Social media channels
An overview of the major social media channels and their primary functions
Last updated: 9 March 2022
There are many resources out there for anyone wanting to learn, brush up, or refresh their social media expertise. Please take a look at our social media tools page for some suggestions as well as advice and guidance from the PAD social media team on maintaining a social media channel and managing audiences.
We are aware that tools, platforms and support pages are constantly changing so please let us know if any of these resources aren’t working; or if you’d like to flag a helpful tool you have found.
Twitter has an average of 206 million users per month. Twitter states its audience are most interested in news, sports, weather, science and dogs. The platform is optimised for mobile, and also GIFs.
Twitter includes the following features:
- In-tool reporting
- In-tool scheduling (via Twitter media studio)
- Paid advertising
- Content threads
- Polls
- GIFs
- Images and videos
- Live feature
- Twitter spaces (a place where you can host live podcasts or audio discussions)
Facebook has an average of nearly 3 billion users per month. It still one of the most popular social media platforms around. However, it should be noted that the platform isn’t as popular with people aged 21 or below.
As well as general content posting, the platform has lots of functionality including:
- In-tool reporting
- In-tool scheduling
- Paid advertising
- Live broadcasting
- Event hosting
- Groups
- Polls
- Donations
- Different levels of admin access to Facebook pages
Instagram has an average of 2 billion users every month with over 500 million stories watched every day. Around 70% of the platform’s userbase is aged 35 or below.
Instagram limits the ability to include links in certain types of content. For example, for posts and reels, you are unable to include a clickable link within the post. However, you can include links within the stories function.
Currently, you can schedule onto Instagram using Facebook Creator Studio. However, you must ensure your Instagram account is linked to a Facebook page to use the tool. It should also be noted that you are unable to schedule stories on Instagram.
Some of Instagram's main features include:
- Post up to 10 image uploads at a time
- Effective image and location tagging feature
- Stories platform which includes features such as polls, Q&A, like-o-meters, stickers, GIFs
- Ability to link to webpages via stories platform
- Instagram videos – enables you to post videos up to 10 minutes long
- Instagram reels – allows you to post TikTok-style videos onto the platform
- In-tool reporting with a Business account
LinkedIn has around 260 million average monthly users. The platform is more than just posting about job roles or career progress. LinkedIn can be an effective platform to promote your research with targeted audiences. The platform displays media such as images and videos effectively on both desktop and mobile meaning LinkedIn can a great platform to call upon.
Functions currently offered by the platform include:
- In-tool reporting
- Content suggestions tab
- Featured posts/articles – this can be used to highlight your key work or news
- Video, image and PDF document uploads
- Poll feature
- Dedicated area for vacancies
- Dedicated area for event promotions
- Link display optimisation
- Hashtag optimisation
- Targeted advertising
- Different levels of admin access to LinkedIn pages
TikTok is an ever-growing platform which has 1 billion monthly users worldwide. The platform is very popular with audiences aged 25 or younger. TikTok claim 60% of their audiences are born between 1997 and 2012.
TikTok is a video-only platform where clips can be up to three minutes. However, the most successful videos on TikTok are the ones which are at the most one minute long.
The type of videos which excel on the platform are people-focused videos filmed in portrait mode (1080px 1920px).
TikTok content does not have to be polished: what is more critical is the content being easy to understand, concise and relatable to audiences.
Some of TikTok’s key features include:
- Video editing functionality within the platform
- Content creators are able to combine multiple clips into one video
- Ability to enhance clips
- Use a variety of video effects and text captions
- Use greenscreen effects
- Polls
- Voiceover feature
- Sticker feature – ability to include interactive components such as hashtags, polls and an ‘ask’ feature.
YouTube is the most popular long-form video hosting website on the internet, with nearly 2 billion logged-in visits per month. The range of content is vast but includes short documentaries, interviews, product reviews, music (half of all on-demand music is listened to via YouTube), gaming, explainers and social content.
Functions currently offered by the platform include:
- In-tool reporting
- In-tool scheduling
- Playlists, series and other curation tools
- Paid advertising
- Live broadcasting
- Watch parties (‘premieres’)
- Polls
- Donations (currently limited to certain creators)
Contact us
For more information about social media at Oxford, contact the PAD social media team:
