Scholars have studied the types of social media. Mayfield divides social media into 6 basic types: blogs, wikis, podcasts, forums, social networks and content communities. Common social media include social networks, business social networking, video sharing, picture sharing, social bookmarks, encyclopedias, microblogs, blogs and forums.
According to the characteristics of cross-border e-commerce marketing, this book divides mainstream social media platforms into: social network type, picture sharing type, video sharing type, forum community type, blog type, word-of-mouth review type, encyclopedia type and question-and-answer type.
1. Social network type
Social media platforms of social network type mainly include Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Among them, Facebook has 2.38 billion active users per month, Twitter has 126 million active users per day, and LinkedIn has more than 500 million users.
Social networks may be the most traditional form of social media, containing various themes, pictures, videos and other content, and conducting various interactions such as publishing, forwarding and commenting. Such platforms provide groups of people with certain social relationships, such as friends, to interact on social networking platforms, such as Facebook, Renren, VK, etc. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are often called social networking platforms because they allow user accounts to interact in a variety of different ways.
In addition to social interactions, information on common social networking platforms is usually a mix of text and visuals, rather than one main type of content. This flexibility makes it easy for social networking platforms to implement social strategies because companies can try different forms of content. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter are also beginning to encourage more native video and photo uploads. Recently, Facebook even adjusted its algorithm to support real-time video and image uploads.
2. Picture Sharing
Picture sharing social media platforms mainly include Instagram and Pinterest. Instagram has 1 billion active users per month, and Pinterest has about 250 million active users per month. People interact on this type of platform mainly in the form of uploading, viewing, commenting, and sharing pictures. Like social networking platforms, users can interact with others through tags, likes, comments, or direct messages.
3. Video sharing
Video sharing social media platforms mainly include YouTube, TikTok, and Vimeo. Among them, YouTube has more than 1.9 billion monthly active users, TikTok has more than 1.2 billion monthly active users, and Vimeo has 240 million monthly active users.
People interact on these websites mainly by uploading, watching, commenting, and sharing videos. About 83% of companies said that the return on investment of video sharing platforms is very high. Choosing video platforms in corporate social marketing strategies can enhance corporate brand stickiness and increase competitive barriers in competition with similar platforms. Video sharing platforms are suitable for most industries.
4. Forum community
Forum community social media platforms mainly include Reddit, with 52 million daily active users.
This type of platform provides a platform for online discussion of issues, providing people with a place to discuss various topics or share resources. Through such discussion websites, companies can share links or posts about specific topics on discussion boards related to their industry and understand how users respond. If the topic that the company wants to encourage discussion on does not exist yet, it can also create its own section.
5. Blogs
Blog social media platforms mainly include Twitter and Tumblr. Twitter has 126 million daily active users, and Tumblr has 18.4 million monthly active users.
People record their views and opinions on the Internet platform in various forms such as text, pictures, and videos, share their emotions and thoughts in the form of online diaries, and even make friends with peers.
Blogs are usually divided into three categories: the first category is the earliest traditional blogs, such as Blog; the second category is the currently very popular microblogs, such as Twitter, which have a smaller capacity than traditional blogs. Its biggest feature is that there is a word limit, such as Twitter has always set a limit of 140 English characters; the third category is light blogs, which have a content capacity between traditional blogs and microblogs, and the representative platform is Tumblr.
6. Word-of-mouth reviews
Word-of-mouth reviews social media platforms mainly include Yelp. Yelp has 145 million monthly active users. This type of platform collects information about products or service providers and presents user feedback. People can search on the platform to get information such as reviews of products or services (such as restaurants, stores, etc.).
7. Encyclopedias
Encyclopedia social media platforms mainly include Wikipedia.
Wiki sites are like public databases where people can add content or revise and supplement existing content. The most famous Wiki site is Wikipedia – an online encyclopedia with more than 1.5 million articles in English alone. (Note: Domestic encyclopedias that are doing well include Baidu Encyclopedia, Hudong Encyclopedia, Hexun Encyclopedia, etc.)
8. Question and Answer
Question and Answer social media platforms mainly include Quora, which has 190 million monthly active users.
Socialized Q&A websites, also known as “social Q&A websites”, are question-and-answer SNS websites between encyclopedias and traditional Q&A (such as Baidu Knows). They are public knowledge platforms whose value lies in rebuilding the relationship between people and information. Users ask questions and other users answer them. Socialized Q&A websites are more like social networks, helping users solve their doubts in the form of communities. Social Q&A makes up for the instant search for implicit knowledge. The Q&A service expands broad terms into clear questions, and through continuous corrections by users, it realizes the transformation of information into knowledge. It presents the best answers to questions and comprehensive relevant knowledge through three major functions (following topics, following questions, and following all questions and answers of a user), and enables people to establish social relationships through information clustering.