Top 10 Most Popular Social Media Sites In 2023
Our presence in social media platforms is growing immensely, be it as a content writer, creator, marketer, or simply as a user. Millions of people use more than two to four social media platforms almost every day. It has become a part of our lifestyle and with the adaptation towards a digitally growing lifestyle, these social media websites are going to become a huge part of our professional lives. In this article, we’re going to learn about the top most popular social media sites
You may be familiar with all of these or maybe some of these, but these are the social platforms that can be helpful for your brand building in the long run.
1. Facebook
Facebook or simply FB, is one of the most popular social media sites to date, and it continues to grow more. Earlier it was a platform for sharing photos and videos, but now it had become a huge platform for content creators and content marketers.
Facebook was introduced in the year 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg. When he introduced this platform his vision was to make the world more socially connected. If you remember the old version of Facebook, it was The Facebook and was only meant for college students, but now, it has grown drastically and millions of people have their accounts on it.
The features that had benefited the lives of content creators and marketers are Facebook Page and Facebook Marketplace.
Facebook Page
It is an excellent way to promote your business or brand as it doesn’t cost even a single penny to create a Facebook page. Once you’ve created it, you can use it to post content, link the website, or interact with your audience. You can post all kinds of media like photos, videos, stories, text to engage with your audience and can even add a call-to-action button.
Facebook Marketplace
This feature was launched in 2016 and has quickly become popular worldwide. At Marketplace, you can discover, sell, or buy products with people in your community. It is a good platform for small business sellers who want to reach out to a big community of people but could not.
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2. YouTube
YouTube doesn’t need any introduction, it had been with us for over a decade and is still one of the most popular social media sites out there. It is one of the most popular social media sites catering to people from all ages. It’s been popular among everyone, be it content creators or viewers. We watch hours of videos almost every day.
It is a huge video-sharing platform that is owned by Google and is also known as the second largest search engine website. It’s easy to create a channel of your own brand, and you can use it to share some knowledge-based videos, entertainment videos, vlogs, or simply how-to videos.
Your growth depends on the number of subscribers you gain, and they can view, like, share, and comment to express their opinions. The more engagement you get, the more it comes with the view of the YouTube algorithm which makes your video trend, and your brand gains success.
It is slowly becoming a great tool for content marketers. According to a report,
“One-third of total time online is spent in watching videos, and YouTube has more than a billion active users. The platform is so extensive that it can be accessed in 76 different languages, accounting for 95% of the world’s population.”
For content marketers and big brands, YouTube marketing can be useful as an intimidating tool. Because it is the internet’s second-largest search engine, it can help in improving your SEO and overall brand presence. And also, it allows marketers to create unique content that can be easy for viewers to consume and share. You can promote your video by advertising on YouTube, these promotions include, video discovery ads, and stream ads.
Having a great channel layout is a good way to start as a YouTube marketer. When the users visit your channel, they need to know how your channel looks like and what kind of content you’re posting. A simple and organized layout helps people to understand what kind of content you produce.
Uploading content regularly will help your channel to increase your presence on YouTube, will keep your channel active, and will help you build an audience. You should upload at least once a week, but it depends on your audience, you should monitor how your audience is responding, their engagement towards your channel, and then you can strategize how frequently you want to upload your content.
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3. Instagram
It is one of the leading social media sites where one can share a wide range of content like photos, videos, stories, and even live streams. It has started as a place to express yourself through photos and videos, but now it has become more of a mass medium.
Not only that, but it has now become a known place for content creators and marketers. You can create your business profile on Instagram which can provide you with the analytics and insights of your post’s performance. More features of a business account include ads, Instagram shopping, primary and secondary message inbox, and the call to action and contact information on your profile.
It has been noticed that the brands on Instagram have a higher percentage of engagement with their followers compared to Facebook or Twitter. While setting up your business profile, you need to have a clear vision and strategy, consistent frequency, familiarity with your audience, and clear visual style. If you combine all these factors, there is a chance of huge results for your business.
A great example of creative Instagram marketing is the brand Madewell. It’s a fashion brand with over seven lakh followers and the number of likes they get per post is massive.
This platform has become a key marketing channel for the brand which helps them to engage with their potential customers on a daily basis.
The Instagram bio has only a word limit of 150 characters so if you want to make a good first impression, your bio should convey all the information your brand offers in that limited space. It should convey your brand personality and should be attractive enough so that your audience will be compelled to follow your account.
