Small businesses need to constantly attract new customers and earn repeat business if they want to survive, and that means reaching people where they are. Although some business owners may still be resistant to the idea, statistics prove that consumers are on social media. According to Statista, there were more than 5 billion active social media users worldwide in 2024, and that number is expected to increase to more than 6 billion in 2028.
With social media platforms so heavily populated, they are a great space to increase brand awareness and drive leads as part of a robust marketing plan. Business.com spoke with social media and marketing experts to understand all the reasons social media is important for small businesses and to find out which sites are essential for building a social media presence.
Why your business needs a social media presence
There are many reasons your business should have a presence on social media other than that everyone is doing it — although that is also a valid reason. For starters, consider the legitimacy that a social media account can provide for your business.
“Consumers expect businesses to be on social media, so it’s crucial to have profiles on popular social media sites to pass the initial credibility check,” said Marie Kubin, co-founder of the social media automation platform Cruise Control AI.
Kubin and other experts say social media is important for small businesses for a variety of reasons.
1. Social media presence increases brand awareness.
Data from eMarketer shows that a majority of people ages 16 to 54 find out about products and services via social media. As users scroll their feeds, they discover new brands via videos, influencer posts and ads. When they find something they like, they may repost the material themselves, increasing brand awareness. That is word-of-mouth marketing in the digital age.
“More than ever, people are using social media platforms to seek out solutions, discover new products and interact with businesses,” said Jonny Gorash, co-owner and marketing director of the creative agency Wilder Horse.
2. Social media drives leads and sales.
Social media can go beyond telling people about your small business and what it offers. Posts on X (formerly Twitter) and other social networking sites can actually get potential customers into your sales funnel. You can, for example, share attention-grabbing statistics and fun facts about the products you sell or a special service you offer and link to a lead-generation form that captures their information.
“Social media is a great source of leads,” Kubin said. “Simply posting content with the right hashtags can get your business in front of a huge pool of prospects.”
Plus, many social media platforms facilitate in-app purchases, converting product recommendations into actual sales right in the moment.
More than 80 percent of social marketers say they’re “confident in their ability to keep up with current social media trends,” according to
Hootsuite’s Social Media Trends 2025 report. If you aren’t, business.com’s free guide to
tracking social media trends is just what you need.
3. Social media fosters authentic customer relationships.
Even though everyone is in a different location and interacting behind a screen, social media humanizes small businesses and their customers, allowing them to form meaningful relationships.
“We transformed a small retail client’s approach by using social media to create authentic community connections rather than just promoting products,” said Aaron Whittaker, vice president of demand generation at Thrive Internet Marketing Agency. “By sharing behind-the-scenes content and customer stories, they built relationships that translated into consistent foot traffic. This approach worked because followers felt personally connected to their business journey rather than just seeing advertisements.”
4. Social media can break through advertising noise.
People are inundated with advertising across channels, and social media is no exception. That is a problem if your small business’s marketing efforts revolve solely around ads.
“In the marketing world, we’re seeing consumers exhibit signs of advertisement fatigue,” Gorash said. “They’re constantly bombarded with paid ads while driving down the road, listening to podcasts, watching their favorite show or surfing the web.”
Gorash pointed out that consumers like himself “can smell a paid ad from a mile away, and we often avoid them like the plague.” The good news is that organic social media marketing can help your business win over customers in a more genuine way.
“Small businesses can capitalize on this growing sentiment by populating social media with authentic and natural content that doesn’t come across as an ad,” Gorash said. “Honestly entertain or inform [followers] and they’ll reward you.”
5. Social media can help small businesses stand out from larger companies.
There is no shortage of competition for small businesses when you consider how much of the marketplace large corporations take up. But on social media, being a small business can give you a competitive edge.
“Social media provides small businesses distinct advantages against larger competitors through personality and responsiveness,” Whittaker said. “When a national chain opened near our local retail client, they maintained customer loyalty through personalized social engagement that the corporate competitor couldn’t match. Regular social listening helped them identify and address customer feedback quickly, fostering loyalty beyond what price competition alone could impact.”
