Customers Over Preferences: Why Every Social Platform Demands Your Attention

Marketers often project their own tastes onto audiences - a classic “false consensus” bias. For example, a CEO who “deleted Facebook” in college might assume none of his customers use it. This kind of bias is dangerous. Harvard Business School researchers warn that businesses “dismiss TikTok…at their own peril”. In other words, if your generation skipped Facebook or TikTok, your marketing can’t afford to do the same. Data underscores the risk: globally there are 5.41 billion social media accounts – about 66% of humanity. Platforms like Facebook and YouTube reach over half of all adult internet users. Ignoring any major channel because “you don’t personally like it” means missing enormous swathes of your audience. In this age, marketers must follow the customer, not personal preference.

The global scope of social media is breathtaking: over 5.4 billion people use these networks. Each platform touches hundreds of millions, if not billions, of users. The chart above highlights that reach (courtesy We Are Social/Meltwater, 2025). Even if your target customers seem niche, remember that 96.5% of people in top markets use at least one social network and the typical user visits 6-7 platforms per month. In practice this means virtually every demographic is on some social channel – from Gen Z to Baby Boomers, from gamers to grandmothers – just not all on the same one.

Even “second-tier” networks have massive scale. For example, Facebook still claims about 3.07 billion monthly users (per Meta’s reporting), while its sister-app WhatsApp has 3.0 billion. YouTube’s ad reach is ~2.54 billion, and Instagram’s user base is roughly 2.0 billion. TikTok - far from being “just for teens” - reaches 1.94 billion. LinkedIn counts over 1 billion professionals worldwide. In short, every major platform touches a huge audience. Surveys confirm these figures: in Q1 2025, 56.6% of adults said they’d used Facebook in the past month, with 55.3% saying the same for YouTube. In fact Facebook is still the world’s most-used network and the third most-visited site overall. Even among younger users Facebook leads on some fronts (for example, US mothers spend 2.3× more time on Facebook than on TikTok).

Facebook: The Unignorable Giant

In short, Facebook is everywhere. With 3.06 billion monthly users and 3.35 billion people on its family of apps each day, skipping Facebook marketing is tantamount to going dark. Marketers who’ve written off Facebook because of past declines in organic reach are missing its continued clout. According to Meta, 90% of social media consumers have a Facebook profile, and it remains the most popular platform for news and commerce. For example, eMarketer projects that 38.5% of US adults will buy directly on Facebook this year - just slightly behind TikTok. In the US, Facebook Marketplace alone has tens of millions shopping weekly.

To leverage Facebook today, savvy marketers stop “just posting” and instead build funnels. For instance, many use Facebook Groups to gather leads, or run Live Q&A sessions linked to signup forms. Others use Messenger “autoresponders” (chatbots) to capture contact info from inquiries. The key is a system: a campaign with a clear call-to-action (download, webinar signup, consultation) rather than scattershot memes. Marketers who skip Facebook may find themselves shouting into an empty room - because, statistically, most customers are still there.

TikTok: Too Big to Ignore

Dismiss TikTok at your peril. The short-form video app now claims around 1 billion active users globally, with Americans spending on average 1.5 hours per day on it. TikTok is so wildly popular that 61% of B2B marketers say their companies maintain a TikTok channel, and 72% of those report meeting or exceeding their goals on it. Even big privacy debates haven’t dented its marketing value. The platform’s algorithm can put content in front of new audiences that no other network can reach organically - from curious Boomers watching recipe videos to teens hunting the latest trends.

A retailer or service provider who shrugs “TikTok isn’t for us” is handing opportunities to competitors. Case in point: TikTok drove more attention than any other platform for many recent product launches. For example, during the 2023 holiday season, a study found TikTok ads converting at rates 45.5% in the US (compared to 38.5% on Facebook). Even aside from ads, brands report virality and engagement on TikTok that far outpace the same content elsewhere. The takeaway? If your audience includes consumers under 50 (or anyone, really), TikTok should be on your radar. Marketers succeed there by testing creative hooks rapidly and building on trends - again, not by a CEO’s whim but by data-driven strategy.

LinkedIn & Professional Networks

Likewise, dismissing LinkedIn is risky, especially for B2B. LinkedIn boasts over one billion members - a concentration of decision-makers and influencers that no other network can match. In many industries, nearly all customers are professionally active on LinkedIn. Beyond running page posts, modern marketers use employee networks for reach. Content shared via employees’ LinkedIn profiles reaches “warm audiences,” generating higher-quality leads. In fact, multiple case studies show employee advocacy programs paying off in sales: one CIO advisory firm built a $2 million sales pipeline in just 3.5 years through employee sharing; another (an IT services company) credits 8% of its total sales to employee-driven social engagement.

The lesson: a structured LinkedIn system is powerful. Tactics include training staff to post thought leadership, using Sales Navigator to target decision makers and send connection messages, and repurposing blog content into long-form LinkedIn posts. Each post (or employee share) includes a call-to-action to download a white paper or book a call. Rather than random status updates, the best marketers use LinkedIn as a lead funnel. They know that 73% of consumers say they’ll switch brands if a company ignores their service requests on social - LinkedIn being a top channel for business inquiries. A refusal to engage on LinkedIn wastes that rich network.

X (Twitter): From Tweets to Transactions

Twitter (now X) may seem niche, but it still has ~600 million monthly users and is often the first place people turn for news and conversations. Importantly, X excels at one-to-one outreach: public threads invite replies, and those replies can move to DMs. Savvy marketers have built repeatable lead funnels on X by converting engagement into private conversations. In practice, this looks like responding to prospects’ tweets, starting meaningful exchanges, and then sliding into DMs with solutions. The results can be striking. For example, one digital agency reports that its “relationship-first” Twitter DM strategy has signed over 100 clients - via what looks like cold outreach, but feels warm to recipients. In that case, the marketer’s content justifies following up, yielding a 15-20× higher engagement rate and a 5-7× higher response rate than traditional cold emails.

