viewers follow along with you as you travel through the world. Also, partnering with YouTube influencers enthusiastic about your mission could help you test the waters before you launch a YouTube channel.
In your case, YouTube should be prioritized if: Your intended audience is under 50 years old and consumes video content in either an educational or entertaining capacity.
- Facebook
More than 2.5 billion people use Facebook every month, making it the largest social network globally. Despite the almost guaranteed use by a portion of your audience, it has developed a somewhat negative reputation among younger users who are turning to other alternatives.
You might also consider having a presence on Facebook if you regularly share news, videos and graphics relevant to your industry, especially if your primary audience is over 30. To gather customers or community members in one place online, you may also wish to utilize Facebook groups. While Facebook groups do not advertise, they can help create conversations.
Sixty-eight per cent of U.S. adults use Facebook, and five per cent log on multiple times a day. Users tend to become increasingly active as they get older (especially those over 40 years old).
It is more likely for your content to go viral on Facebook if it is interesting, engaging or even polarizing. To attract an audience, use short videos, eye-catching images and attention-grabbing headlines. You should use interactive content and conversation starters for Facebook groups. Think about polls and live streams.
Facebook should be your first choice if you want to appeal to a larger audience of adults and create visual content that will evoke an emotional response, catch their attention, and make them encourage their friends to share it. Their software makes it easy to create online communities around topics or businesses.
- Twitter
According to Twitter, its monthly active user count has consistently hovered around 300 million users for some time now. Still, an incredible 40% of them are active on the platform several times a day, so it seems your audience is very engaged with the platform. Social media sites like this remain popular with tech-savvy users, especially in the business, marketing, and politics verticals.
Almost two-thirds of Twitter users are males between the ages of 35 and 65.
Using Twitter to communicate breaking news, digest bite-sized content, and communicate with your users in real-time has become a prevalent platform use. The best tweets tend to be videos and images, but a wittily written tweet still works wonders if you’re jumping on trending topics.
Choosing Twitter is a good choice if: Your audience is composed mainly of mature males 30 to 60 years of age. Using different types of content, such as educational videos, gripping visuals, and advice and opinion threads, can create engaging experiences.
- Snapchat
Snapchat continues to be the most popular app among under-25 years of age demographics, boasting over 300 million monthly users in recent months despite losing some ground to rival social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook. With Snapchat, users make short videos and disappearing images available to their friends and family to share updates.
Over a billion videos are viewed on Snapchat every day by young adults between 18 and 24. A majority of users access the app every day, with a slight skew toward females.
Video-driven storytelling is the best Snapchat content. You can form connections with your customers on Snapchat to create short (usually selfie-style) videos that can entertain & educate a young audience.
Snapchat is right for you if you want to reach a young audience and enjoy sharing engaging videos in bite-sized chunks. Although Snapchat users are here to be entertained, you shouldn’t expect them to talk about your products all day, like they do with Instagram.
We are incorporating one more helpful social media site for small businesses into this list.
- Pinterest
With Pinterest, you can save ideas and find creative inspiration on everything from cooking to DIY projects to interior design to business. Often cited as a crucial part of the product discovery journey, this social media platform primarily reaches adult women.
Pinterest has one of the most concentrated women audiences, with more than 320 million monthly users among all social media platforms. Nearly 80% of their users are female Millennials.
Pinterest’s best-performing content is vertically-formatted images, thanks to the unique browsing experience presented to users. It is best to use polished imagery with descriptive copy, showing the Pinner what they would see if they clicked through. Your strategy should be based on numbers, lists, and quotes. In your imagery, don’t forget to use search terms and keywords.
Pinterest is an excellent alternative if you cater to women’s audiences in the lifestyle, fashion, decorating, or DIY categories.
- Adobe Spark Post: Creating Quality Social Media Content
Follow these tips when using social media for marketing:
- Take inspiration as your starting point.
Get access to thousands of professionally-designed templates, so you’re never starting from scratch. Find fresh inspiration by browsing platforms, tasks, aesthetics, moods, or colours. Once you tap or click a graphic to begin with, the document will open in the editor.
- Create Your Remix
We can customize the templates in many ways. For example, you can change the fonts and copy. Substitute your images or video clips for the imagery. Spark also offers thousands of free photos. Create your graphic by spending as little or as much time as you want. You can even apply your brand logo, colours, and fonts automatically with a premium plan.
- Turn up the glam
Spark’s exclusive design assets add flair and personality to your projects. You can apply animated stickers or text animations to short-form graphic videos in one tap by using applications. The technical stuff has been taken care of, so you can concentrate on the message and the style.
- Maximize the impact of your content by re-sizing it
Images no longer have to be memorized for every single platform. Using Spark’s handy re-size feature, you can easily modify any design you like for any social network. If you want to re-size the project for a particular platform, duplicate the project, click re-size, select the forum you wish to re-size.
- Marketing success depends on the right tools.
To grow an audience & achieve ROI on your social media campaigns in 2022, you will need the right tools no matter which social media sites you choose to spend your time on.
Making that happen will require the right visuals. Using Adobe Spark, you can create stunning visuals and videos for social media.
Article Proofread and Edited by Shreedatri Banerjee