>> Learn more about using customer feedback.
Big businesses have the staff and funds to build a brand presence on a wide variety of platforms, but a small business’s more limited bandwidth isn’t necessarily a disadvantage.
“For resource-constrained small businesses, focused authentic engagement on carefully selected platforms yields better results than trying to match larger competitors’ broad presence,” Whittaker said.
6. Social media is valuable for customer communication.
When it comes to small businesses — or any business — it’s better to have too many than too few methods for communicating with your customer base. Mailing addresses, phone calls, email and contact forms on websites are all helpful, but if the customer has a quick question or wants to share the good news about their order arriving earlier than anticipated, they tend to do it on platforms such as X and Instagram. By monitoring what people are saying about your brand in real time on social media, you can engage with your customers promptly.
7. Social media data allows you to better understand your customers.
You can never know too much about your customer base. Social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram can help you aggregate and analyze big data that allows you to better understand your target audience. Most social media sites have analytics tools that reveal the demographics of the users interacting with your posts and which messages and videos spark the most engagement. With those insights, you can fine-tune your social media marketing efforts and home in on the types of people most likely to patronize your business.
8. Social media is less expensive than other forms of marketing.
In addition to not having the staff to compete with large companies, small businesses may also lack the money for an extensive marketing budget.
“Small businesses don’t typically have the finances available to run traditional paid marketing campaigns such as billboards, television commercials or radio ads,” Gorash said.
Fortunately, social media doesn’t have to cost you anything but time. “Thankfully, we’re living in an age when you can reach your target market for free through social media spaces,” Gorash said.
Unless you’re running paid social media ads or want to pay to boost a post’s reach, platforms such as TikTok and LinkedIn have no charge.
Jenna Harding, a marketing coach and creator of Magic Marketing Machine, considers that one of the best benefits of using social media for small business marketing.
“At no other time in the entire history of business has it been this easy and this free to get your offer in front of thousands of potential buyers. Thanks to social media, business owners can get their products and direct links to buy them into the hands of millions just by tapping ‘post,’” Harding said. “Advertisers are scouring every nook and cranny on the internet looking for more ad space to charge people for. Meanwhile, you can film a 30-second reel and post it to Instagram — to a newsfeed your clients are watching by choice — and get a bigger reach, faster.”
Harding can point to her own experiences as proof of the outsized return on investment small business owners can get through social media.
“My own business revenue shot up overnight in 2023 thanks to a fine-tuned sales funnel and a few Instagram posts I filmed in a stained shirt and dirty hair,” she said. “If I’d have gotten that same traffic using paid sources, it would have cost the business in the hundreds of thousands. Instead, it cost a bit of creativity and a few minutes of editing.”
9. Social media sends traffic to your website and improves SEO.
Social media platforms also enable small businesses to drive traffic to their company websites. On Instagram, for instance, you can post the URL to your website in your account bio and direct users to the link via posts on your feed or in a story.
“Having a social media presence is also important for search engine rankings,” Kubin said. “You get backlinks just by creating social media profiles, and posting content regularly helps improve search engine rankings.”
Canva, a popular
website design tool, can help small business owners create visual art for social media themselves instead of hiring a graphic designer. But if you’d rather take all things social media completely off your plate and you have the funds to bring someone in-house or outsource, consider hiring a
social media manager to do everything for you — from creating your social media content to managing all your accounts.
Social media platforms your business should be on
Each social network is somewhat different in its audience demographics, content types and uses. Rarely will it make sense for your small business to be on every platform.
“At this point, the big ones — Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube — all have billions of users,” Harding said. “It’s likely a huge proportion of your ideal customers [or] clients exist on all of them. That said, being on all of them isn’t an option for most busy business owners. Choose the one you’re actually going to enjoy opening. Choose one that won’t feel like an absolute chore to create on.”
