25 Social Media Platforms for Business in 2024

With so many social media platforms for business today, it’s overwhelming to choose which one to focus on. 🧐

Social media strategy has become an essential part of digital marketing, so you need to choose the right social platform.

And, as always, we’re here to help you with that. 😉

Take a look at these 25 popular social media platforms so you can choose which one(s) suits your business and your target audience best.

Why You Should Use Social Media for Your Business

1. To increase brand awareness.

Before you can work on sales, people need to know about your business first, and content marketing on social media is one of the most obvious ways to do that.

It’s a crucial and easy way to start and participate in conversations with potential customers and boost your brand awareness.

2. To connect with your customers.

It’s often said that to find your customers, you need to show up where they are. This is the main point of social networking.

Social media marketing makes it easy for your customers to find and follow your business, and this helps you generate repeat business.

3. To boost SEO.

Using social media combined with researched SEO keywords for your niche digital product or service also helps boost your SEO, making your business more findable on Google, and sending more customers your way.

4. To build your email list.

Social media platforms are an excellent tool for email marketing and building your email list.

When you create content that offers value and engages customers, you can direct them to your website to subscribe to your mailing list for special offers.

5. To increase profits.

Multiple social media platforms offer eCommerce capabilities right on the page, making it easy for your business to increase its profits.

The less time and fewer clicks it takes for a customer to buy what they’re looking for, the easier it is to generate more sales.

Top Social Media Platforms for Business

1. Facebook

Facebook is the biggest social media site, with nearly three billion monthly active users (MAUs), approximately just a little more than a third of the world’s population.

That sounds like a good bet for business, no? 🤔

You can post all types of content on it, create groups, communities, online eCommerce stores, and more.

Facebook ads are also popular and work well (provided you’re basing them on your current customer data).

Featuring eCommerce marketing capability for customers to shop right on the platform, it’s a no-brainer and easy to use.

2. Instagram

Another big social media marketing monopoly player, Instagram, is a social network with an intense visual focus.

If your business is visual, like, for example, photography, art, decor, etc., this is the platform to post an Instagram Story and get your work seen by Instagram users.

Boasting over two billion MAUs, it’s a big playing field, but with the right keywords and some consistent effort, you can grow your audience and business on this platform.

Instagram Reels and Stories get a lot of traction, so use them in combination with regular posting.

3. Twitter

Twitter is a social media channel perfectly suited to real-time news addicts who enjoy following breaking news, celebrity happenings, political situations unfolding, sports, and more.

With approximately 450 million MAUs, it’s easy to see why Twitter is also useful as a customer service platform because it helps customers get their queries sorted faster.

If this applies to your business (or can be), use it to your advantage!

4. Snapchat

Snapchat features over half a billion MAUs, most of whom are between 18-24 years old, and more women use it than men.

If this fits your market demographic, you need to pay attention and use this social media network.

It’s not at the peak of popularity anymore, but you can still make it work for your business while it’s still profitable and workable.

You never know — when the social media app will hit a new upturn, bringing you even more business.

5. WhatsApp

Known as a user-friendly mobile messaging app, WhatsApp continues to boom in popularity and currently has over 2 billion MAUs.

They have upgraded their encryption of messaging, so it’s a secure app to use.

It’s also fairly reliable when you use it for video calling.

For business, you can set up WhatsApp business accounts that allow you to have a catalog on your social media profile.

People can scan through that and shop right on WhatsApp. It’s so easy; it’s almost irresistible.

6. YouTube

YouTube has been around forever, but this old giant still boasts 2.6 billion MAUs, and 52% of worldwide internet users scroll over to it at least once a month.

There’s no guarantee that you’ll go viral on YouTube — it’s hard to do — but it’s still a worthy platform for business marketing, customer engagement, ads, and setting up a social channel of audio-visual resources for your audience.

Use SEO-optimized content as much as possible.

🎯 Pro Tip: If you're serious about YouTube marketing, don't miss our guide to monetizing YouTube!

7. Facebook Messenger

Facebook Messenger is way less popular than WhatsApp, with only 1.3 billion MAUs, but it’s still worth using.

