Just as a distinction is made between SEA and SEO in search engine marketing, a distinction is made between “paid” and “organic” in social media marketing. “Paid” refers to any form of paid advertising, whereas “organic” refers to the free maintenance of a social media account. Both can be operated largely independently of each other. For example, a company can place paid advertising on Facebook without actively maintaining a Facebook page. This also works the other way around: you can run a free Facebook page without advertising there. The situation is similar on networks such as Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and LinkedIn.
There are now a large number of social media channels, the most important of which are presented below. Unless otherwise stated, the figures are taken from the ARD/ZDF Media Study 2024 and refer firstly to “at least weekly” users and secondly to a population of 70 million over the age of 14 living in Germany. The user figures in the ARD/ZDF media study are generally significantly lower than the figures published by the platforms themselves or the number of potentially reachable users according to the associated advertising platform.
Instagram has around 27 million users in Germany and is particularly popular with people under the age of 40. The fact that Instagram was designed as a smartphone app from the outset is still evident today. Hardly anyone uses the desktop version of Instagram. Visual content, i.e. images and videos (reels), is even more important on Instagram than on Facebook. Longer texts are rarely read.
Instagram is suitable for companies to attract private customers and potential employees. However, competition on the platform has increased significantly in recent years, making it difficult to build up followers. Like Facebook, Instagram is a meta platform, which is why content can be easily synchronized, i.e. played out on both channels. In order to keep Instagram interesting for users, the service is constantly being developed and the algorithm that decides which content is displayed to users is adjusted from time to time. With the introduction of short videos in 9:16 format called “reels” in 2020, Instagram has evolved from an app for beautiful pictures to a short video platform. As a result, the video editing options have also been significantly improved. Also important on Instagram are “Stories”, a mixture of short videos, images and text elements in 9:16 format, which usually disappear automatically after 24 hours and are often used to interact with followers (e.g. surveys, feedback, quizzes). The options for collaboration and shopping functions have also been expanded in recent years.
With around 23 million users in Germany, Facebook is “only” the second largest social network. It is no longer as popular with younger people in particular as it was a few years ago. By comparison, 65% of 14 to 29-year-olds in Germany use Instagram daily, but only 14% use Facebook daily. It is also suffering from declining user activity. For companies that do not yet have a presence (“page”) there, it is now difficult to find users who want to subscribe to their own page and be informed about news.
Nevertheless, Facebook is well suited for communicating with private customers. It also has a wide range of functions. For example, not only can texts, images and videos be published, but also – as on Instagram – “stories” can be posted and products can be sold via the shopping function. Events can also be created and people invited to them – a function that many users have been missing on Instagram for years. In addition to creating a “Facebook page”, the “Groups” function is particularly interesting for companies, in which users – and therefore potential customers – can exchange information.
YouTube
YouTube has around 23 million users in Germany (roughly the same number as Facebook), but is often not perceived as a social network. There is a simple reason for this: most people only use the platform to watch videos. For this reason, it is also listed as a video streaming service by the ARD/ZDF media study. While it is common on other social networks for people to create their own content, only very few people run their own channel on YouTube.
Small companies usually don’t use YouTube at all or only as a repository for their image videos. Companies that have a channel on YouTube where they regularly publish explanatory videos or tutorials, for example, or provide insights into their work are the absolute exception. A major advantage of YouTube is that the half-life is significantly longer than on other social media networks, meaning that content can still be found and viewed years later. In response to the Reels and TikTok boom, YouTube rolled out its “Shorts” feature in 2021, which is almost identical to the short video feature on Instagram and TikTok.
TikTok
The Chinese video platform TikTok has around 13 million users in Germany and is particularly popular with young people. Around 38% of 14 to 29-year-olds stated in the ARD/ZDF media study that they use TikTok every day. The social network, which was originally called musical.ly, became famous for lip-syncing music videos. TikTok still thrives on creative short videos, but these can now be up to ten minutes long. The range of content has also expanded. In addition to fun-based content (e.g. comedy, dance, pranks and challenges), TikTok is increasingly covering topics from politics, society, sport and culture.
Some companies see TikTok as a good channel to strengthen their employer brand, promote their industry and draw attention to vacant apprenticeships. For example, TikTok also provides insights into the work of bakers, roofers and tilers.
The image network Pinterest has around eight million users in Germany. Pinterest has little presence in the traditional media and is therefore often underestimated as a social network. Yet many users use it to find inspiration for projects in the areas of DIY, food, design, home furnishings and fashion. As Pinterest is also used as an image search engine, the half-life of the content is relatively long, meaning that images posted can still be found years later.
X
The network, which was bought by Elon Musk in 2022 and renamed from “Twitter” to “X” in 2023, has around five million users in Germany and is quite present in the media. This is mainly due to the fact that the service is used by many celebrities, journalists and influencers and is much more important in the USA than in Germany. For small companies, X is usually of little significance.