4. LinkedIn
LinkedIn, which started in 2002 is now more than just a resume building and job searching site. It has evolved Into a more professional social networking site where people can share content, build a personal brand, and connect with each other. It can be considered as one of the most popular social media sites today.
What started as a simple resume designing and job searching platform, where people build their profile in the format of a resume by adding their achievements and goals, summarizing their career, and advertising their professional skills, is now more than that. People can share written content and video content and can interact with other business profiles.
It has now a user base of over 500 million users and has given an exclusive platform to influencers to publish their content on their platform, and it had been a great move because,
- The influencers are guaranteed that their content is in front of hundreds and thousands of members and communities.
- They will bring their own audience to the LinkedIn platform by sharing the content with their growing followers.
- It strengthens LinkedIn’s reputation.
This feature of adding influencers to write content on their platform where they can share their articles gives it a unique advantage over other social media sites.
It’s a good platform to build your personal brand and reach out to professionals of your niche. The more you socialize, the more is the chance of creating a good business relationship, and maybe you’ll end up having a job of your interest.
5. Pinterest
Pinterest is the platform where you just don’t see things, content posted on that specific platform but on the whole Internet. It’s like an infinite ocean where you can make unique discoveries and is one of the most in-demand social media sites.
You’ll see photos, videos, infographics, GIFs as per your interest which you can pin on your saved boards and gain followers if the people like your boards. Over 200 million people visit this site every month to discover a wide variety of content and products.
But this amazing platform is equally helpful for brand and business owners as much as it is for normal users. According to a report,
“More than 52% of Pinterest users stated that it has helped them find the items to buy and 61% says that they’ve discovered new brands and products from promoted pins.”
Pins and boards are the basic features of Pinterest. Pins are the images, videos, infographics we find on the homepage and save it like a bookmark/collection on the boards, and these boards are where we can collect specific groups of pins and organize them, similar to that of an old school corkboard.
One of the great advertising tools on Pinterest is promoted pins. These are the pins that brand owners or business owners pay to appear where users are most likely to notice them.
If you want to create a Pinterest business account, there are two options for you, one, you can convert your existing account into a business account, and two, you can build it from scratch. Either way, having a Pinterest business account as a content creator or marketer is a good option as it offers some extra features like Pinterest Analytics and promoted pins.
You need to share your best ideas that are inspirational and actionable. The pins you create should be for a clear audience and to get that audience engaged with your content. Your focus on your niche and the specific audience will create a favorable result within the Pinterest algorithm.
6. Tumblr
Tumblr is a blogging/microblogging platform where you can share texts, photos, videos, GIFs, links, audio, and much more.
It is not that popular among the masses, especially in India, but has generated a good amount of audience to stay in the competition with sites like Instagram and Facebook. People share a wide range of things on Tumblr that varies from as simple as a cat picture to ‘how-to’ tutorials.
It is a lesser-known fact that Tumblr has over 420 million users, which is actually more than the number of users on Instagram or Twitter and this active user base publishes more than 59 million posts almost every day.
The competition for brands and business is low on this platform hence it is a silent space for you to grow your business profile. On this platform, one-fourth of the users are under the age of 25, so if you are looking for a young audience, it’s the right platform but if not, Facebook is a better option.
Creating a lot of visual content is a necessity as three fourth of the contents on Tumblr include images. The more your images will be visually appealing, the more engagement you’ll get on your posts.
With Tumblr, you get a feature of custom modification where you can either hire a designer to give your profile a unique appearance or can download the predesigned themes.
Unlike other social media platforms, follower count isn’t important on Tumblr. The Tumblr community cares more about interacting with other users and building more meaningful conversations and relationships.
7. Twitter
It is one of the most popular social media sites where you can find news, entertainment, media, politics, and much more. The biggest celebrities use Twitter rather than Facebook or Instagram.
Twitter has some unique features that differentiate it from other sites such as it has a strong emphasis on real-time information and has a word limit of 280 characters. It is perfect for people who love to microblog a lot.
The brands can directly interact with their customers and it’s helpful in building their relationship that’s why it works as a good marketing channel for the brand owners.
As a brand owner, you should be active on Twitter and try to post as frequently as possible. Some brands tweet three posts per day while some five times per day. It depends on engagement with their customers. If you’re starting as new, you should post five tweets per day and monitor the results.
Even if the word limit is 280 characters, you should try to keep your posts shorter, between 70 to 100 characters. Short length posts have seen a higher level of engagement as compared to long-length posts.