This is a system, not luck: each week the team identifies key prospects, engages with their content, and slowly funnels them toward a call. The math adds up - if each conversation leads to a single call and a fraction convert, it multiplies. (Interestingly, the marketer noted, “the platform changes, but the psychology doesn’t” - people buy from those who genuinely care, regardless of medium.) The broader point: dismissing X because “it’s just microblogging” overlooks its proven power as a direct lead pipeline. It’s another platform where customers are, ready to be guided down a structured funnel.

YouTube and Content Funnels

Video content deserves its own mention. YouTube is the second-most-used social platform after Facebook by daily reach, and many consumers explicitly search it for help or insights. The biggest mistake is to treat YouTube like a broadcast TV: a company video tossed online hoping for views. Instead, leading marketers build intentional funnels around YouTube. They create search-optimized, educational videos answering specific questions, then enroll viewers into the funnel with calls-to-action. For example, a SaaS company might link every video to a free tool or quiz. As Nate Woodbury of Be The Hero Studios explains: successful YouTube lead-gen involves “highly specific search-optimized content” that builds relationship, with value-aligned lead magnets - mini-courses, webinars, downloads - to “convert viewers into business opportunities”.

Real results back this approach: one content firm documented converting thousands of YouTube views into hundreds of quiz leads, then 10-20% of those into customers. (By contrast, their untargeted posts yielded almost no leads.) This illustrates the system mindset: each video isn’t an aimless post but part of a series designed to raise a hand (via an interactive quiz or signup) and then nurture. Without such a system, even millions of views won’t directly impact your bottom line. With it, a YouTube channel essentially becomes an organic lead machine, day and night.

Email & Newsletters (Substack)

Finally, don’t forget off-platform channels like email newsletters. Many decision-makers still rely on email for deep content. Platforms like Substack show how niche audiences can be built around expertise. A disciplined newsletter strategy - collecting emails through content offers or your social profiles and then sending regular value-driven updates - is a tried-and-true funnel. In fact, owning your subscribers means you aren’t subject to any algorithm’s whims. For example, a B2B consultant I know uses her LinkedIn posts and free webinars to capture emails, then nurtures them via a weekly newsletter (Sent via Substack). Each issue includes lessons, plus a link to a paid program. The newsletter’s open rate is consistently 40%+, far above social click-rates. She emphasizes that her LinkedIn aversion would have been a disaster: “If I hadn’t built that email list, I’d be invisible,” she says. (Statistics back this: global social engagement rates are low, but email ROI historically averages $35 for every $1 spent.)

The Fallacy of “Posting and Hoping”

Too many businesses confuse activity with results. They scroll, re-share memes, and post whenever inspiration strikes, assuming “being active equals being visible.” But this “post-and-hope” approach rarely delivers leads. In fact, social media experts stress that “consistency beats chaos” and that algorithms reward predictability. One guide bluntly declares: “It’s time to stop the ‘post and hope’ strategy”. Random posts give followers no reason to act. Instead, top marketers adopt content pillars and cadence: they theme posts (e.g. how-tos, case stories, announcements) and maintain a reliable schedule.

A quick comparison:

Posting-and-Hoping: The brand posts whatever comes to mind, with no clear plan. Sometimes an ad hoc funny video or trending meme appears. Engagement is sporadic. No measurable lead flow can be traced to these posts. (Often marketers using this method admit they “don’t have a strategy” beyond “be active.”)

Structured Funnels: Each platform is treated like a sales ecosystem. For example, on Twitter this might mean daily prospect-listening, curated replies, and DM outreach; on LinkedIn, employee-shared articles plus scheduled company posts with CTAs; on Facebook, targeted group invites or a Messenger bot sequence; on YouTube, an educational series ending in a subscription or quiz link. In all cases the output is not “content for content’s sake” but a call to action - download a whitepaper, take a quiz, sign up for a webinar, etc. Tracking pixels and tools then tie these actions back into CRM follow-ups.

Together, these systems convert casual engagement into leads. For instance, one B2B agency took a LinkedIn post that got 200 comments, funneled interested commenters to a webinar signup, and generated a pipeline worth $200K - without running any ads. Contrast that with posting the same content randomly across channels with no CTA: it would produce plenty of likes, but almost zero bottom-line effect.

The evidence is clear: structures win. A consistent content pillar strategy “builds trust and recognition”, whereas random posting just creates noise. Every platform’s algorithm favors content that already has momentum (shares, comments) - something unpredictable posting rarely achieves. In other words, a strategic, measurable plan is the difference between social media as a hobby and social media as a lead generation engine.

Every Platform Is an Opportunity

Ultimately, no platform should be dismissed out of hand. The marketer’s job is not to indulge personal tastes, but to meet customers where they are. Today’s customers have fragmented habits - one moment watching TikTok, the next reading email newsletters, another attending a LinkedIn Live. Instead of asking “Do we want to be on platform X?”, ask “Are our customers there?” and “What system can we build on X to reach them?” Because as one savvy social seller put it, “the platform changes, but the psychology doesn’t”. People always respond to sincere help and clear next steps, whether on Facebook, Twitter, or Substack.

By embracing each network with intention, marketers unlock far more visibility and leads than by ignoring it. The companies that relentlessly test new channels and apply proven funnels are pulling ahead: they fill their CRM with qualified leads rather than empty reports of “followers.” If you haven’t yet built a mini-funnel on every channel your customers use - from TikTok to LinkedIn to email - you’re leaving growth on the table. Every platform is an opportunity if you apply the right system, and as leaders in the field affirm, strategic consistency will always beat idle scrolling.