Harding and other experts we spoke with broke down the most popular social media sites and when they make the most sense to use.
Facebook
There are several opportunities on Facebook that small businesses should look into using. Aside from creating a page for your business and taking advantage of Meta Business Suite, you should further promote your company by sharing posts on your feed and in daily stories. Businesses can also create Facebook groups that attract their target audience and form an engaged community. In addition, one of the best tools is Messenger, which you can use to interact with, provide support to and send frequent updates to customers.
Read Related Article: Best Facebook Marketing Strategies
“Facebook remains useful for community-building and local awareness, particularly for businesses serving specific geographic areas,” Whittaker said.
Gorash also likes that Facebook and Instagram, both owned by Meta, are “heavily integrated, so you can easily post to both at one time for ease of use and efficiency.”
Instagram
On Instagram, followers can view captivating photos reflecting your brand and products or services, accompanied by attention-grabbing captions and relevant tags and hashtags. There are also various types of post formats you can experiment with, such as photo, video, carousel and stories. If viewers see something they like, they can share the posts easily with friends via their own Instagram feeds or through direct messages.
“My primary platform is Instagram,” Harding said. “It’s easy to share links and move users toward your funnel, purchase page or email list. You can use a variety of content types, and their constant improvements to the algorithm are making it easier and easier to get your content discovered by strangers.”
X
X is known for its tweets, which are microposts with a 280-character limit (for unverified users) that let users say what’s on their minds in a brief amount of space. Tweets can be a great way for small businesses to show a consistent voice that aligns with their values, engages with potential consumers and reaches a particular demographic. Using X also gives you a chance to interact with customers who have mentioned your business on their personal pages, whether in the form of positive reviews or negative ones. Many brands respond to tweets voicing customer complaints.
TikTok
TikTok is a social network that consists of videos typically viewed on mobile devices. Although it’s possible to upload videos as long as 60 minutes, most videos on TikTok are 15 seconds to one minute long. Although TikTok lends itself to entertainment, with many clips featuring dancing or comedy, it can also be used for advice, education and selling products. Successful TikTok marketing tends to be lighthearted and is far from a traditional sales approach. TikTok is also a bit controversial since it’s controlled by a Chinese company and there have been several attempts by U.S. government officials to ban it.
“TikTok obviously has some question marks surrounding it,” Gorash said, “but it’s still one of the best platforms for quick growth, as long as you’re creating content that resonates with the user culture.”
Business.com’s free guide to
TikTok alternatives outlines the video platforms worth looking into in case a TikTok ban is implemented.
LinkedIn
LinkedIn serves as the world’s largest professional network. The platform allows companies to showcase the products and services they provide directly on their LinkedIn business profile, giving members a clear look at what your business has to offer. With the “About” section on your page, you can showcase the voice behind your brand. Companies can even post customers’ past reviews of their business on their profiles as free advertising.
“This is a great space to showcase your business’s authority and value to potential customers or clients,” Gorash said. LinkedIn’s user base suggests it’s most fitting for B2B businesses, however, not B2C ones. “[It’s] a particularly impactful platform for small businesses that benefit from B2B connections or rely on continuous learning and advancements, like in STEM industries,” he said.
Threads
Threads is a relatively new social media platform created by Meta to compete with X for users and advertisers. It allows users to log in using their Instagram accounts, but rather than sharing the heavily visual content common on Instagram, they can post text up to 500 characters. Threads users can also include links, photos and videos up to five minutes long in their posts. Because of its integration with Instagram, it’s easy to share posts on both sites simultaneously.
Reddit
Anyone searching on Google is likely to find Reddit in their search results. The site dates back to 2005, but it has seen a surge in search results traffic recently as Google prioritizes information and experiences from real-life people over traditional digital publishers. The platform is essentially an online forum, with Reddit boards for different topics. Users can upvote or downvote posts and comments and privately exchange messages.
“Reddit has become a trusted place for people looking for information, advice and guidance across every topic imaginable,” Gorash said. “Small business owners can use their specific expertise to post helpful responses or start intriguing conversations that drive traffic to your website or increase your brand’s authority.”
