YouTube
Monthly active users – approximately 2 billion globally and 25.7 million in South Africa. YouTube is owned by Google and is a video sharing platform. Because of its affiliation with Google, it is also a great search engine. Users watch 1 billion hours of video every day, making it another popular choice for social media, but remember content is limited to videos.Monthly active users – approximately 1 billion globally and 5.43 million in South Africa.
Instagram is another popular option, which supports images and videos – therefore, it is a very visual platform. Along with this, users can also share stories, have live videos and use IGTV (which is for longer-form videos). The platform also provides analytics that can be used to monitor the effectiveness of your content in terms of reach, engagement and so on.
TikTok
Monthly active users – approximately 1.1 billion globally and 0.6 million in South Africa.
TikTok is a video sharing social media platform where users can record 60-second videos, edit them and add music and special effects. It has been rising in popularity since its release a few years ago, making it one of the newer social media platforms.
Monthly active users – approximately 429 million globally and 3.4 million in South Africa.
This social media platform has an emphasis on text; however, it does support images and videos. It is different from other social media platforms as there is a 280-character limit. It also has a strong emphasis on real-time information, ie, things happening right now.
According to Twitter, more than 80% of social customer service requests happen on the platform, making it a great platform to engage with customers who have queries, complaints and anything customer service related.
Monthly active users – approximately 774.6 million globally and 11.4 million in South Africa.