Which social channels are best for my business?

9 min readSep 9, 2022

In 2022, it’s rare to find a brand that does not engage in social media in some form or another.

If your business isn’t active on social media, you’re probably missing out on the opportunity to engage with your audience — but it can be tough to know where to start.

In this article, we’ll look at benefits of each of the main social media platforms and suggest some of the questions you might want to ask yourself to decide which channels are best for your business.

What are the main social media platforms?

At the current time, there are eight ‘premier league’ social media platforms in the UK, that have over 10m active UK users

In order of popularity, they are:

Facebook, 51m UK users
YouTube, 35m UK users
LinkedIn, 31m UK users
Instagram, 28m UK users
Snapchat, 19m UK users
Twitter, 17m UK users
TikTok, 17m UK users
Pinterest, 10m UK users

However, don’t be fooled into believing that this is the full list of social media platforms where your company can create a profile and interact.

We’ve not even touched on Tumblr, Reddit, Quora, Medium, or new entrants like Clubhouse.

But with there being so many social networks to engage with — which one is best for you?

Should I have a profile on every single social media platform?

No — it’s not feasible to be active on every social media platform. You’d be spread too thin and wouldn’t be able to produce high-quality content for each channel.

Instead, focus on the platforms that are most relevant to your business and audience, and make sure your content is of the highest quality possible.

A good place to start is to ask yourself where your audience is most active, what your business objectives are, where your competitors are most active, and where you can effectively engage.

Where are your audience most active?

There’s no point in having a presence on a social media platform if your target audience isn’t active there. So, the first step is to research where your target audience is active online.

We generally advise against making assumptions in business — but a large part of determining where your audience are most active is common sense if you understand the typical audience on each social channel (we’ve put together an overview of each channel at the end of this post).

If your business is a broker for over 50’s life insurance — you probably don’t want to be investing a lot of your time on Snapchat. If your business is selling tools to help the recruitment process — it’s a safe bet that you’ll want to be on LinkedIn.

If you’re on a budget, you can do some manual research to help validate your decisions — but you can also use social media listening tools to track user mentions of your industry and your brand across all social media platforms. This will give you an idea of the platforms that are most relevant for your business.

Where are your competitors most active?

If your competitors are active on a social media platform and seeing a lot of engagement on their content — it’s generally a good sign that it’s worth considering for your business too.

Of course, you don’t want to be a copycat — but if your competitor is seeing success in a particular channel, it’s likely because their target audience is active there.

Researching your competitor’s social media activity is a good way to validate your decision to engage on a platform and give you some ideas for content.

What are your social media objectives?

Before you can decide if a social media platform is right for your business, you need to understand what your social media objectives are.

Are you trying to increase brand awareness? Drive traffic to your website? Increase leads or sales?

Your social media strategy should align with your business objectives. There’s no point in having a presence on a social media platform if it’s not going to help you achieve your business goals.

So, ask yourself — what do you want to get out of social media? And which platforms will help you achieve those objectives?

Where can you most easily produce great content and add value?

Even if a social media platform is perfect for your business in terms of audience and objectives — it might be worth thinking twice about engaging on there if you can’t consistently produce great content.

Before committing to any social media platform, make sure you understand what kind of content performs well on that channel, and that you have the resources to produce high-quality content regularly.

As an example, you might identify that TikTok is a great channel to reach your target audience. But if you have no-one in your business that is comfortable being in front of the camera, and there is no enthusiasm for recording videos — you’re going to struggle to produce consistent high-quality content.

More About Facebook

Facebook is by far the largest social network in the UK, with a massive 51 million users across the UK population.

The split of Facebook users is split relatively even across genders — with 48% of UK Facebook users identifying as male, and 52% of UK Facebook users identifying as female.

The most common age group for Facebook users is 25 to 34 — although if your brand targets a more mature audience, it’s worth noting that 19.4% of UK Facebook users are over the age of 55.