Nextdoor
Some of the biggest social media platforms, such as Facebook, remain great for connecting with local customers, but you may also want to consider using Nextdoor. According to Nextdoor, 1 in 3 U.S. households has a Nextdoor account, and, like other social media sites, it’s free to create or claim a page for your business.
“[It’s] a fantastic platform if your small business market is localized,” Gorash said. “It allows you to connect directly with thousands of your neighbors and quickly increase your brand awareness by regularly engaging with them.”
Nextdoor is filled with neighbors asking for and sharing local service recommendations, from landscapers to dog sitters to HVAC repair. The site also boasts a marketplace for users interested in selling, buying or giving away items. Address verification is required to join a particular neighborhood, which is why it’s a great platform for businesses targeting their own community.
Google Business
Small businesses catering to local clientele should also focus on Google Business. At first glance, nothing about a Google Business listing screams “social media,” but Kubin said she considers it the “most important — and most overlooked — social media site.”
“It may not be a traditional social media platform, but I consider it the No. 1 social media site for small businesses,” she said. “Google Business functions just like any other social media site, allowing you to share photos and videos, post updates and chat with customers. But what truly sets Google Business apart is its unique ability to get you in front of local customers and get you the biggest boost for Google search rankings.”
To Whittaker, the most important thing to remember is that “different platforms serve distinct purposes for small businesses.”
“Instagram works exceptionally well for visually oriented clients like boutiques, restaurants or design services, while LinkedIn proves more valuable for professional services and consultancies,” he said. “The most effective strategy involves deeply engaging on one or two platforms aligned with customer demographics rather than maintaining shallow presence across many.”
Jennifer Dublino and Deborah Sweeney contributed to this article.
Social media platforms your business should be on
Each social network is somewhat different in its audience demographics, content types and uses. Rarely will it make sense for your small business to be on every platform.
“At this point, the big ones — Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube — all have billions of users,” Harding said. “It’s likely a huge proportion of your ideal customers [or] clients exist on all of them. That said, being on all of them isn’t an option for most busy business owners. Choose the one you’re actually going to enjoy opening. Choose one that won’t feel like an absolute chore to create on.”
Harding and other experts we spoke with broke down the most popular social media sites and when they make the most sense to use.
Facebook
There are several opportunities on Facebook that small businesses should look into using. Aside from creating a page for your business and taking advantage of Meta Business Suite, you should further promote your company by sharing posts on your feed and in daily stories. Businesses can also create Facebook groups that attract their target audience and form an engaged community. In addition, one of the best tools is Messenger, which you can use to interact with, provide support to and send frequent updates to customers.
Read Related Article: Best Facebook Marketing Strategies
“Facebook remains useful for community-building and local awareness, particularly for businesses serving specific geographic areas,” Whittaker said.
Gorash also likes that Facebook and Instagram, both owned by Meta, are “heavily integrated, so you can easily post to both at one time for ease of use and efficiency.”
Instagram
On Instagram, followers can view captivating photos reflecting your brand and products or services, accompanied by attention-grabbing captions and relevant tags and hashtags. There are also various types of post formats you can experiment with, such as photo, video, carousel and stories. If viewers see something they like, they can share the posts easily with friends via their own Instagram feeds or through direct messages.
“My primary platform is Instagram,” Harding said. “It’s easy to share links and move users toward your funnel, purchase page or email list. You can use a variety of content types, and their constant improvements to the algorithm are making it easier and easier to get your content discovered by strangers.”
X
X is known for its tweets, which are microposts with a 280-character limit (for unverified users) that let users say what’s on their minds in a brief amount of space. Tweets can be a great way for small businesses to show a consistent voice that aligns with their values, engages with potential consumers and reaches a particular demographic. Using X also gives you a chance to interact with customers who have mentioned your business on their personal pages, whether in the form of positive reviews or negative ones. Many brands respond to tweets voicing customer complaints.
