What are the Best Social Media Platforms for SMEs in 2024?

Social media marketing is a key tool for achieving and improving brand awareness for businesses of all shapes and sizes.

But where do you start? The New Year is an ideal time to think about your social media marketing strategy and commit to a new, better regime to win more for your business.
Choosing what to post is important – but choosing where to post is vital.
Here are the most important social media platforms you should be thinking about in 2024 and why.

Author: Liz Clarke

First – what to consider

Different audiences appear in different places and will want to consume different forms of content.

When you start posting to social media, you need to find the answers to these three core questions.

Who are your audience
Where are they
What do they want to consume

This will lay the groundwork for your social media strategy. The answers will determine what you post, where you post it and who it is targeted towards.

LinkedIn

The current leader for B2B businesses and their management-level employees, LinkedIn is delivering high-value enquiries for businesses big and small.

Regular, educational content that is user-focused is the key to winning this marketplace. Nothing is stopping you from building a LinkedIn content strategy and getting started straight away – it’s that simple.

Algorithms favour content that informs and entertains. So, if you make it educational with a fun twist, you’re on to a winner.

Instagram

A visually led platform, you’re probably familiar with Instagram. It is the number #1 choice for businesses that are B2C and need to showcase their product but is also a valuable tool for smaller B2B businesses that want to build a digital audience.

Text-only posts don’t work on Instagram, and you’ll need to be invested in creating graphics or videos to form your content strategy. Whilst this can sometimes put businesses off, we encourage the creation of these assets as they generally garner better engagement and bring bigger results from your campaigns. If you need help, you know who to call!

TikTok

Whilst TikTok might be full of dancing and other content you find inconceivable for businesses to capitalise on, there’s something many businesses miss…

The audience of TikTok is growing – and it’s being used more regularly by more people across more age groups. Your audience may not have been there a couple of years ago, but it almost certainly is now.

Catching your audience in a place they associate with relaxation and content consumption means you can get attention and raise awareness without feeling like you’re out on the hard sell.

In the coming year and beyond, TikTok is likely to feature more regularly for businesses that seek to win at social media.

Honourable mentions

X is in the news a lot – and it’s not often for a good cause. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t still a cause for your business to use the platform. It boasts a very engaged community and algorithms that are favourable to those who want to get their content seen by many, rather than just a few.

Likewise, Facebook has fallen down the pecking order for businesses that want to build a coherent social media strategy. Whilst it was once full of organic content, it’s hard to scroll without almost exclusively encountering paid ads. This also means the likelihood of your organic content being found is much lower than it was in years gone by.

When working with a social media marketing agency, you’ll be guided on what platforms are best suited to achieve your goals – and given a bespoke plan that helps you get there.