21 Top Social Media Sites to Consider for Your Brand

Whether you are a seasoned social media marketer, a marketer looking to venture into social media marketing, or a business owner looking to leverage on social media, it’s helpful to know the most popular social media sites around. This will allow you to maximize your brand reach on social media, engage with the right people, and achieve your social media goals.

Of course, it isn’t only about the size of the social media sites. It’s also whether the social media site is a right fit for your business and you. Does it fit your brand image? Is your target audience using that social media site? How many social media sites can you manage at once?

To make things easier for you, I did some research and compiled information about the 21 top social media sites in 2018. Some will be familiar to you, others might sound foreign to you. It might be worth reading more about the social media sites that might be great for your brand but that you have not explored.

And remember that you don’t have to be every social media site!

Let’s dive in.

The 21 most popular social media sites in 2018

(MAUs stands for Monthly Active Users, and MUVs stands for Monthly Unique Visitors.)

1. Facebook – 2.23 billion MAUs

Facebook is the biggest social media site around, with more than two billion people using it every month. That’s almost a third of the world’s population! There are more than 65 million businesses using Facebook Pages and more than six million advertisers actively promoting their business on Facebook, which makes it a pretty safe bet if you want to have a presence on social media.

It’s easy to get started on Facebook because almost all content format works great on Facebook — text, images, videos, live videos, and Stories. But note that the Facebook algorithm prioritizes content that sparks conversations and meaningful interactions between people, especially those from family and friends. If you want to learn more about succeeding with the updated Facebook algorithm, Brian Peters, our Strategic Partnership Marketer, shared the secrets of the new algorithm and what you can do to thrive on Facebook.

Also, remember to optimize your content for mobile as 94 percent of Facebook’s users access Facebook via the mobile app.

2. YouTube – 1.9 billion MAUs

YouTube is a video-sharing platform where users watch a billion hour of videos every day. To get started, you can create a YouTube channel for your brand where you can upload videos for your subscribers to view, like, comment, and share.

Besides being the second biggest social media site, YouTube (owned by Google) is also often known as the second largest search engine after Google. (So if you want your brand to be on YouTube, I would recommend reading up on YouTube SEO.)

Finally, you can also advertise on YouTube to increase your reach on the platform.

3. WhatsApp – 1.5 billion MAUs

WhatsApp is a messaging app used by people in over 180 countries. Initially, WhatsApp was only used by people to communicate with their family and friends. Gradually, people started communicating with businesses via WhatsApp. (When I was in Bangkok to buy a new suit, I communicated with the tailor via WhatsApp.)

WhatsApp has been building out its business platform to allow businesses to have a proper business profile, to provide customer support, and to share updates with customers about their purchases. For small businesses, it has built the WhatsApp Business app while for medium and large businesses, there’s the WhatsApp Business API. Here are some stories of how businesses have been using WhatsApp.

4. Messenger – 1.3 billion MAUs

Messenger used to be a messaging feature within Facebook, and since 2011, Facebook has made Messenger into a standalone app by itself and greatly expanded on its features. Businesses can now advertise, create chatbots, send newsletters, and more on Messenger. These features have given businesses a myriad of new ways to engage and connect with their customers.

If you are thinking about using Messenger for your business, here are seven ways you can use Messenger for your marketing.

5. WeChat – 1.06 billion MAUs

WeChat grew from a messaging app, just like WhatsApp and Messenger, into an all-in-one platform. Besides messaging and calling, users can now use WeChat to shop online and make payment offline, transfer money, make reservations, book taxis, and more.

WeChat is most popular in China and some parts of Asia. If you are doing business in those areas (where social media platforms like Facebook are banned), WeChat could be a good alternative.

6. Instagram – 1 billion MAUs

Instagram is a photo and video sharing social media app. It allows you to share a wide range of content such as photos, videos, Stories, and live videos. It has also recently launched IGTV for longer-form videos.

As a brand, you can have an Instagram business profile, which will provide you with rich analytics of your profile and posts and the ability to schedule Instagram posts using third-party tools.

To help you get started and succeed, here’s our complete guide to Instagram marketing.

7. QQ – 861 million MAUs

QQ is an instant messaging platform that is extremely popular among young Chinese. (It is used in 80 countries and also available in many other languages.) Besides its instant messaging features, it also enables users to decorate their avatars, watch movies, play online games, shop online, blog, and make payment.

I have to admit I don’t know much about QQ but Carrie Law from ClickZ has written a helpful brief introduction to QQ for marketers. It seems that while QQ, a desktop-native platform, used to be the top social media platform in China, WeChat, a messaging app from the same parent company, has taken over its place.

8. Tumblr – 642 million MUVs

Tumblr is a microblogging and social networking site for sharing text, photos, links, videos, audios, and more. People share a wide range of things on Tumblr from cat photos to art to fashion.

On the surface, a Tumblr blog can look just like any other websites. So many blogs that you come across online might be using Tumblr!

If you want to consider Tumblr for your marketing, Viral Tag has written a starter guide to Tumblr marketing.

9. Qzone – 632 million MAUs

Qzone is another popular social networking platform based in China, where users can upload multimedia, write blogs, play games, and decorate their own virtual spaces.

