Choosing the Best Social Media Channels for Growth

Welcome to Part 2 of Visaggio & Co.’s series on social media best practices! If you missed Part 1, or would like a refresher, click here.  

Once you have a short list of social media platforms that could be a good fit for your business, it is time to start thinking about growth over time. Not all platforms are equal, and audiences can increase or decrease over time as people’s preferences for social media shift.  

Let’s take a look at how you can use Monthly Active Users (MAU) data to gauge which platform is best for your organization’s growth. 

Gauging a platform by its monthly active users over time can give you an informed picture of how popular a platform is and where its popularity is likely to go over time. MAU is a metric that identifies the number of unique accounts accessing a social media platform every month. A growth in MAU is a positive trend because it indicates that the platform is increasing in popularity and relevance. This is a favorable online environment to grow your audience in. If the MAU is seeing a decline for a particular platform, that would indicate that users are less interested in seeing content posted there. In some instances, you may be left choosing between two platforms that have both seen MAU growth over time. It is best to stick with the platform that has the higher rate of growth. Let’s look at a current example. 

With over two billion users every month, Facebook is one of the most popular social media platforms today. Having run for almost twenty years, it is well established and is likely not going anywhere. Perhaps most importantly, we can see continued measurable growth in Facebook’s MAU over time. Since 2019, Facebook has seen 19% growth in its already considerable number of MAU (see Figure 1).  

Compare this to Twitter which, despite people being stuck at home during the COVID-19 pandemic, has only seen 8% growth (Figure 1) in its MAU from 2019-2021. While Twitter is also an established and popular platform, it has a lower growth rate compared to its competitors. 

Figure 1. MAU Growth for major platforms 2019-2021 

While Facebook and Twitter are both very popular and have seen growth in the past few years, MAU data indicates that many businesses would see better results choosing Facebook if they had to pick between the two.  

That being said, trends change, and it is important to keep tabs on your chosen platforms and see how they are doing on a regular basis, so you can best allocate business resources where they will be most effective. Watch for news from reputable sources regarding your platforms so you can anticipate changes that may affect your social media success.  

Now that you have the tools to choose the best platforms for your organization, you can move onto setting up your pages and working on building an audience. Part 3 of Visaggio & Co.’s series on social media best practices will focus on what aspects make up a great page and how to gain some of your initial following. 

See you next time! 

This is part two of Visaggio & Co.’s series on best practices for social media management. By subscribing to our newsletter using the form below, you will be notified when future installments are posted.