TikTok
TikTok is a social network that consists of videos typically viewed on mobile devices. Although it’s possible to upload videos as long as 60 minutes, most videos on TikTok are 15 seconds to one minute long. Although TikTok lends itself to entertainment, with many clips featuring dancing or comedy, it can also be used for advice, education and selling products. Successful TikTok marketing tends to be lighthearted and is far from a traditional sales approach. TikTok is also a bit controversial since it’s controlled by a Chinese company and there have been several attempts by U.S. government officials to ban it.
“TikTok obviously has some question marks surrounding it,” Gorash said, “but it’s still one of the best platforms for quick growth, as long as you’re creating content that resonates with the user culture.”
LinkedIn
LinkedIn serves as the world’s largest professional network. The platform allows companies to showcase the products and services they provide directly on their LinkedIn business profile, giving members a clear look at what your business has to offer. With the “About” section on your page, you can showcase the voice behind your brand. Companies can even post customers’ past reviews of their business on their profiles as free advertising.
“This is a great space to showcase your business’s authority and value to potential customers or clients,” Gorash said. LinkedIn’s user base suggests it’s most fitting for B2B businesses, however, not B2C ones. “[It’s] a particularly impactful platform for small businesses that benefit from B2B connections or rely on continuous learning and advancements, like in STEM industries,” he said.
Threads
Threads is a relatively new social media platform created by Meta to compete with X for users and advertisers. It allows users to log in using their Instagram accounts, but rather than sharing the heavily visual content common on Instagram, they can post text up to 500 characters. Threads users can also include links, photos and videos up to five minutes long in their posts. Because of its integration with Instagram, it’s easy to share posts on both sites simultaneously.
Reddit
Anyone searching on Google is likely to find Reddit in their search results. The site dates back to 2005, but it has seen a surge in search results traffic recently as Google prioritizes information and experiences from real-life people over traditional digital publishers. The platform is essentially an online forum, with Reddit boards for different topics. Users can upvote or downvote posts and comments and privately exchange messages.
“Reddit has become a trusted place for people looking for information, advice and guidance across every topic imaginable,” Gorash said. “Small business owners can use their specific expertise to post helpful responses or start intriguing conversations that drive traffic to your website or increase your brand’s authority.”
Nextdoor
Some of the biggest social media platforms, such as Facebook, remain great for connecting with local customers, but you may also want to consider using Nextdoor. According to Nextdoor, 1 in 3 U.S. households has a Nextdoor account, and, like other social media sites, it’s free to create or claim a page for your business.
“[It’s] a fantastic platform if your small business market is localized,” Gorash said. “It allows you to connect directly with thousands of your neighbors and quickly increase your brand awareness by regularly engaging with them.”
Nextdoor is filled with neighbors asking for and sharing local service recommendations, from landscapers to dog sitters to HVAC repair. The site also boasts a marketplace for users interested in selling, buying or giving away items. Address verification is required to join a particular neighborhood, which is why it’s a great platform for businesses targeting their own community.
Google Business
Small businesses catering to local clientele should also focus on Google Business. At first glance, nothing about a Google Business listing screams “social media,” but Kubin said she considers it the “most important — and most overlooked — social media site.”
“It may not be a traditional social media platform, but I consider it the No. 1 social media site for small businesses,” she said. “Google Business functions just like any other social media site, allowing you to share photos and videos, post updates and chat with customers. But what truly sets Google Business apart is its unique ability to get you in front of local customers and get you the biggest boost for Google search rankings.”
To Whittaker, the most important thing to remember is that “different platforms serve distinct purposes for small businesses.”
“Instagram works exceptionally well for visually oriented clients like boutiques, restaurants or design services, while LinkedIn proves more valuable for professional services and consultancies,” he said. “The most effective strategy involves deeply engaging on one or two platforms aligned with customer demographics rather than maintaining shallow presence across many.”
Jennifer Dublino and Deborah Sweeney contributed to this article.