According to several people on Quora, Qzone seems to be more popular among teenagers (while WeChat is more popular among adults). But the rise of mobile-based platforms like WeChat seemed to have caused a decline in popularity of desktop-based platforms like Qzone.

10. Tik Tok – 500 million MAUs

Tik Tok (also known as Douyin in China) is a rising music video social network. It was the world’s most downloaded app in the first quarter of 2018, beating Facebook, Instagram, and other social media apps.

My initial impression is that it looks like Instagram for short music videos (though I’m sure it’s more than that). Users can record videos up to 60 seconds, edit them, and add music and special effects.

While it is most popular in Asia, my hunch is its popularity might spread to the west. It has recently acquired Musical.ly, a similar music video social network where Coca-Cola once did a successful “Share a Coke and a Song” campaign.

11. Sina Weibo – 392 million MAUs

Sina Weibo is often known as Twitter for Chinese users (since Twitter is banned in China). It has features similar to Twitter — 140-character microblogging, uploading of photos and videos, commenting, and verification of accounts.

If you would like to learn more about Sina Weibo, What’s on Weibo, a social trends reporting site, wrote a helpful short introduction to Sina Weibo.

12. Twitter – 335 million MAUs

Twitter is a social media site for news, entertainment, sports, politics, and more. What makes Twitter different from most other social media sites is that it has a strong emphasis on real-time information — things that are happening right now. For example, one of the defining moments in the Twitter history is when Janis Krums tweeted the image of a plane that landed in the Hudson River when he was on the ferry to pick the passengers up.

Another unique characteristic of Twitter is that it only allows 280 characters in a tweet (140 for Japanese, Korean, and Chinese), unlike most social media sites that have a much higher limit.

Twitter is also often used as a customer service channel. According to advertisers on Twitter, more than 80 percent of social customer service requests happen on Twitter. And Salesforce calls Twitter “the New 1-800 Number for Customer Service“. There are many social media customer service tools, such as Buffer Reply, available now to help you manage social customer service conversations.

13. Reddit – 330 million MAUs

Reddit, also known as the front page of the Internet, is a platform where users can submit questions, links, and images, discuss them, and vote them up or down.

There are subreddits (i.e. dedicated forums) for pretty much anything under the sun (and above). Subreddits, however, have different levels of engagement so it’s great to research to see if there are popular subreddits that your brand can be part of. For example, r/socialmedia tends to be pretty quiet so we are rarely on Reddit.

Besides submitting your content to Reddit and participating in discussions, you can also find content ideas and advertise on Reddit.

14. Baidu Tieba – 300 million MAUs

Baidu Tieba is a Chinese online forum created by Baidu, the largest Chinese search engine in the world. My interpretation of Wikipedia’s description is that Baidu Tieba seems to be similar to Reddit, where users can create a forum thread on any topic and interact with one another.

15. LinkedIn – 294 million MAUs

LinkedIn is now more than just a resume and job search site. It has evolved into a professional social media site where industry experts share content, network with one another, and build their personal brand. It has also become a place for businesses to establish their thought leadership and authority in their industry and attract talent to their company.

To help you grow your LinkedIn Company Page follower, we have written a blog post covering a simple five-step strategy.

LinkedIn also offers advertising opportunities, such as boosting your content, sending personalized ads to LinkedIn inboxes, and displaying ads by the side of the site.

16. Viber – 260 million MAUs

On the surface, Viber is quite similar to major social messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Messenger. It allows users to send messages and multimedia, call, share stickers and GIFs, and more.

However, Viber presents many more opportunities for businesses. As a business, you can buy ads, promote your brand through stickers, engage your community, display your products in the shopping section, and provide customer service.

17. Snapchat – 255 million MAUs

Snapchat is a social media app that focuses on sharing photos and short videos (as known as snaps) between friends. It made the Stories format popular, which eventually proliferated on other social media platforms like Instagram. But the rise of Instagram Stories seemed to have hindered Snapchat’s growth and marketers’ interest in using Snapchat for their brands in general.

If you are not familiar with Snapchat, here’s our beginner’s guide to Snapchat. Or if you are undecided between Snapchat and Instagram, we wrote a little comparison of Snapchat and Instagram for brands.

18. Pinterest – 250 million MAUs

Pinterest is a place where people go to discover new things and be inspired, quite unlike most social media sites where engagement is the primary focus. According to Pinterest, 78 percent of users say that content on Pinterest from brands are useful (much higher than that on other sites). This gives your brand an unique opportunity to shape their purchasing decisions.

As Pinterest users want to be inspired to try or buy new things, having a presence on Pinterest could help put your brand on their minds. Here are some tips on using Pinterest for business that the Pinterest team shared with us.

19. Line – 203 million MAUs

Line is a multi-purpose social messaging app that allows users to message, share stickers, play games, make payments, request for taxis, and shop online. It is the most popular messaging app in Japan and is also popular in other areas in Asia.

Brands can create official accounts on Line to share news and promotions, which will appear on their followers’ timeline.

20. Telegram – 200 million MAUs

Telegram is similar to most social messaging apps and is often known for how secure it is as a messaging app.

