Your personal social media accounts might be a great place for showcasing what you had for breakfast or clever memes, but when it comes to leveraging social media for business growth, what and where you post requires a much more tactical approach.

Business on social media is booming. With the average North American user spending over 2.5 hours per day scrolling their socials, what better place to grab your audience’s attention? However, brand building and advertising on social media isn’t as straightforward as occasionally posting a product shot or random status update. Your social media channels should be viewed as a strategic marketing asset, much the same as your marketing team would manage print or PPC campaigns. The first step in this strategy is deciding which social media platforms best align with your audience so that you can tailor your content accordingly.

Social Media Platforms and Their Strengths

There are, in fact, dozens of different social media platforms actively used in Canada, but the vast majority of engagement comes from the top eight: Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. Each of these platforms serves up different types of content that appeal to users in different ways and these distinctions play a huge role in your social media strategy.

So how can you know which platforms fit your business best and what type of content to produce? Let’s dive into the strengths of each platform and how to get the most out of your social media marketing.

Facebook: Best for Community Engagement

Facebook was originally envisioned as a community tool where people could connect and share information. We’ve all witnessed how that concept has morphed into one of the largest social media platforms in the world, but the premise remains the same. Facebook is a place where people go to connect and to consume content that feels relevant to their interests.

From a business perspective, there are two key components to using Facebook to build your brand: organic engagement and paid advertising.

Organic engagement generally comes through your Facebook business page. This page will feature all your relevant business information like name, address, contact info, and bio. This is also the place where you are posting and promoting your business and brand, whether that’s with clever graphics or a really interesting blog post.

Alongside your business page, most brands choose to run paid ad campaigns on Facebook. The platform has arguably the best audience targeting capabilities, allowing businesses to refine their reach based on demographics, interests, behaviours, and even past interactions. With over 3 billion daily active users, it offers maximum exposure to potential customers.

Ad campaigns on the platform operate on a pay-per-click (PPC) structure, with you in charge of setting your budget, choosing your audience, and optimizing for specific goals such as website traffic, conversions, or lead generation.

Instagram: Best for Visual Storytelling

Instagram is not just for influencers; anyone can leverage the platform to create eye-catching reels that showcase your various products or services. The key to gaining traction on Instagram is consistency. The algorithm is designed to feed users content that keeps them engaged and interacting. Instagram is primarily a business-to-consumer platform where authenticity and visually compelling content are crucial to success.

Like Facebook, you need a business page to start. From there, you work to grow your presence organically by regularly posting highly engaging, curated content and interacting with users. Because Instagram is a visual platform, your content strategy should be formed around high-quality image reels and engaging short-form videos that tell a story, showcase products in action, or highlight behind-the-scenes moments.

Instagram also has a paid advertising feature, which allows you to boost your exposure with sponsored posts that appear alongside organic content in users’ feeds, reels, and stories. You can also link your Instagram to your Facebook (both Meta platforms) and manage both social media campaign strategies from your Meta Ads Manager, making cross-platform marketing more streamlined and effective.

YouTube: Best for Long-Form Content

While YouTube often sneaks under the radar for advertisers, it’s a space that has rapidly been gaining traction, particularly with younger audiences. As of 2025, YouTube is topping 13.3 billion visits a month, making it the world’s second most popular search engine after Google.

Unlike other social platforms that focus on quick, digestible content, YouTube thrives on long-form videos. These longer videos are generally higher in production value than the short-form content you see on other platforms. They tend to feature in-depth product demonstrations, tutorials, educational videos, and other types of explainer content, although challenges and comedic content also do well on the platform.

However, you don’t need to produce long-form video content to benefit from advertising on the platform. YouTube offers a variety of ad formats to choose from, including skippable in-stream ads, non-skippable ads, and bumper ads, that are between 6 seconds and up to 3 minutes (depending on the ad type) and appear in-feed, before, after, or in-between other content. Most businesses find success on the platform by thinking outside the box with their video advertising and creating content that feels relevant, relatable, and real.

YouTube ads run on a cost-per-view format, with the average price ranging between $0.10 and $0.30 per view. And because YouTube operates through Google Ads, you can take advantage of advanced audience targeting and retargeting options to ensure your videos are reaching the right viewers at the right time.

TikTok: Best for Reaching Younger Audiences

In contrast to the longer-form content popular on YouTube, TikTok has gained a mass following of younger audiences with its fast-paced, highly engaging short-form video content. As of 2024, the platform had over 1 billion active users worldwide, most of them between 16 and 24. If you’re aiming to engage this demographic, TikTok should be a part of your social media strategy.

Like Instagram and Facebook, businesses on TikTok start with a business account and work to grow their audience by regularly posting content and engaging with users. The platform thrives on serving up content that captures the latest trends and challenges; however, authenticity is key. To harness TikTok's potential, you need to focus on creating bite-sized content that grabs attention but also showcases your brand’s unique personality. For added engagement, you can also incorporate popular music and effects or consider collaborations with relevant influencers to leverage their reach for your brand.

Outside of your business page, TikTok offers several advertising options, including In-Feed Ads, Branded Hashtag Challenges, and TopView Ads. The cost structure depends on the type of ad you choose, with In-Feed Ads typically starting at $10 per 1,000 impressions (CPM), and minimum campaign budgets starting at $500.

Like your page content, your advertising videos need to tell a story and showcase your product without being overtly sales-driven. The most successful TikTok campaigns aren’t the ones with the biggest budgets or highest production value as viewers on the platform generally prioritize storytelling and authenticity over polished production.

LinkedIn: Best for B2B Networking and Professional Outreach

Where most of the other social media platforms we’ve covered are targeting business-to-consumer audiences, LinkedIn stands out as a platform designed for business-to-business (B2B) interactions. With over 900 million members, there is no better social media tool for growing your professional network and generating leads for your business.

At its core, LinkedIn works much in the same way as other social media platforms. You create a business page and earn engagement and attention by regularly posting valuable content, sharing industry insights, and delivering company updates. Interacting with followers through comments and discussions is also crucial on this platform as it helps you build meaningful connections and positions your brand as an authority or at least a recognizable figure.

LinkedIn's advertising platform does a great job of offering precision targeting that allows you to reach professionals in specific industries, job titles, and even at individual companies. Ad formats include Sponsored Content, Sponsored InMail, and Text Ads. As far as pricing goes, LinkedIn ads tend to cost slightly more than other social media platforms, however, its granular targeting helps to ensure that those clicks or impressions are generating value.

Given the professional nature of the LinkedIn platform, content, whether it’s your business page or part of an advertisement, needs to appeal to a professional audience. Static images, carousels, short-form videos, document ads, and thought leader content all perform well, as long as the content looks polished and is relevant to your target audience.

Different Social Media Platforms Require Different Content Strategies

With so many social media platforms it can be difficult to pinpoint exactly where to spend your marketing dollars for maximum return. To conserve time and money businesses often fall into the trap of recycling content across multiple platforms tailoring their social media strategies. Or they spread themselves too thin trying to be active everywhere all at once. Unfortunately, these approaches rarely yield positive results.

The best way to maximize the effectiveness of your social media strategy is by focusing on the channels most likely to engage your audience and creating curated content that fits each platform’s unique strengths. Instead of trying to be everywhere at once, prioritize the platforms where your ideal customers spend the most time, and invest in creating high-quality, platform-specific content.

By taking a more strategic approach and aligning your content with the right platforms, you’ll build stronger connections, boost engagement, and ultimately drive better results from your social media efforts.