It’s important to set some goals if you want to use Twitter as a content marketing platform. These goals can include,
- Trying to generate leads by creating a landing page
- Making your customers aware of the new products and services
- Promoting the value of your brand
- Providing customer support
- Building your credibility
Encouraging conversations among your followers is also a good way to increase engagement. You should offer tips, ask questions, and respond to the comments. Many famous brands like Adobe Illustrator use these techniques and their tweets are mostly replies to their customers.
8. Medium
It is one of those social media sites where you can publish your articles online free of cost and can read other articles as well except for the ones that are reserved for only paying members.
Besides posting organic articles some brands also republish the article from their company website to extend their reach. Posts on Medium vary from anything to everything, such as short-form, long-form, light content to deep or existing content elsewhere.
Publication is a section on Medium which collects articles and arranges them into a curated set of posts.
The unique thing about Medium is that the way it focuses on the stats and metrics of the post. It seeks to assess a posts read ratio instead of focusing primarily on the visits and views. The readers can know the time they’ll spend reading a particular article.
For new bloggers, a Medium is a great option for starting. The writer gets the insight of their posts by knowing the traffic of the views, reads, read ratio, and recommendations.
Headlines are built differently on Medium. The SEO headlines are less common as compared to other blogs around the internet, and it is about writing a headline that can relate to your reader base.
9. Reddit
It is one of the leading social media sites where people can submit links, questions, and images, can discuss them, and upvote or downvote on them.
There are many dedicated forums, also known as Subreddit for almost everything under that category. These threads have a different level of engagement, so it’s good to research and be a part of that Subreddit that is similar to your brand.
It’s a massive platform and according to Alexa.com,
“it’s the sixth most popular website on the planet.”
Users find it really engaging as it has over ten million comments and sixteen billion votes. The comments section is always active, and sometimes it reaches to over a thousand comments if the topic is hot and engaging.
There are two types of posts on Reddit, one, a simple text-based post, and two, where you can attach a link and direct the users to an external site. If you’re a marketer, link posts are good to boost your traffic.
Askreddit is a popular Subreddit where you can ask any type of questions and as a brand, you should monitor these topics and try to engage with the audience of your interest.
Just like Quora, the Reddit community doesn’t think twice before banning someone who can be potential spammer. If you want to steer clear of getting banned, you should,
- Never submit the same comments on different Subreddit rapidly, it can get noticed.
- While promoting your brand, make sure to add links to other websites as well so that Redditors don’t sense you are there to promote your brand but are genuine user who wants to socialize.
- Do not ask the Redditors for upvotes, if they’ll like your content, they’ll vote.
- Stay away from illegal content
- Don’t be overly promotional, you can get noticed, be a genuine Redditor.
- Add value to the content you’re posting instead of blindly promoting the links to your website.
Reddit ads are a good way to keep the community informed about upcoming events. They are reminders of the date and time of an event and are used by known brands like Red Bull and Coca-Cola.
10. WhatsApp
WhatsApp was introduced as a messaging app but in recent years, it has started a feature known as WhatsApp for business where the brand owners can directly reach out to their customers to promote their products, provide customer service, and share updates about their purchases.
Every business person can have a WhatsApp business profile, for small businesses, it has developed a WhatsApp business app, while for medium and large businesses, there’s a WhatsApp business API.
WhatsApp Business app is a free-to-download app that was built by keeping small business owners in mind. This app makes it easy for brand owners to personally connect with their customers, highlight their products and services, and answer the queries of their customers throughout their shopping experience.
You can create a catalog where you can display your products and services and there are many special built-in tools that you can use to automate, sort, and quickly reply to your customers’ messages.
WhatsApp Business API is for medium and large business owners where they can communicate with their customers from all around the world in a simple, secure, and reliable way.
Concluding thoughts on social media sites
There are numerous social media sites that are huge and popular among the masses. If you’re just a user, you are free to create multiple accounts for your entertainment but if you’re a creator or marketer, the first thing you should consider is whether your target audience is active on that platform or not then you can go ahead and create your business account or page or website.
You can create your profile on multiple accounts or even just on a few of them, it’s completely up to you. As a brand owner, you should strategize, pre-plan, set your goal, and look out for the ideal social media website that could be helpful for your brand or business.
With the upcoming trends and changes in the construction of social media sites, updates in their features, these social media sites will gain more and more popularity among the masses. But, as of now, these social media platforms are top in their business game.
