Choosing the Best Social Media Platforms for Your Business: A 2025 Guide
Choosing the best social media platforms for your business in this present digital age can be quite overwhelming but more crucial than ever. In this guide, we’ll walk you through the prime factors to put into consideration anytime you intend to select the best social media platforms for your business in 2025.
What is a Social Media Platform?
A social media platform is an online channel or network that supports communication, interaction, and content sharing among individuals and communities. It’s a broad definition, and intentionally so. As consumer and advertiser preferences shift, so do social media platforms.
What You Should Know About Social Media Platforms
At this time, product reviews and the like are being done on social media by most internet users, as they tend to go online to look out for products or even services before they buy. That’s a huge number – more than two billion people worldwide. These social media platforms vary based on it’s strengths, though some work better than the other for certain kinds of stuff or businesses. Thus making it a necessity that you choose the right social media platform for your business to thrive.
In the past times, people leveraged the Facebook platform as having a Facebook page was enough to run a business. But in recent times, as your customers are using diverse platforms you ought to be vast as well to be able to meet their demands. There are over twenty (20) social media platforms which are available for you to connect and interact with your target audience.
As the year 2024 comes to an end, it’s now time to start considering branding and growth for the upcoming year. Businesses can not ignore social media as a crucial and inevitable tool anymore, but choosing the best social media platform for your business success in 2025 is key.
For instance, if you running a small or medium-sized business with little resources and funds, there are merely too many to be active on all of them. Also, you would be better off spending your time on the platforms that align with your objectives.
The first—and perhaps most crucial—step in every SME’s digital marketing strategy is choosing the best social media platform for business growth. Being at the right place at the right time to interact with your target audience is more paramount than merely being active online. Let’s consider how to choose the most effective social media platform for your business growth and boosting your target audience’s reach and visibility.
Related: 9 Steps to Building a Winning Social Media Marketing Strategy
Becoming a Social Media Master
Social media offers business owners the opportunity to connect with audiences from all demographics on a global scale. But there exists an art to leveraging social media channels effectively for your growth and success.
Before we dive into the best social media platforms, let’s get one thing straight: a great strategy is your backstage pass to social media success. Without it, you’re just shouting into the void—and nobody likes that.
- Your Objectives: The benefits diverse social media platforms provide differ from one another. Your whole business objectives are often connected to the social media goals you intend to achieve. You’ll find out that some platforms are the best for actualizing some of your social media goals.
To help you out in choosing the best social media platforms, put down your main objectives in writing when you’ve made your decisions. This is important since you may focus on the social media platforms where you will likely connect with your target audience as well as potential clients if your goal is to boost brand visibility.
- Your Niche: Knowing what niche or sector of your brand or business is operating is key to choosing the best social media platforms to leverage. For instance, platforms such as Pinterest or Instagram might not be the best option for you, if you’re offering special software for medical professionals and your product isn’t visually appealing. These won’t be the best social media platforms for you as your audience is business-oriented.
- Understand Your Audience (as in, truly understand them): Consider social media platforms as different neighborhoods. You wouldn’t set up a trendy vegan café in an area known for steakhouses, would you? In the same vein, you must be aware of the places where your audience convenes.
While Gen Z uses TikTok to make us millennials feel outdated, professionals will use LinkedIn to offer their professional insights and to modestly boast about their achievements.
- Customize Your Content (Not Everything Fits Into One Format): What will work on one social media platform may not work on another, in accordance with the golden rule of social media. Consider long-form videos for YouTube, clever tweets for X, and eye-catching images for Instagram. Make the most of each platform’s advantages to gain admirers and followers.
- Choose Quality Over Quantity: Being everywhere at once can be enticing, but it’s tiring as you’ll miss the most important things, just like attempting to participate in every group chat. Focus on and master two or three platforms that align with your objectives.
- Keep an eye on the competition, but avoid copying them: The main aim of competition analysis is to discover opportunities that your competitors may have missed, but not to imitate their every move. Consider it similar to negotiating a busy marketplace: a busy stall does not necessarily represent the ideal location for your business. It’s possible that your rivals are dominating Facebook but haven’t yet tapped into Instagram. This is your opportunity to make an impression.
- The secret to becoming memorable is consistency: After reviewing the data in your competition research report, you have determined which social media channels are most appropriate for your company. Make sure that the handle you claim is the same across all channels and that your material is consistent before you start setting up your accounts. Your social username is called a handle. Make sure that your social media handles are consistent across all platforms because it can be confusing for your followers and viewers.
Next, if you want people to remember who you are, make sure you have a business logo image that you can use as your profile picture on all platforms. Keep in mind that consistency is crucial.
- Test and Modify: Lastly, keep in mind that social media is ever-changing. What is effective today might not be tomorrow. Review your performance regularly and be ready to modify your strategy. Make decisions based on feedback and platform statistics.
Related: Inspiring Social Media Campaigns Examples: Learn From the Best
Best Social Media Platforms for Brands in 2025
It might be a difficult thing to choose the best social media platform for your brand or business. For example, if you’re selling furniture or other items that appear well in photos, you’ll likely want to leverage a platform that features these images. Still and all, if you have in-depth reports or success stories, you need a way to share them with readers who are interested in learning more.
In 2025, social media will still be the very best platform for brands to interact, connect, and thrive. The best social media platform can make all the difference, whether your objective is to attract a loyal local following or a global audience. The top social media channels that can support the growth of your brand this year are outlined in more detail here:
LinkedIn is simply a platform or channel for professional networking that features the stories and contents of diverse businesses and brands. Showing your brand as true and human relative to just uploading a logo or an image is better than ever as most people trust the brands they know and can talk about.