This platform is handy for business in that you can set up automated message responses when Facebook users enquire about your services or products.

It lends itself to a helpful customer service flow.

If most of your target audience has and uses Facebook, they likely also use Facebook Messenger, so it makes sense to combine the two.

8. Reddit

While Reddit is more of a forum than a stereotypical social media platform, it’s a great place to get questions answered, see what your customers are talking about in your industry, and contribute value to the conversations.

It’s a different method to use for increasing your PR efforts, but don’t underestimate it.

The platform boasts over 430 million MAUs that participate in over 100,000 interest-based communities.

Your industry is bound to have a group in there somewhere.

Find your tribe and join in!

9. TikTok

It’s easy to think of TikTok as the favored love child of the pandemic, even though the popular social media platform was already active and growing fast before that.

With over 1 billion monthly users, this huge online rabbit hole of relatable content, and consumer-created social media advertising has the irresistible appeal of doing away with the aesthetically driven trends of Instagram and Pinterest.

It’s a place where people build their own communities based on causes as much as interests, and there is a distinctly human focus.

There’s still plenty of room to implement your marketing strategy here.

Your social media videos also have the potential to go viral more than once!

10. LinkedIn

Almost as old as Facebook, LinkedIn is still alive and well as a professional social media platform for the business world.

There are more individuals posting on there than company pages getting attention, but again, depending on how your industry works, it’s a great place to start and participate in relevant conversations to get seen.

To enhance your presence, you can also embed LinkedIn posts on the website, showcasing discussions and updates that can attract more engagement.

There are over 310 million MAUs, so it’s admittedly a smaller pool to swim in, but that may be exactly what you need to stand out faster and better.

11. Google My Business

This advertising platform is more about visibility than social media engagement.

Listing your Google business profile on Google My Business is a must because it’s free! It also helps your business be found online more often.

It’s particularly suited for local customers looking for help in their vicinity.

And combining it with SEO marketing strategies also increases your business ranking on Google.

Users search 1.5 billion locations along with services, places, and products they are looking for, and almost 9 out of 10 potential customers check online reviews before choosing a local service provider.

☝️️ Tip: Hotels are the most searched on Google My Business, so it’s crucial for hospitality businesses.

12. Medium

Medium is a blogging platform where writers can post content on any topic that interests them, from politics to health, prose, and more.

It’s also a monetizable social media platform, though it takes a while to get a substantial income from it.

On average, about 60 million readers are active on this platform every month.

It has a high domain authority (DA) ranking of 88, so posting on this platform will give you a high likelihood of your content being seen, especially because about half of all the site’s traffic comes from organic searches!

13. Pinterest

Pinterest is also one of the “elders” of the social media community, but still holds a lot of power as an extremely effective SEO booster.

Organic reach is determined by your choice of keywords matching up with users’ searches.

Standing at approximately 445 million MAUs, it’s the place to be if your target audience is mostly women and your business is geared towards food and visual niches such as crafts, DIY, interior decorating, etc.

14. Discord

Discord is a social media platform intended for video gaming fans to use while playing online, but businesses also use it as an alternative to Slack for business communication.

The platform has 150 million MAUs, and almost two-thirds are men.

It is, however, also expanding into becoming a popular community platform centered around interest-based groups of all kinds.

At this stage, it means that if you explore using this platform for business, you may have less competition.

15. Quora

Like Reddit, Quora lends itself to easy customer research in a question-and-answer fashion.

It’s easy to join conversations and do keyword searches to see topic/product/industry-related questions your potential customers may be asking.

You can use this information to create SEO-optimized blog posts, website copy, landing page information, social media content, newsletters, and more.

Boasting over 300 million MAUs and the ability to create business pages and paid ads, it’s well worth using.

16. Tumblr

Tumblr is a dynamic creative space where writers publish blogs, as well as photos, videos, and audio content.

Almost half of the platform’s 150 million MAUS are mostly young people between 18-25 years old.

The platform shows users’ information based on their geographic location and interests.

If you are in the creative space and your target audience is Gen Z, this is one of the best places to build your social media presence.

