Can you fix a plumbing problem without having the right tools? At least you need pipe and tube benders or even something simple like pliers even to start. Having the valuable and right tool can be instrumental to the success of any occupation.

As a business or marketer, knowing the right social media networking apps and tools can be the difference between a successful social media campaign and a mediocre one.

Many of the best social networking apps out there have been around for a while, but as mobile phones get smarter, so do the apps, and you can now do more than ever.

With numerous new apps being launched every day, it can be difficult to know which ones are worth the time. To help you with that, we have collected a list of our favorites below. So, continue reading for the complete rundown of all the best social media networking apps for Nigerian businesses. 

List of the Best Social Media Networking Apps for Nigerian Businesses

Facebook

Facebook is the one site where you are likely to find friends, colleagues, and relatives all in one space. Although Facebook is mainly centered around sharing photos, links, videos, and quick thoughts of a personal nature, people can also show their support to brands or businesses by becoming fans. The biggest leverage Facebook has over other social media platforms is that it’s a real-time social networking site. This makes it one of the best platforms to stay updated with the latest news and information. Major news usually goes viral on Facebook, and most businesses use it to announce important things regarding their products/services.

Why use Facebook?

Facebook provides an excellent opportunity to grow your business. It’s the largest and most used network, and here are a few reasons to use it.

Facebook allows you to:

• Builds your online brand
• Forms professional bonds between competitors
• Be able to reach a large audiences
• Have a direct connection with your audience
• Drive traffic to your business website
• Gain valuable information about your customers that will help you make smarter business decisions
• Track your campaign to see if you are driving valuable results
• Sell or promote your products/services; hence you increase the possibilities of making money on the internet.

If Facebook is used correctly and with proper care, it can be a powerful tool for marketing and networking.

Any online or offline business can use the power of Facebook for business success. That is why Facebook has become one of the most widely influential marketing tools in today’s business world.

Twitter

This is possibly the simplest of all social media platforms. The app happens to be one of the most fun and interesting app out there. You can write about anything on Twitter, which is usually called Tweets.

Tweets are limited to 140 characters or less but believe us, that is more than enough to post a link, share an image, or even trade thoughts with your favorite celebrity or influencer.  

Twitter’s interface is easy to learn and use, and setting up a new profile only takes minutes.

Why use Twitter?

Twitter has gradually become popular with almost everyone you could think of on the platform. It has become the social media platform of choice for so many.

Twitter allows you to:

• reach a large number of people quickly via tweets and retweets
• follow the work of other experts in your field
• build relationships with experts and other followers
• keep up-to-date with the latest news and developments, and share it with others instantly
• reach new audiences
• seek feedback about your work and give feedback to others
• follow and contribute to discussions on events, like a conference that you can’t be there in person
• express who you are as a business.

If you are tweeting as a business, you may choose only to send factual, business-related tweets. Twitter is a relatively informal communications tool, so don’t be afraid to embrace a personal.

LinkedIn

With over 380 million registered LinkedIn users, LinkedIn has become one of the largest professional networks in the world. It can lead to a bunch of engagement, and it provides a platform where you as a business can share updates, upcoming events, news, and more. The platform allows you to connect with professionals in your industry as well as potential customers.

LinkedIn is the only mainstream social media site that is geared towards business growth. It’s great for meeting customers, recruiting new employees, getting in touch with vendors, and keeping up with the latest business or industry news. 

Why use LinkedIn?

LinkedIn has evolved so much in recent years that it is time to stop thinking of it as just a social site for recruiting or networking. LinkedIn has grown into a much more robust tool that can and should be used for so much more. 

Linkedin allows you to:

• Promote your brand as an authority
• Demonstrate your knowledge, credibility, and expertise in your business
• Have Lead Generation – LinkedIn opens the gate for networking with a pool of potential clients
• Have a Higher Level of Credibility – LinkedIn is a great place to showcase your business’s products/services and gain the trust of customers/prospects
• Quality Business Connections – The most important benefit of LinkedIn is that it is occupied almost entirely by forward-thinking professionals such as yourself looking for ways to grow their businesses.

