The 5 Types of Social Media and Pros & Cons of Each

 Marketers commonly use social media to increase brand awareness, generate leads, and improve traffic. If you’re tasked with starting a social media strategy for your company, you might be wondering which type of platforms you should be on. Your platform choice will likely change based on your audience.

What is Social Media Used For?

Individuals use social media to express themselves, discuss their interests, connect with friends, and grow their careers. Different social media platforms are used for specific purposes. For example, expressing creativity is most common on TikTok or Instagram; promoting one's career is common on LinkedIn.

The list of social media platforms is growing, and well-known platforms like Facebook are always evolving and adding new features. With a greater and greater need for a social presence and an overwhelming amount of platform choices, it can be hard to pick which social channels to use.

You might not want to spread yourself too thin by managing a channel on every imaginable platform, but you also don’t want to miss great brand-awareness opportunities.

To help you make informed decisions about which platforms to use, this post will guide you through some of the core types of social media, examples of platforms within each category, and the pros and cons that each type might present. By the end, you should have a much clearer idea of what kind of social media strategy will work for your business.


Social Networking

Examples of Major Platforms

  • Facebook: 2.6 billion monthly active users
  • Twitter: 166 million daily active users
  • LinkedIn: 160 million users in the U.S. alone

Social networking is possibly the most traditional form of social media.

Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are often called “networking” platforms because they allow user accounts to interact with each other in a variety of different ways.

Professional Uses

If you’re a small business, like a restaurant, a platform like Facebook could be a great place to start your social strategy. With Facebook, you can build a business profile that includes links to your website and details about your menu.

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