There are several ways brands can make use of Telegram, besides providing one-on-one customer support. For example, brands can create chatbots for the Telegram platform or make use of Telegram’s channel feature to broadcast messages to an unlimited number of subscribers.

21. Medium – 60 million MAUs

Medium is an online publishing platform with a social network element. It’s free to publish on Medium and free to read most articles. Some articles are reserved for only paying members.

Besides publishing original content on Medium, it’s quite common for brands to republish their blog posts from their company blog onto Medium to extend their reach. (That’s what we’re doing here at Buffer.)

If you want to experiment with Medium, we wrote a guide to Medium for marketers and a blog post on the nine strategies we tried on Medium.

Over to you: Which sites are your brand on?

Regardless of the size of the social media sites, it’s most important to consider whether your brand’s target audience is active on those social media sites. That said, larger social media sites, like Facebook, tends to cover a wide range of interests and topics, which makes it suitable for most brands.

Which social media sites are your brand on? Why did your brand choose to be there?

P.s. Buffer Publish lets you schedule social media posts to six of these 21 social media sites — Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. If you want to manage more than one social media accounts on any of these six, we would love for you to try it for free for 14 days and experience what it can do for your business.

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Credit: The list of top 22 social media sites is compiled by Statista. The respective monthly active users number was taken from the following websites: Facebook (as of June 30, 2018), YouTube (as of July 20, 2018), WhatsApp (as of January 31, 2018), Messenger (as of February 1, 2018), WeChat (as of August 15, 2018), Instagram (as of June 20, 2018), QQ (as of March 2017), Tumblr (estimated as of July 2018), Qzone (as of March 2017), Tik Tok (as of June 2018), Sina Weibo (as of December 2017), Twitter (as of July 27, 2018), Reddit (as of November 12, 2017), Baidu Tieba (estimated as of July 2018), LinkedIn (as of July 2018), Viber (estimated as of July 2018), Snapchat (estimated as of July 18, 2018), Pinterest (as of September 10, 2018), Line (as of October 26, 2017), Telegram (as of March 2018), and Medium (estimated as of December 14, 2016).

Image credit: Ammar, Culture Trip, Instagram, QQ, Computers Made Simple, Line, and Telegram

Thank 21 Top Social Media Sites to Consider for Your Brand for first publishing this post.

How to Use Facebook to Market Your Business

If you want your business to have a presence on social media, Facebook is probably one of the first or the first social media platform you think of.

More than 1.4 billion people use Facebook every single day, and many multiple times a day. It’s almost certain that your potential customers are on Facebook and using it actively to connect with their family, their friends, and their favorite brands.

Whether you’re running a brick and mortar store, an ecommerce site, an agency, or a software company, you can use Facebook for marketing your business. In this guide, I hope to cover everything you should know to put your business on Facebook, to market your business, and to measure your results.

If there’s anything you wish to know that isn’t covered here, please feel free to tweet me @alfred_lua. I’m keen to keep this guide as comprehensive and helpful as it can be. Thanks!

Table of contents

• Facebook Page: How to create a Facebook Page for your business
• Facebook algorithm: How the Facebook algorithm works
• Facebook post types: What to post on Facebook
• Facebook Insights: How to measure your results
• Facebook ads: How to advertise on Facebook
• Facebook Messenger: How to connect and serve your customers
• Facebook Group: How to build a community
• More Facebook marketing resources

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Facebook Page: How to create a Facebook Page for your business

Having a Page on Facebook is similar to having a website on the Internet. Your Facebook Page is a place where people can find your business online, learn more about your business, and connect with you.

Creating a Facebook Page for your business is quite straightforward. Facebook has streamlined the process to make it super easy for businesses to set up their Facebook Page.

To get started, on any page on Facebook, click on the drop-down icon in the upper-right corner and select “Create Page”.

Here are the things to do to ensure you have a Facebook Page ready to share with your customers:

1. Fill out basic information about your business
2. Add a profile photo and cover photo
3. Add more information (e.g. description, contact info, location, etc.)
4. Customize the sections you want on your Page
5. Add collaborators if you work in a team
6. Publish a few posts (more below)

If you prefer to follow a step-by-step guide, we have a detailed Facebook Page set up guide for you. The guide covers things such as how to create your cover photo, what key information to add to your Page, how to customize your Page, and more.

Pro-tips:

• Facebook has several little-known features you can use to market your business.
• Besides using a photo for your cover photo, you can also use a video or a slideshow. Our Facebook cover photo guide has the ideal dimensions for the cover photo and several cool examples from various businesses.

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Facebook algorithm: How the Facebook algorithm works

Before we look at what to post, there’s a very important aspect of Facebook that you should know first.

The Facebook algorithm.

Long ago, Facebook used to show posts in the News Feed in a reverse-chronological order. The most recent post will always appear at the top of the News Feed. But as more and more people and businesses join and post on Facebook, there were so many posts on everyone’s News Feed that it became difficult to go through every post on our News Feed.

So Facebook introduced a system to help organize the posts we see on our News Feed. The system is often known as the Facebook algorithm.

The Facebook algorithm uses many different factors to determine how relevant a post might be to each one of us and shows us the most relevant posts at the top of our News Feed. The algorithm is always changing but here’s the core of how it works:

This means that not all the people who Like your Facebook Page will see all of your posts. On average, Facebook Pages are reaching about five percent (or lower) of your fans.