LinkedIn is a powerful social platform not only for professionals but also for businesses. So if you are a small business and don’t have a business page on LinkedIn, now might be the time to rethink it and start leveraging on it.

WhatsApp

There is a reason Facebook acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion, and that is because WhatsApp is exactly what every messaging app should aim to be. It is designed well, has a thriving user base, is free to use (even for international messaging), and lets you send texts, videos, pictures, and voice messages.

Today, this Viral marketing technique and taken place over traditional marketing. As everyone uses smartphones, it becomes easy for marketers to reach their targeted audience by sending their audience promotional messages, video, or audio files.

WhatsApp has also become an easy means to get in touch with family and friends, both nationally and internationally. 

Why use WhatsApp?

Whatsapp is currently the most effective and innovative marketing tool used for business promotion. It is used for promoting your business and creating a strong connection between you and your potential customers.

WhatsApp allows you to:

• Promote your products or service personally and directly 
• Use a separate messaging app for business
• Build trust through the Business profile
• Easily respond to customers with auto-replies
• Organize your customer contact list
• Have better time management – interactive communication with the customer (in real-time) is the most effective way to save time and improve feedback. 
•  Interact with your customers, using effective content that leaves an impact.

Whatsapp is used by some of the world’s biggest companies like Uber, Singapore Airlines, and so much more. That should tell you how valuable Whatsapp is, and the earlier you incorporate it into your strategy, the better it will be for your business.

Instagram

As most of you already know, Instagram is one of the most common image-sharing sites/ services in the world.

The app is really useful, to begin with, and it has only improved over the years. 

Aside from the regular feed, you are getting, you have many additional options when sharing images, like a ton of filters, while most of the older options are still included in the app. Today, most of our social exchanges are filled with visuals – snapping a quick selfie to text to a friend, posing at a bar for a photo, or glancing through newsfeeds filled with photos and videos.

The impact of the rise of visual content on social networks can be seen on Instagram. 

As a result, many businesses are implementing strategies that help them maximize the platform’s usefulness.

Why use Instagram?

Since its inception, Instagram has proven to be a powerful marketing tool for businesses looking to expand their presence and the visibility of their products. While sponsorship and advertisement opportunities exist, getting started with Instagram is free, and businesses can establish a significant following without spending any money.

Instagram allows you to:

• Attract engaged traffic – Build a community that comes back time and time again
• Boost your marketing with UGC(User Generated Content) – Use photos from customers
• Make money directly from Instagram using the shop tab.
• Increase your visibility using Hashtags
• Use Instagram Insights to hone your social media marketing strategy.
• Learn What Your Customers Like
• Sync with Facebook – Because these mediums are under the same ownership, businesses can now run the same advertisement on Facebook and Instagram simultaneously, adding seamless, easily attainable integration.
• Gain high engagement rates.

More people are now paying attention to Instagram than ever before, and you would only be ignoring millions of potential customers by not joining this social media platform. Start building your Instagram presence, and your bottom line will be glad that you did.

YouTube

As a video-sharing service, YouTube is so popular that its collection of billions and billions of videos has become known as “the world’s second-largest search engine.” The website has all you could think of, from promotional clips to first-person product reviews to “how-two” instruction on virtually any topic or discipline. Users can share, rate, and comment on what they see.

Why use YouTube?

Using YouTube for your business can be a profitable way to grow your business, especially if used regularly as part of your marketing strategy. You can easily integrate YouTube into your marketing campaign to reach probable customers and expand your business.

YouTube allows you to:

• Get found on Google easily by people that need you
• Expose your business to a huge audience
• Acquire qualified traffic
• Have higher conversion rates – Some research suggests that video content is 12 times likelier to be watched than text is to be read. 
• Get people to take action.
• Keep your content alive. It never dies as it can be reused as much as you want
• Make money with AdSense for video.