In the ARD/ZDF Media Study 2024, the use of LinkedIn was no longer surveyed. In 2023, the business network still had around five million weekly users in Germany, while LinkedIn itself stated that it had around seven million monthly active users in 2024. LinkedIn is similar to Facebook in terms of functionality and design, but is much more limited in terms of topics. The focus is clearly on work-related topics, which is why LinkedIn is mainly suitable for companies that are based in the B2B sector or are looking for highly qualified employees. LinkedIn plays almost no role for the private customer business of small companies – although it can be smart for small companies to adopt a different social media strategy than everyone else (and not just be present on Instagram).
According to the ARD-ZDF online study, Xing, which competes with LinkedIn, had around three million users per week in 2023. There are also many other parallels between the two networks. In simple terms, it can be said that Xing is stronger in the events sector, while LinkedIn functions better as a social network and is more international. Xing, which is backed by the German company New Work SE, has often been declared dead, but it has held its own against LinkedIn, which belongs to Microsoft, for years, even though it is slowly but surely losing importance.
Other social media
In the ARD/ZDF media study, Snapchat is listed as a social media platform with 9 million users, but in practice – at least in Germany – the service is primarily used as a messenger, although Snapchat does have social media functions. After all, you can also view stories from companies, brands, media and celebrities here. In terms of usage behavior, however, Snapchat is much closer to a messenger like Whatsapp and is hardly relevant for small companies. For the same reason, various other social media platforms such as Twitch, BeReal, Mastodon, Bluesky and Reddit are not considered in more detail.
5 tips for social media marketing
1. impartiality: Which channels are the right ones?
Small companies in particular often make the mistake of committing to individual social media channels too early and categorically excluding others in return. Of course, Instagram is now the dominant social media platform and a social media strategy without Instagram is unusual, but you should still approach channel selection with as little bias as possible. TikTok is still dismissed by many as a teen fun channel, but the service and its users have evolved and there are definitely over 30s who consume serious videos on the platform. So why not use TikTok as your main channel and repurpose the videos on Instagram? YouTube, on the other hand, still has the enormous advantage that the content will still be viewed years later. And Pinterest is hardly present in the media, but has more users in Germany than X and is likely to be relevant for companies that are active in the DIY, design, food or fashion sectors.
2. uniqueness: How do you stand out from the crowd?
Analyzing the competition, getting inspiration and looking at what competitors are doing is good. However, copying them is bad. At the same time, companies’ products and services are often not fundamentally different from those of their competitors. This applies to large companies (e.g. discounters) as well as small ones (e.g. painters). However, small, owner-managed businesses have the advantage that they are not only defined by their products, but also by the people who work there.
Fluctuation is also an issue for them, but with the owners or the management, there are constants that define themselves. For this reason, it makes sense to also show the team and the fun they have at work and to give the website a personal touch. A consistent design and a uniform visual language (e.g. always square, always in natural colors) is also helpful to make the account unique and create a recognition value.
3. advantages: Why should users follow you?
The battle for attention on social networks is enormous. Users are shown content from their friends and acquaintances, from prominent musicians, actors, models, athletes and artists, as well as from numerous companies.
For this reason, even small companies need to provide users with good reasons why they should subscribe to their social media channel. Customers usually follow companies and brands because they like them personally, to receive information about new products, because they hope to find funny, helpful or interesting content, to get discounts and to take part in competitions. At the end of the day, it is always the content, the people and their presentation that matter.
4 Secondary use: Where else can the content be published?
Right at the start of a social media activity, you should ask yourself how you can also place the posts on your own website. The best, but also most time-consuming way is to publish them under a news, current affairs or blog section on the website, as this also has a positive effect on visibility on Google and can be seen by all Internet users. Another option is to embed the social media posts via a plugin. This has the advantage that they are then automatically integrated into the website. Such plugins are available free of charge for WordPress and also for many modular systems.
Companies that are active on several social media platforms should also consider whether they should synchronize their accounts fully or partially automatically, i.e. display the same content on several social media channels. Some platforms offer this on their own (e.g. Instagram and Facebook, which belong to Meta), while others require paid automation services such as Zapier or dlvr.it (e.g. to synchronize Instagram with Pinterest or the Google company profile). As a further form of secondary use, it can be useful to use social media posts for your own newsletter.
5. editorial plan: Who regularly publishes new articles?
At the beginning of a social media campaign, the euphoria is usually great and several posts are published each week. However, as time goes on, this often fades and the social media presence becomes orphaned – which has a negative impact on the company’s image. For this reason, it should be determined as early as possible how many posts per week are realistic in the long term and who is responsible for maintaining the social media channels. It should go without saying that the “social media manager” (who can also be a trainee or office administrator) needs a fixed time budget in which they can focus exclusively on maintaining the social media presence. The editorial plan itself can be kept simple and created as an Outlook or Google calendar, for example.