To reach more people with your Facebook Page, you have to post content that they care about and would interact with. We’ll cover that next.

Pro-tip:

• Keeping up with all the Facebook algorithm changes can be challenging. We hope to make it easier for you with this list of all relevant changes to the Facebook algorithm.

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Facebook post types: What to post on Facebook

Now that you’ve understood the Facebook algorithm, let’s go through what you can post on your Facebook Page.

Here are the five main post types:

1. Text
2. Link
3. Image
4. Video
5. Stories

Text updates are the most basic post type. It’s the easiest to create, though possibly the least visible on the News Feed. Generally, it’s better to attach a multimedia to make the post stand out. (Or you could go wild with emojis! )

Link posts (posts with a link) show a preview of the link attached, usually with an image, a headline, and a description. You can add text to go with the link (as seen in the example above).

Image posts can have one or multiple images. For single-image posts, the image will be resized to 500 pixels wide and the height will be scaled accordingly. (Learn more about the ideal image sizes for Facebook posts here.)

Video posts seem to be the most popular and most engaging format at the moment. Buzzsumo’s study of 880 million Facebook posts found that videos get twice the amount of engagement than other post types. But experiment with the different post types to discover what works best for your brand.

Stories is the latest post format on Facebook, which is also available (and popular) on Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger. It is a vertical image or video that makes use of the entire screen of mobile phones, and it disappears after 24 hours. (You can now advertise with Facebook Stories, too.)

Pro-tips:

• The best time to post on Facebook is not what you find in “best time to post” studies because your business has its own best time to post. Post when your data tells you and when it’s relevant to your audience. Here’s how.
• How often to post on your Page is mostly dependent on the amount of time and resources you have. Our study with Buzzsumo found that five posts a day seem optimal for engagement. But you can definitely post more or less. Start with one per a day, increase the frequency, and monitor how your reach and engagement change.
• Scheduling your Facebook posts with social media scheduling tools like Buffer lets you focus on the important aspects of your business — engaging your fans, creating a great product, etc.

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Facebook Insights: How to measure your results

To help you understand how your Facebook Page is performing, Facebook provides a helpful, comprehensive analytics dashboard — Facebook Insights.

With Facebook Insights, you can get the following data:

1. Promotions (your Facebook ads)
2. Followers
3. Likes
4. Reach
5. Page views
6. Page previews
7. Actions on Page
8. Posts
9. Branded content
10. Events
11. Videos
12. Stories
13. People
14. Messages

In summary, Facebook Insights tells you how your Page is growing and how many people are engaging with your content (posts, videos, or Stories). You can also use it to see when your fans are most active on Facebook and what your top performing posts are.

For a more detailed walkthrough of Facebook Insights, we have written a beginner’s guide to Facebook Insights, which covers most of the key data.

If you use Buffer to manage your Facebook Page, you’ll get three additional analytics reports:

1. Posts Report
2. Overview Report
3. Analysis Report

My favorite is the Overview Report, where you can get a summary of your Facebook Page’s performance, see how your key metrics have changed over time, and find your top posts.

You can learn more about the Overview Report here.

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Facebook ads: How to advertise on Facebook

Once you have mastered the basics of managing a Facebook Page (i.e. posting and checking your results), you might want to consider using Facebook ads to reach a wider audience.

With more businesses joining Facebook and sharing their content, it has been becoming harder to reach an audience on Facebook for free (though not impossible). A solution that many businesses have turned to is Facebook ads.

More than six million businesses advertise on Facebook to promote their products and services. Facebook advertising provides the most comprehensive targeting to help you reach the specific audience you have in mind. You can specify your target audience based on their location, their demographics, their interests, their behavior, and more.

That’s not all. Through the Facebook Ad Manager, you can create ads that’ll also show on Instagram, Messenger, and Audience Network (Facebook’s network of publisher-owned apps and sites).

Running a Facebook ad is very straightforward. Here are the steps:

1. Choose an objective
2. Select the audience you want to reach
3. Decide where you want to run your ads
4. Set your budget (daily or lifetime)
5. Pick a format (Photo, carousel, video, slideshow, or collection)

The first time spending money on advertising can feel daunting. I know I was intimidated. I read countless articles even before I visited the Facebook Ad Manager. I would love to help reduce the anxiety with creating your first Facebook ads. Here are some resources you might find helpful:

• The Complete Guide to Getting Started with Facebook Ads
• Facebook Ad Specs and Image Sizes [Fully Updated for 2018]
• Inside the Thriving Six-Figure Facebook Ads Strategy at Classpass

Pro-tip:

• The best way to learn Facebook ads is to dive right in and get started. Through experimentation, you can gradually learn what images and copy resonate the most with your audience, how to pick the right audience, how to budget your spending, and more.

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Facebook Messenger: How to connect and serve your customers

Social media marketing used to be businesses simply broadcasting their marketing messages at their followers all day. It worked well back in the days when few businesses were on social media and people were still very receptive to marketing messages.

That has changed.

Nowadays, customers message businesses to find out more information, ask questions about their purchases, and request customer support. A study by Facebook found that the majority of messaging app users surveyed had messaged a business in the past three months — Brazil (85 percent), India (74 percent), UK (61 percent), and US (61 percent).