A well-thought-out YouTube strategy can immensely pay off for your brand. YouTube is free to use platform, and you can produce videos for very low prices or even free if needed. Producing videos does not need to be like a movie production. What you will need is a quality smartphone, and good lighting will get the job done.

Snapchat

Snapchat was created back in 2011, and the platform has managed to become one of the most popular social media companies in record time. They are known for their innovation, they were responsible for making short videos known as reels to become popular to the extent Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube had to adopt it. 

The Snapchat app had introduced different interactions with people, which is what makes it so popular. 

Why use Snapchat?

Snapchat lets you share short video clips with your followers. The app offers tons of additional options like attaching various images to your person while recording a short video clip, etc. App’s design is spot on, a combination between youthful and serious, which is exactly what the design should be for an app like this.

Snapchat allows you to:

• Connect with a younger demographic and attract new followers
• Influence purchases – The app is designed to connect users with brands using the ‘Discover’ icon, meaning they can see content created by brands using Snapchat for marketing.
• Up your engagement with geofilters – Snapchat offers on-demand geofilters for anyone. These filters allow snapchatters to use a custom filter on their photo, and businesses can leverage that.
• Boost traffic to your site using snapcodes
• To keep your account fresh – Users aren’t confronted with a stale grid or newsfeed when they go to your account to follow you. Instead, they connect with you and wait for your next post or content.

Snapchat isn’t new anymore, but it has sustained continuous growth since it was launched almost eight years ago. According to Hootsuite, the platform only had 5 million daily users in 2013, which has increased to 300 million today. That number is expected to keep on growing, so join in on the fun now and get your business involved!

TikTok

TikTok is another video-sharing social networking service owned by Chinese company ByteDance. The social media platform is used to make a variability of short-form videos, from genres like comedy, dance, and education, and have 15 seconds to one minute (three minutes for some users). With over 500 million active users, TikTok is a completely new beast of social media, which shouldn’t be ignored. In terms of users, it has exceeded LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, and Snapchat, which is no small achievement. To better understand TikTok’s insane growth, it took Instagram 6 years to gain the same number of users TikTok reached in 3 years.

Why use TikTok?

Garnering 1.5 billion downloads, it is easy to see that TikTok is an ideal platform for brand promotion through paid and organic advertising, as well as influencer marketing. 

TikTok allows you to:

• Reach an enormous audience of over 800 million active users
• Meet and interact with a ready-to-engage audience
• Be updated on the Trends
• Take advantage of user-generated content
• Save as it is budget-friendly
• Use versatile ad formats when creating ads.

It can seem daunting at first, especially with so many trends that change daily. However, if you dive in and use the app, you are sure to pick out some things that will work for you and your business. Have some fun, develop your brand, and create some remarkable content.

Facebook Messenger

Facebook’s choice to break Messenger out of its main app in 2014 became a very smart move. Messenger currently has 700 million users worldwide, and it has become much more than a way to send text messages to friends.

Messenger can now send money (limited), stickers, and animated GIFS, videos, pictures, and make video and phone calls over the Internet. If the future is one app that does everything, Messenger will be picked as the big winner.

Why use Facebook Messenger?

With over 1.3 billion users every month, Messenger can be a vital Facebook feature for your business, particularly when you consider that almost everyone is already using it to connect with brands and businesses regularly.

Facebook Messenger allows you to:

• Generate high-quality leads
• Provide exceptional customer service
• Enable transactions for a better experience
• Build trust for your business
• Perform targeted advertising 
• Drive traffic to your website 
• Generate business leads.

Facebook Messenger is a multi-purpose tool and a game-changer for streamlining communications with people. There are numerous benefits to using it for your business, whether for improving customer interactions, generating leads, facilitating consumer concerns, or establishing a trustworthy brand. 

Pinterest

Pinterest defines itself as “a visual bookmarking tool that helps you discover and save creative ideas.” The app allows users to “pin” images to the service and share them in collections or “boards,” that other user can follow.

The social platform has 100 million monthly active users, the majority of which are women.

Aside from feeding fascinations with exotic hopeful vacations and gourmet food, the actual strength of Pinterest is the integrated features of their business accounts. 