17. Telegram

Telegram is much like WhatsApp, a mobile messaging app that also allows for data-based audio and video calls, posting of different types of content, group creation, etc.

The difference is that it has more capacity and better encryption than WhatsApp, which is owned by Meta (Facebook).

The groups you create on Telegram can hold up to 1000 members, whereas WhatsApp groups can only hold 250 members.

You can also broadcast messages to 200,000 people at a time, while WhatsApp broadcasting is limited to 256 contacts at a time.

The platform boasts about 700 million MAUs and enables businesses to set up automated social media customer service using chatbots.

18. QQ

QQ is a top Chinese instant messaging app, but it does so much more.

Users can customize their avatars, watch movies, interact with other users in online games, stream music, shop, blog, and even make payments.

Using the app itself does not require a phone number ― a unique feature that’s appealing and makes it accessible to young people.

It’s mainly used in the workforce and boasts 574.4 million users because it’s easy to use and you can send files bigger than 25MB ― another rare feature you don’t see on many of these apps.

19. Yelp

Yelp is a platform that provides business reviews and has 172 million monthly visitors.

People use it to check on businesses, read reviews of other customers’ user experience, and see whether your business is a good fit for their needs.

You can boost your brand loyalty and business reputation by asking your happy customers to post positive reviews on this site.

It’s also worth taking the time to respond to any negative reviews and complaints.

20. WeChat

WeChat is an instant messaging app that combines payment features, lifestyle features, messaging, and social commerce into one platform.

It’s especially popular in China, so if this is your target market, you need to be active here because this platform has over a billion MAUs, with one-fifth being 31-40 years old and another fifth aged over 50.

The payment features on this app allow you to book and pay for all kinds of appointments and reservations, giving you another incentive to use the app if this applies to your business too.

21. Twitch

Although Twitch was initially intended for users in online gaming, it’s becoming increasingly popular as a live-streaming platform with 140 million monthly active fans on it.

If your target audience is mainly Millennials and Gen Z (20-29-year-olds), this is the place to use video to reach them.

You can use various types of challenges or series-type posts to build interest and inspire people to participate.

22. Skype

Skype is an old platform, but still useful as a free internet calling, video, audio, and text messaging app.

Over 300 million people still use this app every month. It’s free to use and fairly straightforward, although it lacks the ability to record meetings and calls like Zoom and Teams.

You can also purchase credits to enable calling international mobile numbers instead of just ringing someone’s account.

Skype for Business offers additional features and functions, such as the capacity to have online meetings with groups of 250 people, high-level security, and integration with various Microsoft Office apps.

23. Qzone

Qzone is QQ’s mom, just like Facebook is the parent of Facebook Messenger.

That said, Qzone has way fewer users than QQ. This social media platform is mostly like a Chinese version of other social platforms, allowing users to shop online, play games, upload images and videos, create and share blog posts, etc.

The platform has over 6 million users, most of whom are Generation Z, so there is still a good overlap with QQ.

If your target market includes these groups in China, this platform will help you grow.

24. TripAdvisor

TripAdvisor is well known as the world’s top travel platform where users can see reviews of all things, places, and services related to travel, accommodation, adventure, and transport experiences.

With over 463 million monthly active users, it’s reliable and a huge opportunity to share your business with more clients looking to come your way.

25. BaiduTieba

Another app that can help you reach the Chinese markets, BaiduTieba is a type of online forum made by the geniuses behind the third largest search engine globally.

Think of it as the Chinese version of Reddit.

Users can create conversation threads on various topics, share the content and conversations with others on the forum, and interact.

The forum has over 45 million monthly active users, so while smaller than many of the others listed above, it’s not insignificant, either.

Choose YOUR social media platform for 2023

Now that you have a good idea of which social media platforms for business would be most suitable for you and your target audience, it’s time to implement your digital marketing strategy.

Set up social media management basics ― accounts, profiles that link to your business website/offer page, and options for contacting you.

Talk to people, be yourself, and be as helpful as you can.

Business and marketing are — and will always be — about helping people.

The best social media platform — or multiple platforms — for you is the one where your target audience is and where you consistently show up to offer value.

Keep that in mind, and you will be successful.