The average UK user spends around 23 minutes per day on Facebook, and leaves an average of 7 comments on posts per month.

A profile on Facebook allows your business to connect with both your customers and prospects, and it costs nothing to set up your initial business page.

Facebook has a really simple and easy to use Ads platform, which makes it easy to boost the reach of your posts or build your page following.

Facebook can also be a really great customer support tool and can link with both WhatsApp and Facebook messenger if you wanted to answer business questions in real-time.

More About YouTube

It’s estimated that 33% of UK users watch videos on YouTube every day, with 97% of UK users logging in at least one per month.

A really interesting stat is that the average UK YouTube user spends more time watching video content on YouTube than they do subscription services such as Netflix or Amazon Prime.

If your business has the capabilities to produce engaging, entertaining or educational videos — YouTube could be a great opportunity for you.

YouTube gives you a great platform to demonstrate the benefits of your product or services in action, demonstrate your knowledge and expertise and show off your brand personality.

More About Instagram

Instagram is a great platform for sharing visually engaging content — which makes it perfect for businesses that can create interesting, eye catching images and videos. It is ideal for businesses in sectors such as travel, food and drink, fashion and beauty, and art and design.

Instagram has over 28 million active users in the UK, and is most popular with the 25–34-year-old age group.

In terms of gender split, there is a slight skew towards a female audience — with 56% of UK Instagram users identifying as female.

Instagram started out as an image sharing app but has more recently branched out into ‘Reels’ which are videos that are up to 60 seconds long — many people believe this is to compete with the rise in popularity of TikTok.

Instagram can be great for businesses who are able to create regular visually engaging content — it can give customers a visual reference of your products, services and benefits. It’s great for visual branding.

One thing to bear in mind with Instagram is that you’re currently not able to share links to your site in the captions of your posts — many brands combat this by having their link in their bio.

More about Snapchat

One platform that you may not have considered for your business is Snapchat.

Snapchat has around 19 million monthly active users in the UK, and approximately 77% of users are in the 18–24 year old age group.

So, if your target audience is in a slightly younger demographic, Snapchat could be a channel to consider.

One of the key things that sets Snapchat apart from other social media platforms is its disappearing content — which means that it’s perfect for businesses that want to share timely, relevant content without it being around forever.

More About Twitter

Twitter is a platform that can be really effective for businesses that want to share timely, relevant content on a regular basis.

Twitter is perfect for sharing news, updates, blog posts and articles.

If you’re looking to use social media to build relationships with other businesses or influencers in your industry, Twitter can be a great place to start.

Twitter is all about engaging with others — so make sure you’re regularly tweeting, retweeting and replying to other users.

When it comes to Twitter advertising, Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts are definitely worth considering if you’re looking to boost your visibility on the platform.

More about TikTok

TikTok is a relatively new social media platform, and one that is growing in popularity.

TikTok is all about short videos — with most videos being between 15 and 60 seconds long.

The platform can be really effective for businesses that are able to create creative, engaging video content. It’s also great for influencer marketing as there are many ‘micro-influencers’ on the platform with a smaller, but very engaged following.

More about Pinterest

Pinterest is a visual bookmarking site — which means that it’s perfect for businesses that have a lot of visual content, such as fashion brands, homeware brands and food and drink businesses.

If you’re not familiar with Pinterest, it basically allows users to ‘pin’ images and videos to their own personal boards. These pins can then be seen by other users, who can then ‘repin’ them to their own boards.

This makes it a great way to get your content seen by a wider audience and can ultimately lead to more website traffic and sales.

To make the most of Pinterest, you need to make sure that your images are high quality and optimised for the platform. You also need to make sure that you’re using keywords effectively, as this will help your pins be seen by more people.

Hopefully after reading this article, you’ve got a better idea of which social channels might work best for your business.

But if you’ve still got questions and queries about how to get the results you need, why not drop me a line?