The 3 Must-Have Social Media Channels

This article comes to us from the Speaking Human University Program, which gives voice to the opinions and perspectives of the next generation of consumers and marketers… 

Let’s be honest: social media can be a bit of a pain sometimes. Every single site in existence vies for your attention and, of course, floods your feed with an endless amount of posts. Although all social media channels provide some sort of value (at least in theory), only a handful of sites are useful enough to consistently use.

Below are the three best social media sites that you simply have to be on:

3. Instagram

With one of the cleanest social media user interfaces in existence, Instagram is a fun and beautiful way to share all your favorite photos. Posting is easy, checking your feed only takes a minute, and a massive user base guarantees that all your friends will be on there. Also, content on Instagram tends to get a lot more likes and comments than on other social media channels. Posts can easily get two to three times the amount of engagement that they would get on Facebook or Twitter.

That being said, Instagram does have some major downsides. Because it is so heavily image based, the site tends to reward good-looking-but-ultimately-meaningless content (think Kylie Jenner) instead of truly meaningful photos and ideas. Anything that doesn’t make for a good picture ends up at the bottom of the news feed, even if it’s an amazing new product or a useful blog post. Plus, the stories feature is incredibly annoying—it does nothing but take away from the simplicity of the rest of the site.

2. LinkedIn

LinkedIn offers virtually every tool you could ever need for your business and professional growth. On one website you can network, search for jobs, keep up with influential companies and entrepreneurs, create a virtual resume, and share business articles with your network. LinkedIn is far more useful than any other social media channel in terms of the sheer amounts of opportunity it offers.

However, a couple of LinkedIn’s more annoying features keep it from being the #1 social media channel in existence. LinkedIn’s news feed is worse than Facebook’s – it shows little organic content and lots of ads mixed in with recommended connections. Also, other people being notified when you view their profile is just creepy. We get that you can use it to network, but for the most part it just feels like a dating website gone horribly wrong.

1. Snapchat

What is there not to love about Snapchat? Sending snaps is a fun, easy, and highly personal way to keep in touch with all of your friends. It supports personal messaging with a ton of awesome features—I use Snapchat to text more than I use actual text messages—and lets you post snaps on your story for all your friends to see at once.

The best thing is that every single snap automatically self-destructs after people see it and a notification is sent if someone has the audacity to screenshot your snap, so you can share those embarrassing-yet-hilarious videos from Friday night without worrying that it will somehow be saved for posterity to see.

Although Snapchat is ultimately designed just for fun and socialization, all of its benefits easily make it the best social media network in existence. Human beings crave social interaction in a fun and enjoyable way and Snapchat delivers exactly that—all while adding some innovative and useful features along the way.

There are a lot of other awesome social media sites out there, but these three are hands-down the best ever created. What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comment section below!