Top 15 Social Media Networking Sites- Brands Must Know!
Social media networking can do wonders for a brand if used in the right way. It can help you establish your brand’s identity. To leverage social media to its full capacity, you need to know the right social media networking platforms to use.
Aiming right social media networking sites will help you capitalize on your brand reach, engage with the right audience and establish your brand value. If you are a social media marketer, you need to know everything about social media networking platforms right away. Stay tuned to learn more!
What is Social Media Networking?
Social media networking is using social media sites to remain connected with friends, customers, and clients. In this era of digitization, the advent of social media has changed the way a brand is recognized.
It is due to these social media platforms that people tend to be socially active. One of the main objectives is to expand your brand’s reach to as many people as possible. A brand these days is not only acknowledged by its quality product and services but also its identity.
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What are the Advantages of Using Social Media Networking Platforms?
Before you think of choosing any social media networking platform to market your products and services, you need to know the advantages of using social media platforms too. Here are a few benefits of using social media networking platforms:
- Easy connection with other people in the world
- Instant communication
- Great opportunities
- Access to real-time information round the clock
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How to Choose the Right Platform
Any social media platform you choose from this list will raise your brand’s awareness. It will help you understand the formats supported by different platforms while you use them. If you have just started building your brand’s presence, it is crucial to know which platforms you need to target to get the right audience.
Lists like these will be a beginner’s guide for you to know your target audience. These platforms will help you communicate your brand’s value while connecting with people and changing the way your brand is perceived.
We suggest you find out everything about each platform before deciding the platform you want to use. The apt research is a prerequisite to be sure before going further. You may not find an all-set-up guide for every platform, but once you begin using the platforms you decide on, your understanding of that platform will get better with time.
You can choose to use different strategies for every platform you use and put out the content that’s liked by your users. Often brands talk about their products and customer reviews to establish a sense of trust among their users and potential customers.
Things to Consider before Investing in Marketing Campaigns
To prove that your brand can cater to a target audience, you need to recognize the pain points, your brand’s unique selling points, and the demand-supply gap in the market. It can be understood only if you are well acquainted with the platforms and your target audience.
Understanding how your brand is perceived is of utmost importance. So, researching the target audience and the kind of content they like on your selected platforms is part of a hygiene check that comes in mandatory as and when you begin using social media sites.
Gain the advantage of social media platforms to gain new customers and establish a brand story that connects with people just by using the right platforms. Give your brand the face and recognition it needs by deciding the platforms that are used by the target audience.
Try to make the most of social media to understand everything about your audience’s likes and dislikes. Once you know about their interaction patterns on the social media channels, you’ll have a thorough understanding of the user behavior.
Learning about every social media platform can be overwhelming, but this is the right place to begin understanding what works well and what doesn’t. You will need to take the first step to set up your account and analyze every little activity and interaction your audience makes with your brand page.
These small metrics will help you understand everything you need to know about user behavior. The knowledge you get along the way will help you build the right strategies on social platforms to make the desired impact and shape the way your brand is found, recognized, and perceived. As someone who is looking to build their brand, keeping these bits of advice will help you increase your brand’s awareness.
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Roles and Responsibilities of Social Media Marketers
Social media marketers are likely to understand everything about handling different social media platforms while creating strategies. Taking their help will be fruitful in the long term because they can help you use the right approach for each platform while highlighting the right brand values that’ll connect with people.
They will assist you in understanding everything about social media and the way it functions before taking any steps further. This will not only help you create the right impact but also help you scale your brand in the right direction going further.
Importance of Brand Awareness in Successful Social Media Networking
Building a brand requires a lot of prerequisites which will be detailed out by the social media marketer. This part of the work demands them to be strategic and active to know about every ongoing social media trend. It will ease the process of building your brand and enhance your brand’s social media presence.
Building your brand becomes easier if you make the right pitch to your potential customers because there needs to be a story that your brand conveys. To be able to be a brand that grows coherently, knowing the platforms that suit your needs, and exploring everything in the brand’s capacity to convey the message is one of the best things to do.
While every social media channel has a different set user base, knowing tools that’ll support you in the process can be helpful. The tools that can help you schedule your content, analyze metrics along with strategies that’ll boost your brand’s presence are a boon in such times.
While we spoke about social media sites, their advantages, and disadvantages this list will help your brand grow and become your user’s go-to choice. Using different engagement activities on each platform will help you interact with your users and know about them better.
The Most Popular Social Media Networking Platforms
While there are a lot of social media networking platforms that have grown in a short period, you need to know which platform will match the requirements of your business. It will help you understand how to put those platforms to the best use while building your brand. If you want to know everything about 15 social media networking platforms, this list will do it all. Let’s find out!
1. Instagram
It’ll allow you to share different content formats like images, videos, and reels. Any brand can have a business profile that gives them access to the profile analytics and schedule posts with third-party tools.
Recommended Read: Instagram Marketing- 15 Essential Tips
2. LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a professional social networking platform. It is available in twenty different languages. It is used across the globe by all professionals helping them connect with other professionals in their field. Brands share content on LinkedIn to increase their brand’s awareness, send personalized ads, and attract talent to the company.
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3. WhatsApp
WhatsApp is a messaging app used in over 180 countries. It also has a business platform that allows businesses to have a business profile. WhatsApp will help you share updates with customers about their purchases. Small businesses can use a built-in app, WhatsApp Business App, while medium and large businesses use WhatsApp Business API.
4. Facebook
Facebook is a well-known social media platform used by 65 million businesses and six million+ advertisers for promoting their business. Content formats like texts, images, and videos can be posted on this platform.
Learn How to Do Marketing On Facebook?
5. Messenger
Businesses now use Messenger to advertise, send newsletters and create chatbots. These features give businesses a new way to engage with users while helping them acquire new customers.
6. YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing platform where users watch videos in both kinds of format, long or short. You can create videos for your brands, upload them and increase your reach. It is a well-known and second-largest known search engine.
7. Pinterest
It is a visual bookmarking and photo sharing that’ll enable you to find new project ideas and save them. Around 78% of brands use Pinterest to shape their purchasing decisions. Having a presence on Pinterest will help you build a top-of-the-mind recall for your business.
8. Telegram
Telegram is like other messaging apps and known for how secure it is. This platform is available in 8+ languages and is focused on privacy and security. It’ll empower you to send encrypted and self-destructive messaging. Active users for Telegram are approximately 100 million per month.
9. Quora
Quora is a knowledge gaining and sharing platform where people from various fields answer and ask questions. Every answer holds relevance as it comes from an expert in a particular field. Being present on Quora will help you raise your brand’s awareness by getting answers from your customers.
10. Snapchat
Snapchat is a social media app focusing on sharing photos and videos. Snapchat was the platform that gave rise to the stories on Instagram. It eventually turned Instagram to be more favorable for users.
11. Clubhouse
The clubhouse is a social media platform that is used for live audio discussions. The only way you can create an account on it is by receiving it from an existing user. This app can hold up to 5000 people in its chatroom-style rooms. Recording, transcribing, and sharing live conversations are not allowed. It is one of the most popular audio-based networks on the web.
12. Tiktok
It is a video-sharing platform that allows users to share short videos. It was one of the most downloaded apps in 2018. Any user can record a 60 seconds long video, edit them, add music and special effects.
13. Medium
It is a content publishing platform that is free to publish and read articles. Many companies publish their blogs on Medium to increase their brand’s reach. They create content virtually on any topic of their choice, and once the content is published, readers can leave their feedback.
14. Tumblr
Tumblr is a microblogging and social networking platform for sharing photos, text, links, videos, audio, and more. This Yahoo-owned platform gives the flexibility to customize everything. A Tumblr blog looks like any website, and thus it is utilized by many blog pages.
15. Skype
Skype is a Microsoft-owned communication-based social networking platform. It’ll allow you to connect with people through voice and video calls. You can even do video conferencing calls. The best part of it is, it’s free to be used in any part of the world.
Disadvantages of Social Media Networking Sites
While social media platforms have a lot of advantages, it has a lot of disadvantages. Let’s find out about them as well:
1. Frauds and Scams
It is a concerning matter because many people create identical pages like brands and use them for doing frauds and scams. They mislead people into believing that they are the true brand pages.
2. Cyberbullying
Before you begin using social media for your brand, you need to know that people tend to express their hatred and aggression on social media too. This happens very often with well-known brands and public figures.
3. Hacking
Most users are not aware of security measures one needs to take care of using social media platforms. People share information on social media websites that provoke hackers to hack public accounts.
4. Privacy Issues
There can always be privacy issues while using social media. In order to avoid any of those while using your brand’s channel remember to take care of the data, you put out using it. It allows people to peek into your life while being unaware of circumstances.
5. Need to stay Engaged and Active
Every social platform needs to have a different strategy because the kind of content that works for every platform is very different depending upon their format. To reach a larger group of people, it is necessary to understand the right strategy and the target audience. It can lead to a reduction in engagement if not taken care of.
6. Platform Wise Limitations
Every social platform needs to have a different strategy because the kind of content that works for every platform is very different depending upon their formats. To reach a larger group of people, it is necessary to understand the right strategy and the target audience. It can lead to a reduction in engagement if not taken care of.
Now that you know the advantages and disadvantages of using any social media platform along with the list of platforms, let’s find out the answer to a few frequently asked questions here!
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Frequently Asked Questions
1. What are some examples of social networking?
Social networking connects like-minded professionals from the same fields using apps or websites like LinkedIn and Twitter.
2. Why is social media good for networking?
Social media is good for networking because it is a two-way channel that gives opportunities to establish a professional relationship with brands and their users along with prospects.
3. What is the biggest social media platform?
Whatsapp and Instagram are now growing to be the biggest social media platforms.
4. Can every brand use social media for creating brand awareness?
Yes, every brand can use social media for creating brand awareness.
Final Thoughts
A brand is made from the value it propagates and the problems its product and services solve. So, be mindful of choosing the platforms for your brand to communicate what separates you from your competitors.
The way you communicate this message about your brand on social channels becomes the identification of your brand. It is not limited to your brand’s logo but also to the strong messaging you put in front of your users on social media that’ll define your brand’s persona.
Being the one who builds a brand, you will need inputs from people who specialize in different fields and this list will help you do the needful as your first step. If you are looking to grow your brands on social media you need to be acquainted with the pros and cons of each platform.
Every platform you use can help you in increasing your user base by targeting different age groups, demographics, and locations. To establish your brand’s global presence, it is necessary to have a consistent voice and tone on every platform while using different strategies for each of them. It will only help your brand have the voice that you desire.
Happy learning!
