Social Media Platforms for Business

Social media platforms enable businesses to connect with their audience in new ways. These tools help humanize businesses and provide analytics that informs marketing campaigns.

Several social media apps have photo- and video-sharing capabilities, including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. These apps also offer privacy settings to control who sees your content.

1. Facebook

Facebook is the world’s most popular social networking platform with over 2.9 billion active monthly users. It started in 2004 as an online portal for Harvard students and remains the leading software for connecting people worldwide.

One of the most contested issues with Facebook is its failure to establish genuine accountability for content. While it has delegated censorship decisions to a quasi-independent oversight board, this system still lacks the authority and control to make genuine changes.

2. Twitter

Twitter is a social networking platform where users post 140-character status updates known as tweets. These are broadcast to users who follow the tweeter and can be retweeted by those followers to their followers.

Businesses can use Twitter to share product/company news and develop brand awareness. Twitter can also help a business build up customers by allowing them to respond to customer questions, comments, and concerns in real time.

Using the right social media platform can increase your traffic, leads, and sales. OptinMonster helps you use the best platforms for your business to reach your marketing goals. Try it free today!

3. LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a social networking website focused on business and professional connections. Launched in 2003, the site provides a range of services that enable users to promote themselves and their companies, find employment, and build business relationships.

The site’s features include a news feed customized to each user’s network, job search, and groups for specific companies or occupations. Users can also add contacts and get skill endorsements and recommendations from other members.

Like Facebook, LinkedIn allows outside developers to create applications that access a user’s social graph. In May 2017, LinkedIn sent a cease-and-desist letter to hiQ Labs, which collects public profile information, claiming it violates the DMCA.

4. Tumblr

Tumblr is a blogging and social media platform that allows users to post text, photos, audio, and video. It has a focus on multimedia and a flexible format that makes it popular with writers, artists, musicians, and others.

A post on Tumblr can be reblogged (similar to a retweet on Twitter) or commented on, which is known as a “note.” Notes are a form of gratitude and are more valuable to creators than likes.

Tumblr is often used by teens and young ages, and it has gained a reputation as an unsafe place to find pornography and self-harm content. It was also recently criticized for banning ages content when it was owned by Verizon.

For more: Businesstechtime.com

5. Reddit

Reddit is a community forum that calls itself “the front page of the Internet.” Users can create forums, or subreddits, on specific topics and communicate with others who share the same interests. Users can also up or down-vote posts, which help determine which links are featured on the site.

Reddit allows its users to chat anonymously and build up karma, which can be used to earn rewards for contributions to the forum. Reddit also hosts AMAs (Ask Me Anything) with prominent people in fields such as science and entertainment. It’s a popular place to follow breaking news and live events. Reddit also has a robust mobile app that provides real-time updates.

6. Pinterest

Pinterest is a visual discovery and planning platform that allows users to pin images and videos for future reference. Users organize Pins into collections called boards. Each board can be public or secret.

Pinterest’s algorithm uses keywords and phrases to find related content for users to discover. This means that consistently sharing new and interesting Pins improves the chances that Pinterest’s algorithms will share them with more users in the future.

To maximize your marketing potential on Pinterest, use Sprout Social to create and publish content that reflects your brand, products, and services. Use research on your buyer personas to determine what types of content your audience wants to see from you on Pinterest.