The rise of social media over the past decade has presented brands with the opportunity to interact with its clients in ways that would have been unthinkable15 years ago. Back then, the possibility to communicate with millions of potential customers at relatively low cost would have been every marketers dream.
Today, the problem that brands face is less a problem of lacking opportunity than a problem of choice. There are so many platforms out there that brands have to decide which ones they want to focus on. Some try to be everywhere at once (e.g. Adidas is present on 13 different platforms), but few of these omnipresent brands actually excel on more than a couple of platforms. A recent study by L2 analyses the social media presences of 382 brands across 8 verticals and 17 platforms.
As our chart illustrates, Facebook is mandatory for any brand and the adoption of Twitter, YouTube and Instagram is also nearly universal. Many brands have yet to adopt Asian platforms though, which offer the potential to reach millions of consumers from countries where access to western social networks is limited.