The easiest way to serve your customers through Messenger is to download the Messenger app (iOS and Android) or use http://messenger.com. With the app, you could receive and reply to your customers’ messages, just like you would with your friend’s messages.

If you manage multiple social media accounts besides your Facebook Page, we hope the best tool for you is Buffer Reply, our social media engagement and customer support tool. With a single tool, you respond to messages, mentions, and comments on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Pro-tip:

• Besides serving your customers, you can also use Facebook Messenger for marketing. Here are seven ideas for your inspiration.

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Facebook Group: How to build a community

The final thing you might want to experiment with is Facebook Group.

It is one of the easiest ways to start an online community for your brand advocates. Most of your customers are likely already on Facebook, and Facebook offers a ton of features for Facebook Groups to help connect people better. It is also great for increasing your organic reach on Facebook.

For example, Ahrefs, one of the best SEO tools, has a Facebook Group for its customers to discuss Ahrefs, SEO, and marketing. It has almost 8,000 members (one has to be a customer to join), and multiple valuable conversations happen in the group every day.

Starting a Facebook Group is as simple as clicking “Create Group” on Facebook and filling out some basic information. The challenge is growing the group while keeping members engaged. Here are four tips for you.

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More Facebook marketing resources

I hope you found this Facebook marketing overview useful. If you would like to learn more about using Facebook to market your business, check out the following resources:

How Facebook Marketing is Changing (And How to Be Prepared)

The Simple Facebook Posting Strategy That Helped us 3x Our Reach and Engagement

How the Miami Dolphins Generated $4 Million in Sales Using Facebook Video

We Analyzed 43 Million Facebook Posts From the Top 20,000 Brands (New Research)

Thank How to Use Facebook to Market Your Business for first publishing this post.

What a Real-Life Social Media Style Guide Looks Like (and How to Make Your Own)

How to Launch on Product Hunt Like a Pro, Lessons from 17.2 Million Twitter Impressions, 4 Key Facebook Trends for 2019, and More!

Looking to catch up on the latest social media news, but short on time? We have you covered! This week (episode #117) we’re chatting about all of this and more.

• For those launching a new product or tool or even project, Product Hunt can be a serious game-changer in terms of awareness, traffic, feedback, and so much more.
• Twitter is a great place to repurpose content. If you’re creating content of any form: videos, blog posts, podcasts, etc., repurposing it across multiple channels is a great way to get the most bang for your buck.
• The most important 2019 Facebook trends that businesses should keep their eye on to make the most out of their social media marketing, including augmented reality, Instagram Stories ads, and more.

Join 19,000+ weekly listeners for the Buffer podcast, The Science of Social Media, where we bring you the latest and greatest in social media marketing news, updates, stories, insights, and actionable takeaways.

Let’s dive in!

How to subscribe: iTunes | Google Play | SoundCloud | Stitcher | RSS

How to Launch on Product Hunt Like a Pro, Lessons from 17.2 Million Twitter Impressions, 4 Key Facebook Trends for 2019, and More! [Complete podcast transcript]

What follows is a lightly edited transcript of the conversation between Hailley Griffis and Brian Peters.

• • Part I: How to launch your product on Product Hunt like a pro
  • Part II: Do Twitter ads really work? Lessons from 17.2M Twitter impressions
  • Part III: Four key Facebook trends in 2019 for businesses and marketers
  • Part IV: Buffer SocialChat and this year’s exciting new campaigns

Brian: Hi everyone! I’m Brian Peters and this is The Science of Social Media, a podcast by Buffer. Your weekly sandbox for social media stories, insights, experimentation, and learning.

Hailley: Welcome to episode #117, I’m Hailley Griffis and this week we’re coming to you live from Nashville, Tennessee and we’ll be covering a ton of great updates and strategies in the social media world, including a channel that we haven’t talked about in the past here on the show, Product Hunt.

Brian: It’s awesome to be here with you in person, Hailley. We also have some fun insights from a Twitter Thread that was viewed over 17.2 million times and what it can teach us about the art of Tweeting, four Facebook trends businesses should know for 2019, new marketing campaigns, and more.

Hailley: Let’s kick off the show!

Part I: How to launch your product on Product Hunt like a pro

One channel that we haven’t talked about before here on the show, but one that can certainly be considered a social media channel among other things, is Product Hunt.

For those that have never used Product Hunt before, it’s a great community of creators, founders, developers, marketers, CEOs that curate the latest new products on the market, every day.

For those launching a new product or tool or even project, Product Hunt can be a serious game-changer in terms of awareness, traffic, feedback, and so much more.

Brian: Which is exactly why we figured we’d share some tips on how to launch your upcoming product, tools, or projects on Product Hunt with the best of them.

We really do believe that Product Hunt should be a central part of any marketing strategy moving forward. If nothing else, it’s a great platform to connect with other folks in your industry or niche.

I’ve heard of countless stories of collaborations and even acquisitions resulting from relationships formed on Product Hunt.

Hailley: We pulled a lot of these tips from a great article written by JotURL.

