Top 10 social media apps and sites in 2022
Written by Chloe West
Published on July 18, 2022
Reading time 6 minutes
When creating a social media marketing strategy, it’s important to find all of the best social media apps for your business to have a presence. But with so many options, it can be easy to overlook a platform that might actually be a great converter for your brand.
This is why we’ve put together a list of the top 10 social media apps and sites in 2022. Learn more about how many users each site has, its key benefits and why it might be a great fit for your brand.
Why should you use social media apps for your business?
Social media apps provide the perfect avenue for reaching your audience where they already are. About 58.4% of the world’s population are active social media users, spending an average of 2 hours and 27 minutes accessing social media each day.
There are three major benefits to social media marketing that your brand doesn’t want to miss out on:
Identifying and understanding your audience
Social media apps give you amazing insight into your target audience. Being able to see the types of posts your audience likes and shares helps you deliver consistently better content. It also gives you insight into the types of products or services your target audience might benefit from.
Having an active presence on social media apps helps you pinpoint exactly which demographics are most interested in your business by analyzing your followers and those who engage with you online. Through that analysis, you can get a much better understanding of who your audience is.
Gauging sentiment analysis of your brand on social media
Social media sentiment analysis is the process of retrieving information about your customer’s perception of your product, service or brand. And it’s yet another reason why monitoring your audience on your selected social media sites can be so valuable.
Through social listening, you can easily pay attention to what people online are saying about your brand, your products/services and your industry. This helps gauge whether you need to revisit your brand’s reputation or adjust your marketing messaging to better serve your target audience.
Using social media apps as a customer service line
Social media is also a great channel for providing customer service. In fact, some brands create social media accounts specifically for customer service, as we can see with this example from Spotify:
![A screenshot of Spotify's customer service Twitter account](https://media.sproutsocial.com/uploads/2022/06/Screen-Shot-2022-06-29-at-10.38.59-AM.png)
Add customer service into your overall social media strategy so that even if you don’t create a separate support account, you still have a process in place for handling support requests.
10 most popular social media apps
There are so many social media apps out there, and it feels like there are more popping up every year, so it’s easy to overlook a platform that might actually be a huge success for your brand. Whether you want to make sure you’re on all the best social media apps or you’re looking to branch out onto new platforms, we’ve got a list of the top 10 social media apps in 2022.
1. Facebook
2.93 billion monthly active users
- The largest social media platform of them all
- A Facebook Business Page that acts as a second website and online store
- Comprehensive advertising to help you further reach your audience
Facebook is one of the longest standing social media apps, having been created back in 2004 before soaring to global popularity around 2007. Naturally, it has evolved over the years, offering many different features and making it easier for businesses to reach their audiences. With nearly 3 billion monthly active users, Facebook is a great platform for nearly every business to have a presence on.
2. Instagram
2 billion monthly active users
- Visual content platform for sharing stylized photos, videos and more
- Instagram Reels, short-form videos that are wildly popular with viewers
- Filters, stickers, audio clips and more assets for creating visual content
Instagram, owned by Facebook’s parent company Meta, is a visual social media platform that revolves around photo and video content. It also includes both stories and reels, giving users a number of ways to reach their audience. As a visual platform, Instagram is perfect for brands with a visual product to photograph and showcase.
3. Twitter
229 million monetizable daily active users
- Platform where a lot of people get their news and discover trending topics
- Great for conversations and text-based content
- Twitter threads allow brands to engage users with more than 280 characters
Twitter was founded in 2006 and has stayed very similar to its initial concept—a place for short statuses. Although it increased its available character count from 140 to 280 per Tweet and has added in features like Retweets, quote Tweets, threads and more, its chronological feed is one that its users love. Twitter is ideal for news publications, B2B companies, tech companies and the like.
4. TikTok
1 billion monthly active users
- Short-form, scrollable and easily digestible video content
- Easy-to-navigate search feature that Gen Z uses frequently
- Audio clips, captions and stickers to help create engaging videos
TikTok was the initial inspiration for the popular Instagram Reels feature, leading the charge in short-form video content. All sorts of brands can take advantage of this app; you just need to get creative with your content.
5. Pinterest
433 million monthly active users
- Visual search engine ideal for online shopping and finding new products
- Shoppable Pins that make online shopping even easier
- Pinterest SEO helps your pins to show up in searches
Pinterest is another visual social media platform that is perfect for ecommerce platforms. However, brands can also create infographics and blog graphics to promote content from their website and increase web traffic. Just put together a branded graphic or two that you can reuse for each blog post you share on Pinterest.
6. LinkedIn
- Professional B2B platform for networking, job searching and recruiting
- Platform for long-form articles you can share with your audience
- Post polls to start conversations with your connections
LinkedIn is great for personal branding and business-to-business marketing. Professionals create profiles alongside companies, making this a great way for both C-Suite team members and the brand itself to reach potential customers.
7. Snapchat
- Built-in insights for checking in on your overall reach
- Disappearing stories that allow you to show behind-the-scenes photos and videos with your customers
- Stickers, filters and drawing tools for creating engaging visual content
Snapchat was the original disappearing story app that Instagram and Facebook stories emulated on their own platforms. It has evolved to include stories from prominent brands and publications as well as Spotlights, its own version of short-form videos similar to TikTok and Instagram Reels.
8. YouTube
2 billion monthly active users
- Video sharing platform for long-form video content
- Second most popular search engine with its own form of YouTube SEO
- Video library perfect for sharing educational and product-led content
YouTube, owned by Google, is the most popular video-hosting platform available. It’s perfect for any brand looking to share long-form educational content with their audience. Create playlists for each series to organize them on your YouTube channel.
9. Reddit
- Forum with endless rooms called “subreddits” focusing on various topics
- Have industry-specific discussions in subreddits dedicated to your niche
- Use your blog content and educational videos to add more to your forum responses
Reddit is a popular online forum with subreddits in nearly any topic you could think of: finance, marketing, tech, etc. Browse through related subreddits to your industry to see if you find any questions your company has knowledge on. Create a brand account for your responses. Brands can also sponsor topics to get even more awareness on the platform.
10. Clubhouse
10 million weekly active users
- Host an audio chat about a topic related to your industry
- Join like-minded audio chats to offer input
Clubhouse popped up in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic as a way for professionals to still network while quarantining. Users could start an audio room for others to join and listen in to learn about something as well as ask permission to join as a speaker and provide their own insight.Clubhouse is a unique social media app and a first of its kind, but that also presents its own challenges. If an audio discussion app seems like something your brand and your industry are interested in, it may be worth looking into.
Find the best social media apps for your brand
Build your brand’s presence on the best social media apps for you. Find your target audience, create content suited for each platform and start building a following. Learn even more about how to build your social media presence.
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