Why use Pinterest?

There are so many reasons why Pinterest is a great opportunity for businesses. It’ll help you introduce your business to a whole new audience. One pin can easily lead to ten pins, which can lead to another ten pins, and so on.

Pinterest allows you to:

• Spot emerging trends – Pinterest is the number one platform where users share products, designs, and trends that they are loving. To ensure that your brand is at the forefront of upcoming trends in your industry, you want to maintain an active presence on Pinterest.
• Increase awareness
• Gain additional blog traffic
• Gain new leads
• Increase sales
• Get more inbound links – Because every pin includes a link, it makes it easy to lead it back to the image source. Just imagine how many people you can bring to your website by posting images of your products on Pinterest.
• Discover what your audience loves

Many businesses are cautious about using Pinterest for business, but you don’t have to be! Pinterest has a lot to offer as a networking app, and you should consider using it.

Telegram

Telegram is a freeware, cloud-based instant messaging software and cross-platform app. The service also runs end-to-end encrypted video calling, file sharing, VoIP, and several other features. It was created for iOS on 14 August 2013 and for Android in October 2013.

Telegram helps you share countless photos and videos with a cap of 1 GB(not even WhatsApp has that feature yet). It is a messaging application with more focus on security and speed, which aid you to form group chats containing up to 5000 members (again, WhatsApp is maxed at 250 members) and stay in touch with all. 

Why use Telegram?

During the Covid pandemic, the usage of Telegram blew because of its user-friendly features, which could benefit businesses. With over 400 million active monthly users and 70 billion messages shared on the networking app every day, the app is promising in terms of engagement and opportunities. 

Telegram allows you to:

• Conduct safe business online – Nobody has managed to hack Telegram, and its team is extremely proud of that fact. The founder of this Messenger encourages the community to hack Telegram and offers $300K if they succeed. However, no one has ever succeeded.
• Be available on all platforms – Telegram has a mobile app for iOS, Android, Windows Phone along with the desktop apps for Mac, Linux, and Windows. It also has a web version. So, you shouldn’t worry that your customers won’t be able to access this platform.
• Create bots – You can create a chatbot of your own that will be responsible for a certain process, be it processing orders or customer consulting.
• Have safe, secure chats with customers

Telegram is being utilized by businesses for marketing and reaching customers because professionals realize the benefits of the platform, maybe even more than WhatsApp.

Hootsuite

This one is somewhat different, it isn’t a social media networking app per se, but with this platform, you can control most of the apps listed above. 

Instead of cluttering your smartphone with a different app for every function, choose an all-in-one solution for your business’s online presence. Hootsuite lets you source stock images from a comprehensive library, edit these images with quality tools, and share the images to your social media networks.

The time they say is money, and Hootsuite saves you both time and money.

Why use Hootsuite?

Hootsuite is an amazingly useful application for managing most social media network channels. This app enables you to view multiple social media streams at once and monitor what customers are saying. Many international brands—including Sony Music and Coca-Cola —utilize this time-saving approach to social media marketing.

Hootsuite allows you to:

• Monitor multiple social media streams in one place
• Schedule posts in advance
• Have an easy view of data analytics
• Have social media listening — A great feature of Hootsuite is that it allows you to track key phrases and terms across other users’ posts to determine when your expertise could benefit them.
• Have team collaboration— This tool allows you to add multiple team members to the social media accounts of your choice, allowing you to see first-hand who is posting what information and who has scheduled posts.
• And manage customer service on social media efficiently.

It is no secret that social media is vital to building your business’s brand. However, keeping up with repeated posting and connecting with your customer base can be quite difficult and incredibly time-consuming; with Hootsuite, you can solve that problem easily and seamlessly.

Final thoughts

Social media networking apps have taken over the world, and if you as a business are not taking full advantage of it, you are leaving a huge sum of money on the table. Get involved and integrate social media into your business strategy. It’s not a must to be on all social media platforms. Choose the one or three you feel and know will work best, and develop strategies to utilize those platforms effectively.