Getting into it, there are lots of things to think about with Product Hunt launches before, during and after the launch. Without going through every single one, we’ll focus on the most important here.

First is that Product Hunt is a community and it’s based on an algorithm.

Brian: In other words, if the reviews, the upvotes, and the comments you receive are by very active users and followed on the platform, their specific weight will be greater .

So before you ever launch your product, it’s important to build relationships, participate in the discussions, comment on the products you find most interesting and make friends with the founder and/or Maker of the products that are published daily.

And of course, be honest and always available, both on Product Hunt and in the different groups.

Hailley: The next thing to prepare before your launch is all of the images, logos, and messaging that you’ll be publishing on social media, email, etc.

Like we mentioned before, it’s super important to respond to all comments on your product, and so worrying about other things like messaging during launch day will be a distraction.

There’s a big list in the article on our blog of everything you’ll need, but the essentials to launch your product include a really good tagline, the names of the Makers.

Quick note on Makers: Every follower of every Maker on the day of the launch will receive a notification, so definitely take advantage of this feature.

Brian: Including Makers and Hunters that have a solid following is really key in launching your project with a bang.

Media wise, including a project video is highly recommended as well as photos, screenshots, and a thumbnail GIF. That’ll help your project to really pop.

Which leads us perfectly to the next part which is what to do with all of the traffic that you will (hopefully) receive on launch day.

Hailley: On the day of the launch you will receive a lot of traffic from a good amount of targeted and interested visitors….

So why not make the most out of this opportunity?

Installing a few website tracking pixels will be more than enough to make sure you don’t miss out. First, we use Google Tag Manager to install Google Analytics on our website and landing page.

And then, of course, we have Facebook Pixels installed so that we can gently retarget users in the future.

Brian: Those are both must-haves in my opinion when it comes to tracking, but if you wanted to take it a step further, a tool like Hotjar or CrazyEgg will allow you to understand what works and what does not on your site and where folks are clicking.

Now you’ve got your tracking installed it’s time to think about what you want people to do from a marketing perspective once they’ve signed up. This includes things like thinking through your website and product messaging as well as your email onboarding flows.

Hailley: Super important part of the launch, for sure.

You’ll also want to loop in your support team (if you have one). Prepare them with some questions they might get on the day of the launch so that they’re ready to go.

And then finally, you’re ready to launch!

On launch day, it’s all about generating good publicity and management.

Personally message everyone you know. Ask specifically for upvotes on Product Hunt, make sure to personalize them, and get ready to answer a lot of questions and support tickets.

Brian: Love it yeah we can’t stress how important it is to take time to answer everyone’s questions and continue to build relationships even on the day of the launch.

Doing each of the things we talked about today will ensure a smooth and successful Product Hunt launch.

Part II: Lessons from 17.2 million Twitter impressions

Hailley: We recently published an article on our blog titled: “Do Twitter Ads Really Work? A Surprising Experiment: 17.2 Million Views From a Single Twitter Thread.”

Based on the reactions from our audience we thought we’d chat about a few important points from the article on Twitter ads and what makes for a really good Tweet.

Quick background on the experiment, JotForm founder, Aytekin ‏Tank, wanted to know if telling a brand’s authentic story would be successful across social media and other channels.

Brian: Tank had found success telling Stories on Medium in the past, but he wondered if a platform like Twitter could product the same results.

He explained, “Apart from its character limit, Twitter isn’t any different when it comes to sharing your authentic voice, It’s blogging in 280 characters.”

Which I think is a great way to think about Twitter. It’s not just sharing articles to links. It’s telling the story behind that link or behind your brand.

Hailley: The plan was simple:

Repurpose a successful Medium post into a Twitter thread and boost it with Twitter ads to test the limits of Twitter as a platform to spread Aytekin and JotForm’s message.

Looking at the Medium data, he was able to see which articles had resonated most with his audience and tell a story that he was sure would connect with people on Twitter:

He chose to create a Twitter thread based on his post titled: “Don’t listen to those productivity gurus: why waking up at 6am won’t make you successful.”

Brian: And the results?

The tweet generated 17,177,432 impressions on Twitter. Which is incredible!

Now the part we haven’t mentioned yet is that he spent $24,000 on promoting this Tweet.

Which is a lot, don’t get me wrong. However, the Tweet generated more than 4,000,000 impressions organically, which is about 27% percent of the total reach. So still super impressive in its own right.

Hailley: There are a couple of lessons here from this experiment.

One is that Twitter is a great place to repurpose content.

If you’re creating content of any form: videos, blog posts, podcasts, etc, repurposing it across multiple channels is a great way to get the most bang for your buck.

But repurposing doesn’t just mean copying and pasting a link over to Twitter.

If you want to be successful, you need to think about how you can tell each story natively to the platform you’re publishing on.

Brian: Absolutely.

Two is that a Twitter thread can help you to achieve multiple goals at the same time.

Impressions and engagement are awesome — especially when you’re quite new to the content marketing game.

But when you use a Twitter thread, you’re able to feature multiple types of content within your tweets and achieve various goals.

For example, Tank’s tweet received more than 1.1 million impressions and over 35,000 clicks, helping to drive traffic back to the original post on Medium.

Hailley: And finally, number three, Twitter is a great place to start a conversation.