With a large number of Gen X and Millennial corporate professionals as its main users, LinkedIn is the go-to resource for all things career-related, including networking, jobs, professional growth, and personal brand building. Boost your LinkedIn activity to establish credibility and keep your position as an authority in your field. For startups, LinkedIn is especially helpful for posting jobs, learning about the culture of the company, and checking the references and background of possible hires.
In addition to being the top B2B marketing platform, it’s a great place to find leads. Indeed, according to recent data from LinkedIn, 62% of B2B marketers use the platform to create leads. Better yet, when compared to other platforms, it increases buy intent by 33% and yields 2x greater conversion rates.
Facebook is still one of the most widely used platforms worldwide, twenty years after it initially debuted and transformed the way people communicate and share content online.
Approximately 83% of all social media users now have a Facebook account. Facebook usage is highest among Gen X, with Boomers and Millennials following closely behind. For news and current affairs, it continues to be the best option. Facebook is also likely to be the first choice for social media customer support among users of all ages.
X (formerly Twitter)
Men are very much more likely than women to have an X profile, with almost half (49%) of all social media users over all age groups having one account.
Customers make use of X for entertainment, to stay in touch with their friends and families, and to follow celebrities and also influencers. When interacting with brands, X’s objectives do shift a bit. Customers are most liable to take part in contests, prizes, and informative product material while still seeking entertainment.
WhatsApp and Telegram
WhatsApp, Telegram and other messaging apps are increasingly essential for client interaction and tailored communication. Particularly in areas where these apps are ingrained in daily life, businesses can utilize these platforms to provide direct service, spread marketing messages, and create devoted communities.
TikTok
With over one billion users, TikTok is rapidly becoming more and more influential, more specifically for brands and businesses. To aid you in making the most of the platform, it offers a Small Business Resource Center. TikTok is a platform or channel for sharing videos and it provides free tools for you to make your own.
TikTok’s explosive rise was and still is driven by younger users. 82% of Gen Z and 76% of Millennials have a TikTok profile, even though 68% of social media users have one. TikTok is more than just a social network, especially for Gen Z. It serves as a search engine, news outlet, cultural hub, and virtual marketplace. Among the age group, it is the most popular channel for finding news and products.
Since low-quality videos might harm your brand’s reputation, creating high-quality material is the greatest strategy to advertise on TikTok and reach as many people as possible.
Pinterest is perceived to be a high-energy source by most social media users. Yea, according to a survey of customers, over half (55%) believe that content on Pinterest is more positive than content on other social media platforms. For Gen Z, that number increases even further. The topmost brands on Pinterest make use of the social media platform to inspire and encourage their followers with inspirational and motivational content.
Instagram is the most popular social media platform across all age groups, with 87% of social media users having an account, according to the 2024 Social Media Content Strategy Report.
The main motivations for Instagram scrolling are to relieve boredom and establish connections with loved ones. However, at least half of all users engage with brands there daily.
YouTube
YouTube is regarded as the second most sought-after search engine after Google. Monthly, over 1 billion people from across the world make use of it, and over 400 hours of video are uploaded every minute. This is an immense opportunity for raising brand awareness. Over 78% of all people using other social media platforms have a YouTube profile, and the percentage rises even further among Gen Z and Millennials.
Considering that 84% of businesses now make use of videos as a tool for their marketing, it’s a necessity to adopt YouTube’s benefits for your brand. Bear in mind that YouTube stands as a search engine and a social platform, so you should carefully take into consideration the titles of your videos to boost visibility.
Even for brand uploads, YouTube’s comparatively lengthy films remain appealing as consumers’ attention spans get shorter. Long-form brand videos are preferred by more than half (53%) of YouTube users. Because YouTube material is long-form, you can also make short-form content for Instagram and TikTok to boost your reach and return on investment.
Threads
While entertainment and education are major draws, users also like watching brands interact with one another, which has proven to be an effective strategy for brands on Threads looking to drive engagement.
Meta launched Threads in 2023, and since then, it has rolled out new features and users are beginning to figure out how Threads fits into their daily scrolling habits. At the moment, most users turn to Threads to pass the time, though many also use it to stay up to date on news and real-time events.
Over 85,000 communities, or subreddits, make up the text-based social network Reddit, each with its own set of rules and customs.
Nearly 75% of the network’s viewers identify as male, and they are often younger. Although Reddit is often linked to its main subreddits, such as /r/IAmA or /r/personalfinance, it also has vibrant communities on a variety of subjects, including beauty, fitness, and more.
Discord
More than 200 million individuals use the voice, video, and text chat platform called Discord globally. Communities with a wide range of hobbies, from readers and equestrians to botanists, now inhabit what started out as a place for gamers to gather. There will probably be a Discord server devoted to a topic if there are enough fans of it.
Discord has a lot of potential for users who are prepared to put in the time and effort to create a lasting community, even while it might not be the greatest network for expanding your following. Discord is a great tool for encouraging participation for firms with robust advocacy programs since it allows community members to connect and have meaningful conversations.
Related: Why Use Social Media Marketing? | Benefits for Businesses of All Sizes
Conclusion
While we consider this present time and beyond, the social media landscape is developing speedily, providing us with a vast opportunity for businesses to connect with their audiences cleverly.
Embracing a multichannel strategy and staying frontwards with trends can help businesses boost their reach, interact with mixed audiences, and create authentic, intriguing experiences that align with their consumers.
Adaptability is prime for successful social media marketing. By adopting these new trends and technologies, businesses can sustain their strategies, ensuring they remain pertinent, ingenious, and prepared to leverage the exciting opportunities that lie ahead.
