10 Different Types Of Social Media Channels In 2024

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With a plethora of social media channels out there, it can be enticing for agencies to join all or bury your head in the sand. Agencies fail to understand that not all social media platforms are created equally and to become successful in the SEO landscape, one needs to prioritize.

Which platform best meets your business needs, and which ones yield subpar results?

To help you make conscious decisions about choosing the right social media platform, we have created a comprehensive guide which groups social media platforms into different categories.

We have broken down the specific functions of each social media channel and what businesses can accomplish by using them. If you are ready to change your social media game, read on!

Table Of Content

Have a look at different types of social media platforms.

Used For: Directly connecting with customers in specific areas, interest groups or communities.

How Businesses Can Benefit From Them:

Conventional and OG (original) social media platforms focus on connecting people by amplifying your voice and reach. These platforms are flexible and designed to help you share visual and textual content with whomever you want. Features of these sites include event organizing, networking, and advertising.

Conventional social media platforms gather important details about their users. This allows you to run specific targeted ads and post content to connect with the right audience to run contests, promote local events, or share useful information.

You can also use these platforms to engage with your customers directly using direct messaging tools.

Examples: Facebook, Threads, X (formerly Twitter)

Used For: Brand building, social commerce, and visual storytelling

How Businesses Can Benefit From Them:

Visual images create the most impact in reaching the target audience and boosting visibility. Almost all image-based social media channels are great for social commerce. These offer different ways to shop in-app and avoid the need to lead traffic to external sites.

You can directly sell to your customers by building a gratifying in-app shopping presence.

You can create a storefront using Instagram Shopping. You can tag products in your videos and images and mention the products in your profile bio.

Pinterest shopping connects your store catalogue and adds shoppable links to search results. Much like a blue tick on Instagram, you get a Verified Merchant badge on your profile, which increases your brand credibility amongst users.

With the new Snapstore feature, brands with a verified business profile can simply upload a catalogue and incorporate a ‘shop’ tag on their profile. Snapchat is one of the most popular social media channels that cater to a younger demographic. If your business caters to the needs of the youth, Snapchat is your go-to platform.

Businesses can also use the TikTok Photo Mode to showcase their catalogue, announce a giveaway, or tell a longer story.

Examples: Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, TikTok (Photo Mode)

3. Short-form Video Platforms

Used For: Sharing short video-form content (between five and ninety seconds long)

How Businesses Can Benefit From Them:

Short-form video content is great for spreading brand awareness and giving life to products.

This type of social media content is quick to make and edit, making it a perfect business strategy for small businesses.

With the rise of different trends, it becomes easier for businesses to use short video content to promote their products and/or services.

However, brands must know that the short video content must be engaging, entertaining or inspiring. Users will not be enticed to engage with your brand if the content becomes too promotional.

Examples: Instagram reels, YouTube Shorts, TikTok

4. Live Streaming Platforms

Used For: Broadcasting live video to multiple viewers at once

How Businesses Can Benefit From Them:

Live Streaming popularity shot up threefold with the outbreak of the 2020 pandemic. By late 2023, nearly 35% of users aged 16-64 watched live streams weekly.

You can use live streams to interview well-known guests, host (ask me anything) AMA sessions, and launch products.

Live Streams include features such as polls and live chat which allow users to directly interact with the hosts, increasing brand reach.

Examples: Instagram Live, Facebook Live, Twitch, YouTube, and TikTok Live.

5. Discussion Forums And Communities

Used For: Asking and answering questions, forming communities, and networking around interest and niche-based topics.

How businesses can benefit from them: It is quite challenging for brands to crack the code of discussion forums. Platform users can be wary of businesses, including the ‘sales talk’ in a community space.

The key to cracking the code is adding value for your customers. Inform them about your industry-expertise knowledge and answer relevant questions related to your niche. Listen to the issues put forth in these channels and offer effective solutions.

Examples: Quora, Reddit

6. Private Community Platforms

Used For: Creating different communities to expand the network by creating screening measures for new members.

How Businesses Can Benefit From Them:

Private groups bring the community members closer together in a close-knit group. They bond over shared problems and help each other with solutions without having the ‘small talk’ of unrelated conversations.

You can also use your private community to encourage user-generated content, engage with new customers, and run promotions that add value to the community members. This can also be a welcome screen to ask members questions and learn more about your target audience.

Examples: Discord (popular among gamers), Patreon, Slack (used for workplace communications), Mighty Networks (community building platform), Facebook Groups

7. Consumer Review Networks

Used For: Using such consumer review networks helps search, share, and review different information about services, brands, and products.

How Businesses Can Benefit From Them:

When businesses use these review networking sites, it helps them conduct market research about the likes and dislikes of their customers.

This also helps businesses claim more credibility with positive reviews. Positive reviews influence users to engage with the brand and entice new users to purchase.

Social media platforms such as Zomato and Yelp offer location-based reviews that help businesses run location-based social campaigns.

Examples: Zomato, Yelp, TripAdvisor, etc

8. Blogging And Publishing Sites

Used For: These social media platforms are best for discovering, publishing, and commenting on social media blogs, articles or any other type of content on the web.

While Blogger and WordPress are conventional blogging platforms, Medium (social publishing site) and Tumblr (micro-blogging service) are the latest publishing networks.

How Businesses Can Benefit From Them:

Businesses who want to boost their content marketing strategies should use these sites to share content on various other social media sites such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

The content used in these platforms further helps create a niche for your audience in search of specific information concerning your niche.

Examples: Tumblr, Medium, WordPress

Used For: Engaging with your community, building brand awareness, and monitoring ongoing conversions.

How Businesses Can Benefit From Them:

These sites help businesses connect with their users to carry out UGC and run UGC campaigns.

Decentralized social media sites such as Mastodon differ from other traditional social media sites. While traditional sites work on a centralized platform where one company makes all the decisions on its servers, decentralized networks distribute information across all servers. This means your information is not controlled by any entity or confined to a single server.

While Mastodon does not allow advertising, Bluesky is a platform that remains ad-free and invite-only. Businesses can use this platform to conduct market research, create community, and increase brand reach.

Examples: Mastodon, Bluesky

Used For: These sites help you find the latest trends in the market along with general shopping tips. They further help you follow different brands, make a purchase, or share interesting things.

How Businesses Can Benefit From Them:

Businesses can use shopping networking sites to boost engagement, create brand awareness, and sell products on effective platforms.

These sites are highly result-driven for startups and small businesses to sell their products without any physical store.

Examples: Etsy, Fancy, Polyvore

Concluding Remarks

We cannot sum up the post without talking about other social media platforms that are not as prominent as the ones above, but they still create an impact (if the niche aligns with the sites’ requirements).

Sharing economy sites such as TaskRabbit, Uber, and Airbnb let you advertise, sell, buy, find, share and trade different products and services. While anonymous sites such as After School, Ask.fm, and After School are used for gossiping or venting.

Though these directly do not help businesses, you can use these platforms if you want to post anonymous content. These are fun platforms where confessions convert into content.

Using different types of social media is exciting, and they deliver tangible results. Businesses must use these sites diligently and compare the statistics of new networks to ensure that they are the right choice for their business.

By employing a successful digital marketing agency, you can save time and effort managing your social media presence while focusing on other aspects of your business.

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