With any highly shared tweet, you’ll always get a few trolls pop up here and there, but if you look past this, you’ll realize that Twitter is still an incredible place to start a conversation and build relationships.

Following Aytekin’s thread, he received plenty of questions about JotForm and how the business operates. This enabled him to build new relationships with people he previously wouldn’t have reached.

Part III: Four key Facebook trends for businesses in 2019

Brian: We’re getting towards the end of 2018 which means you’re either one, ramping up to end Q4 off with a bang, or two looking forward to a big 2019. Or both. Either way, it’s a good place to be in.

And in that spirit, we thought we’d share some of the most important Facebook trends for 2019 that you should be keeping your eye on to make the most of your social media marketing strategy and results.

Starting with Augmented Reality Ads.

Hailley: In 2019, we’re going to see a shift to brands looking to build an even deeper connection with users by helping them interact with, and visualize, different products and experiences within the Facebook and Instagram platforms.

And Brian, this is particularly relevant as our marketing team has been experimenting with the Facebook Oculus VR headset over the last week or so.

I can absolutely see shopping in augmented and virtual reality becoming a huge success for brands that sell their products on social media.

Brian: I couldn’t agree more, Hailley.

I was a little hesitant before we started using the Oculus, but I have to say that I’m all in. I now understand why VR gets so much hype. I can’t wait for the future.

And another trend to keep an eye on for 2019, and we’ve talked about this one here on the show a bunch, are Instagram Stories ads. We’ve seen a ton of success, meaning high interaction rates and low cost per clicks.

Hailley: Facebook Stories Ads will really start to enable brands to create new experiences for via the platform’s Stories option.

And remember, Facebook Stories hasn’t taken off the way Instagram Stories has, but this type of full-screen creative is very popular right now, and Facebook Stories ads will provide more options to reach people across both platforms.

So definitely keep an eye on Facebook Stories moving forward.

Brian: Yeah I’m a big believer that Facebook Stories will be one of the hottest advertising channels in 2019 for brands.

Alrighty, another trend to know for 2019 are the Facebook Page Reviews being updated to Recommendations.

We talked about Facebook creating more features in-app for small businesses, similar to companies like Yelp and Google, and it’s important to take advantage of all of these.

Hailley: Exactly, so if you haven’t updated your Facebook page in a while, we highly recommend going into your settings and just making sure you have all of your information filled out and the bells and whistles enabled.

And another great trend, or more of an update from Facebook, is that they’re moving into helping businesses with their creatives more.

For example, Facebook recently launched a new Video Creation Kit which enables you to turn your existing photo assets into mobile-optimized videos. These easy-to-use templates include text options also.

Brian: That’s a good one.

Yeah I was creating an ad the other day and I saw that option in Ads Manager. It was super easy to use and I must admit, it worked pretty well.

So basically what we’re saying here as well is that video ads are absolutely still trending through 2019.

And that’s it. If you keep those four trends in mind you will be well ahead of the game as a business on Facebook and Instagram in the coming year.

Part IV: Buffer SocialChat and exciting new campaigns

Hailley: Totally.

Alright to end the show, we have a few fun updates for everyone on the Buffer front.

First, really excited to introduce a brand new free tool from us here at Buffer called SocialChat.

Buffer SocialChat lets your customers start conversations with you on your website, and continue them privately, right where they feel comfortable, via Messenger and Twitter DMs. It can be enabled with just a couple of lines of code. No software or other tools needed!

Brian: Super excited about that one. Lots of chat tools these days are so complicated and so we wanted to make it easy for businesses to get up and running without too much hassle.

We also have tons of fun campaigns coming your way in the near future. We’re celebrating Small Business Saturday with Mailchimp, Square, and WooCommerce, we have State of Remote Work and State of Social in early 2019 and, well, we might have one more surprise for you in just a few weeks.

Hailley: We won’t say too much now, but we will say that we’re excited about the Stories format.

Very excited.

Brian: Yes. I can’t wait to announce that Stories surprise here on the show. Stay tuned!

Hailley: Thank you so much for tuning in to the Science of Social Media today. The show notes for this episode are now available on the Buffer Blog at blog.buffer.com with a complete transcript.

If you ever want to get in touch with me or Hailley, we’re always here for your on social media using the hashtag #bufferpodcast. You can also say hi to us anytime and hello@bufferapp.com

Brian: Yup, we’d love to hear from you!

Wishing everyone a wonderful and prosperous holiday season in the next few weeks and months. It’s my favorite time of year and I know it’s a big one for businesses. We’ll keep bringing your shows that help you rock it on social media.

Until next Monday, everyone!

How to say hello to us

We would all love to say hello to you on social media – especially Twitter!

• Hailley on Twitter and Hailley’s Website
• Brian on Twitter and Brian’s Website

Thanks for listening! Feel free to connect with our team at Buffer on Twitter, Buffer on Facebook, our Podcast homepage, or with the hashtag #bufferpodcast.

Enjoy the show? It’d mean the world to us if you’d be up for giving us a rating and review on iTunes!

