Storytelling is a cornerstone of any successful digital marketing strategy. One of the best media channels for telling stories, of course, is social media. But not all social media platforms are created equal.
Understanding the nuances of each social media platform—user demographics, usage trends, formatting requirements, and engagement data—is crucial to being seen and heard on social media.
One of the biggest social media marketing mistakes we see businesses make is posting the same exact content to each platform. Sure, there are rare instances where this is appropriate…but, for the most part, your content will need to be optimized on a platform-by-platform basis. Some obvious examples include:
Adjusting post content based on user demographics
Removing links from Instagram post content, and directing users to the link in your bio instead. Pro tip: don’t forget to actually update your bio link, or add the link to your landing page!
Adjusting hashtags based on platform-specific trends: for example, the hashtag #analytics gets used about 1–2 million times a month on Facebook and Instagram, but almost 7 million times a month on LinkedIn (and there are countless other examples of this).
Resizing graphics: Instagram posts look best at a 4:5 ratio (as of Q1 2025), but Facebook and LinkedIn graphics should be slightly wider.
Making sure graphics and videos display properly on each platform: What looks great as a carousel post on Instagram might look awful as a collage on Facebook or LinkedIn—and might not translate to X at all, considering they have a 4-photo limit.
Adjusting character count for platforms like X, which limits you to 280 characters.
So, yeah. Each platform has its nuances—and we’ve outlined everything you need to know below, including the advantages and disadvantages of each platform, user demographics, hashtag best practices, recommended post length, formatting considerations, and more.
With over 2.9 billion monthly active users, Facebook is a powerhouse in the social media realm. Its diverse user base spans various demographics, making it an ideal platform for businesses looking to connect with a broad audience. However, precise targeting filters and re-targeting capabilities also make it possible to target niche audiences. For many reasons, being on Facebook is an absolute must for businesses of any size, in pretty much any industry.
As a visual-centric platform, Instagram is perfect for businesses with compelling visual content. Boasting 2 billion monthly active users, Instagram caters primarily to a younger demographic. Birdhouse Marketing and Design capitalizes on this by creating visually stunning content that resonates with millennials and Gen Z.
X—formerly known as Twitter—with its 330 million monthly active users, is the go-to platform for real-time updates and engagement. Over the last year, X has undergone major changes (including its name and ownership), and is more controversial than pretty much any other social media platform…except for maybe TikTok. While CEO Elon Musk says that X is poised to break even after 4+ years of posting massive losses, only time will tell.
We often get asked whether X is worth posting to anymore, and this is what we usually say: definitely at least HAVE a profile, because, if nothing else, this is beneficial for SEO and building a broad web of digital backlinks. Post as it makes sense, but I wouldn’t hang your social media marketing strategy on X—brands are pulling back from advertising on X, and even stepping away from the platform completely. Musk’s recent endorsement of an antisemitic post has caused this mass exodus to gain even more traction.
If you do choose to include X in your social media strategy, here’s what you need to know:
LinkedIn, with a modest 875 million users, is widely-known as the social network for professionals. Ideal for B2B marketers, it allows businesses to establish thought leadership and build professional relationships. For B2C businesses, LinkedIn is a great platform to build up your network of referral sources.
There are two primary types of LinkedIn profiles: personal profiles and company pages. Company pages are more passive, while personal profiles are where the action happens. After all, on LinkedIn, people want to interact with people…not companies. That’s not to say you don’t need a company page—you absolutely do. It reinforces your business’s credibility, increases the size of your digital footprint, enhances SEO performance, and keeps your employees connected. But leveraging the personal profiles of your company’s leadership team will always be more fruitful.
Our team likes to re-share updates from our company page to our professional profiles, adding a few sentences of personal insight on whatever the topic is!
Social media marketing isn’t rocket science, but it is time-consuming as all hell. Curating content, adjusting it for each platform, creating graphics and resizing them for each network, doing platform-specific hashtag research, figuring out which time of day to post to your various accounts…
It’s exhausting.
And it’s why small businesses across the country count on us to manage their social media marketing for them.
Our team includes several social media strategists with specialized experience on each of these platforms—as well as on TikTok, YouTube, and even Threads. From crafting eye-catching Instagram content to curating intriguing and captivating Facebook captions, we combine our efforts and work together to ensure your business presents with a consistent and impactful online ubiquity.
If you’d like to level up your social media game—or if you’d simply like to get started with social media marketing—we are happy to jump on a call to discuss your goals, and brainstorm some ideas to help you achieve them. Get in touch with us using the brief form below!
Fear-based marketing is probably my least favorite type of marketing. I’m very much a focus-on-the-solution kinda marketer. But using fear in marketing is nothing new, and it does have its place…but you have to know how much fear you can monger without crossing the line, when to leverage fear-based marketing, and when to keep it positive.
We get it, social media can be a lot. There are multiple platforms—Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads and Pinterest, just to name a few—and each platform requires individualized attention. As a digital marketing agency, we’ve been active on pretty much every major platform, for clients in a wide range of industries. We decided to put all of our social media marketing knowledge into one definitive source. You’re welcome 😉
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