Which social media platform is best for you?

I'm sure I can safely say without hesitation that every single WA affiliate is using a social media platform or two (or three or more!) for either personal or business purposes. Have you ever wondered the origin of those platforms and maybe which of them is right for you and your business? Let's take a short walk down the social media history lane:

Facebook 101 – beginning at Harvard University in 2003 under the name Facemash which

was an online service for students to judge the attractiveness of their fellow students, its primary developer Mark Zuckerberg who was violating University policy with the website, registered the URL Facebook in Jan 2004 and launched it in Feb. By June, more than 250K students from 34 schools had signed up with major corporations such as Mastercard paying for exposure on the site. I don’t have to tell you where Facebook sits today among the most popular social media platforms!

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nstagram 101 - Instagram was developed in San Francisco by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. Systrom had previously worked at Google as a corporate development associate and interned at Odeo (a company that would later evolve into Twitter). Launched in Oct 2010, the first prototype of Instagram was a web app called Burbn. Like Facebook, Instagram makes its money from advertising. Instagram's strengths include its young and global user base, hence the reason that many brands use it in their marketing strategies.

Twitter 101 - Twitter was created by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in

March 2006 and launched in July of that year. The service allows users to share status updates in the form of 140-character messages known as “tweets.” By 2012, more than 100 million users posted 340 million tweets a day, and the service handled an average of 1.6 billion search queries per day. In case you’re interested, the first tweet ever was done by Dorsey and it simply said, "just setting up my twttr,". This tweet was auctioned off for charity to the tune of US$2.9 million. Talk about the value of 5 words!

Pinterest 101 - Pinterest is a "visual discovery tool" that was originally created for people to share ideas and inspiration for various interests and projects. The social media site was founded by Ben Silbermann (again a former Google employee) along with two colleagues, and launched in March 2010, just a few months ahead of IG. One of the key reasons for its success – it is image based, unlike other social media which are content based. Additionally, its users enjoy the option of being able to create boards and pin multiple images that are saved under their account and allows others to re-pin and follow them.

LinkedIn 101 - LinkedIn began in co-founder Reid Hoffman's living room in 2002 and was
officially launched on May 5, 2003. Unlike other social networks which are often purely recreational, LinkedIn emphasises a user’s professional connections. Users create profile pages that have a structure similar to a résumé and allows users to further their careers by searching for jobs, finding connections and receiving recommendations from other users. LinkedIn leads a diversified business with revenues from membership subscriptions, advertising sales and recruitment solutions. They have also included LinkedIn Learning that provides a portfolio of thousands of short courses for professionals and non-professionals alike – a very smart move!

YouTube 101 - YouTube is an American online video-sharing platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. Three former PayPal employees created the service in February 2005. They had the idea that ordinary people would enjoy sharing their “home videos.” Google purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock in November 2006. To reduce the risk of copyright-infringement lawsuits, Google negotiated deals with a number of entertainment companies that would allow copyrighted video material to appear on YouTube and would give YouTube users the right to include certain copyrighted songs in their videos. This platform is hugely popular in the entertainment, DIY, cosmetic, cooking and a host of other industries. You can find virtually any topic that you can think of on YouTube.

TikTok 101 - Douyin was launched by ByteDance in Beijing, China in September 2016,

originally under the name A.me. Douyin was developed in 200 days and within a year had 100 million users, with more than one billion videos viewed every day. TikTok was launched in the international market in September 2017 and has been downloaded more than 130 million times in the United States, and has reached 2 billion downloads worldwide. It was also the most-downloaded app on Apple's App Store in 2018 and 2019, surpassing Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. It is wildly popular with the Generation Z age group.


Based on the history of these social media platforms, there appears to be one common thread among them all – they were designed to satisfy a need or to introduce a niche, most times not intended for global consumption, but what has turned into billion-dollar industries with unprecedented global reach. It is up to you and your brand and your target audience to determine which of these platforms will work for your business when it comes to lead generation and sales – keep in mind, there are quick wins and some that will require more consistent and longer-term effort. As with any kind of tool or resource, it is imperative that you weigh the pros and the cons of using any of the social media platforms. In short, do your homework first!

I hope this post has provided some interesting information. Feel free to let me have your thoughts and comments below.

Cheers!

Maria