—

About The Science of Social Media podcast

The Science of Social Media is your weekly sandbox for social media stories, insights, experimentation, and inspiration. Every Monday (and sometimes more) we share the most cutting-edge social media marketing tactics from brands and influencers in every industry. If you’re a social media team of one, business owner, marketer, or someone simply interested in social media marketing, you’re sure to find something useful in each and every episode.  It’s our hope that you’ll join our 19,000+ weekly iTunes listeners and rock your social media channels as a result!

The Science of Social Media is proudly made by the Buffer team. Feel free to get in touch with us for any thoughts, ideas, or feedback.

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Thank How to Launch on Product Hunt Like a Pro, Lessons from 17.2 Million Twitter Impressions, 4 Key Facebook Trends for 2019, and More! for first publishing this post.

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Introducing SocialChat by Buffer, the Easiest Way to Start Conversations With Website Visitors

Today, we’re excited to launch, SocialChat by Buffer, a simple, free tool that enables visitors to start social media conversations on your website.

Each and every day, people visit your website to learn more about your business.

The problem is a large percentage of websites don’t really support visitors in helping them to find what they want. In reality, most website visits are simply ignored — that was excusable a couple of years back, but not so much now.

People in 2018 don’t want to have to search your website for a contact form or spend ages crafting an email request. In fact, they don’t really want to use traditional social media channels for communication.

Now, it’s all about private, 1:1 messages.

But don’t just take our word for it: Gartner forecasts that by 2019, requests for customer support through consumer mobile messaging apps will exceed requests for customer support through traditional social media.

This is why we built SocialChat.

SocialChat lets your customers start conversations with you on your website, and continue them privately, right where they feel comfortable, via Messenger and Twitter DMs. It can be enabled with just a couple of lines of code. No software or other tools needed!

We’ve been experimenting with SocialChat for a while and are excited about to share this tool with you for a few reasons:

1. The conversation doesn’t have to end when the visitor leaves your site. With SocialChat your website visitors can then easily send you a Facebook message or Twitter DM, and you can turn each visit into an ongoing relationship on social media.

2. It’s human and authentic. Chatbots are pretty awesome, but you just can’t replace the feeling of talking to another person. Chatting through Messenger and Twitter feels super personal as it’s a method used by billions across the globe to chat with friends, and family. A Conversocial study found that over half (59 percent) of people considered interacting with a human agent to be more important than being serviced by a bot or AI-driven resolution.

3. Business has always been social. As Facebook’s David Marcus told USA Today, commerce has always been social: “For so long, doing business was always conversational. Web (e-commerce) is truly an anomaly. It feels good to have a more human relationship when you’re buying things.”

P.S. Check out SocialChat and get started for free here.

Why social messaging is the new normal for customer engagement

When customers started turning to social media for support, it happened on Facebook Pages and public tweets. Now, however, for many brands, the majority of questions and conversations have shifted to private messaging channels.

Here are a couple of reasons for that change:

1. Messaging is convenient, familiar, and fast

Businesses tend to use communication channels that are familiar to consumers.

When a phone call was the number one way to keep in touch, businesses offered phone support and sales. When email took over as the default communication channel, businesses followed. Now that the majority or peer-to-peer communication happens over social messaging apps and products, businesses have again followed suit.

Social messaging is fast becoming the new normal for customer support and engagement. According to a Facebook-commissioned study by Nielsen, 56 percent of people surveyed would rather message a business than call customer service, and 67 percent expect to message businesses even more over the next two years.

By using channels that feel familiar, businesses are able to engage with customers and prospects in channels they feel comfortable with.

Messaging is also quick. Most consumers use a form of messaging app every day — multiple times per day, even — so replying to a thread with a business feels much more natural than heading to their email account.

2. Platforms are embracing private communication

On Messenger alone, there are more than eight billion messages exchanged between consumers and businesses every month.

And platforms are constantly taking steps to make it easier for consumers to connect with brands through direct messages. For example, it’s now very simple to add Messenger buttons to your Facebook Page and Twitter DM direct links to your profile, making it easier than ever for consumers to reach out and talk with your business privately:

And with SocialChat, you can take this one step further and add direct message links directly to your website:

We made it easy and 100 percent free to get started with SocialChat

We built SocialChat because we wanted a free and easy way for businesses to help start conversations with prospects and customers and turn those conversations into ongoing relationships on social media.

Here’s how to get up and running with SocialChat in three simple steps:

Step 1: Customize Your Widget

Go to buffer.com/reply/socialchat and customize the appearance and copy that will display within your widget. 

Step 2: Add the code to your site

Copy your custom embed code to your clipboard and paste it into your website before the closing tag (or ask your website developer to do it for you.) If you’re using WordPress, check out this plugin to easily add your embed code to your website instead. 

Step 3: You’re all set

You’re ready to chat with website visitors through Facebook Messenger or Twitter DMs. It’s that easy!

Here’s how the widget looks on this blog (it’s live on this page too so you can test it for yourself):

We believe that social messaging is the next frontier of customer support and engagement.

Agree with us?

We hope SocialChat will make it easier for you to reap the benefits of social messaging too, and we’d love for you to give it a try.

If you have any thoughts on feedback on SocialChat, please let us know in the comments. We’d love to hear from you.

Thank Introducing SocialChat by Buffer, the Easiest Way to Start Conversations With Website Visitors for first publishing this post.