Best Social Media Platforms for a Local Small Business

01Start With Who Pays You, Not With a Platform List

Most advice about the best social media for a small business begins with a list of platforms and ends with a suggestion to be on all of them. That is a poor fit when one or two people also run everything else. A plumber in Bradenton and a yoga studio in Sarasota may both need an online presence, but their customers are not in the same places, and neither owner has time to keep five accounts going.

A better starting point is the customer. Who pays you, roughly how old are they, and what do they look at before they decide to call? Once you can answer that in a sentence, the platform choice mostly follows. This article uses published survey data on platform use by age to turn that answer into a short plan a small team can keep up.

Sarasota shows why this matters. According to the Census Bureau's 2024 American Community Survey one-year estimates, as displayed on Census Reporter, the median age in Sarasota County is 57.6, compared with 42.7 for Florida and 39.2 for the United States. A dentist whose patients are mostly retirees faces a different audience from a children's party venue a few miles away, and the right platform will differ with them.

No platform choice can guarantee reach, followers or sales. What a good choice does is put your limited time where your customers already spend theirs.

02What the Pew Numbers Say About Age

The most useful public data on who uses what comes from the Pew Research Center. Its survey of 5,022 U.S. adults, conducted from February 5 to June 18, 2025 and published on November 20, 2025, found that 84% of adults say they use YouTube, 71% say they use Facebook, 50% say they use Instagram and 37% say they use TikTok. These are national figures about whether someone uses a site at all. They do not say how often people use a site, or whether they follow local businesses there, so treat them as a map and not a forecast.

The age breakdown is where the numbers become practical. Here is what Pew reports for the share of each age group that says it uses each platform:

• Facebook: 68% of ages 18 to 29, 80% of ages 30 to 49, 74% of ages 50 to 64 and 57% of ages 65 and older.
• YouTube: 95% of ages 18 to 29, 92% of ages 30 to 49, 85% of ages 50 to 64 and 64% of ages 65 and older.
• Instagram: 80% of ages 18 to 29, 62% of ages 30 to 49, 40% of ages 50 to 64 and 19% of ages 65 and older.
• TikTok: 63% of ages 18 to 29, 44% of ages 30 to 49, 30% of ages 50 to 64 and 12% of ages 65 and older.

Of the platforms Pew asked about, Facebook and YouTube are the only two that a majority of every age group uses. Facebook peaks with adults 30 to 49, an age group that includes many parents and homeowners, and it stays common among adults over 50. Instagram and TikTok fall away quickly with age: Instagram goes from 80% of the youngest group to 19% of the oldest, a gap of 61 points.

The takeaway is not that older customers avoid the internet. A business with customers over 50 can reasonably put Facebook ahead of Instagram, while one selling to people under 30 may find the reverse. Pew's figures cover adults nationwide, so a Sarasota or Venice business with a retiree-heavy customer base is likely to sit toward the older end of these patterns.

03Match the Platform to the Customer Type

Here is one way to turn that data into a first choice. These are starting points, not rules or predictions of results, and the businesses named are hypothetical.

• Customers over 50, including retirees and seasonal residents, such as an estate planning attorney, a dermatology office or a home health agency: lead with Facebook, and consider YouTube for short how-to or tour videos, since Pew finds that 85% of adults 50 to 64 and 64% of those 65 and older say they use it.
• Families and working-age customers ages 30 to 49, such as a pediatric dentist, a pool service or a remodeler: Facebook first and Instagram second, since Pew reports that 80% of this age group says it uses Facebook and 62% says it uses Instagram.
• Customers under 30, such as a coffee bar, a tattoo studio or a fitness class: Instagram and TikTok, which 80% and 63% of adults 18 to 29 say they use, according to Pew.
• Neighborhood-based work, such as a landscaper, a house cleaner or a handyman: Nextdoor. According to Nextdoor, a Business Page is free, neighbors can leave recommendations that appear on that page, and every neighbor goes through a registration process meant to ensure they live where they say they do.
• Customers who are other businesses, such as an accountant, a commercial cleaner or a staffing firm: LinkedIn. According to LinkedIn, Company Pages are free to create and are meant to make your business discoverable on LinkedIn.

Most businesses have more than one customer type, so pick the one that pays the bills first. A physical therapy clinic may treat retirees recovering from hip replacements and a few high school athletes. If the retirees fill most of the schedule, build around Facebook and keep an Instagram page accurate for the younger patients.

Trends are the usual reason a business ends up on the wrong platform. According to Sprout Social's 2025 Index, a survey of 4,044 consumers in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia who follow at least five brands on social media, a third think it is embarrassing when brands jump on viral trends. That survey is not about local businesses, but it supports a plain point. A dance that works on TikTok is unlikely to help a hearing clinic whose patients are mostly over 70, so choose by where your customers are, not by where the conversation is loudest.

04Social Media Is One Stop on the Customer's Route

Before putting everything into social posts, look at how people find local businesses. BrightLocal published consumer search research on July 9, 2026, based on a representative panel of 1,227 U.S. consumers who had searched online for a local business in the previous three months. According to BrightLocal, 52% started their most recent search with Google Search, and 71% used Google Search at some point during that search. Over the whole search, social media was used by 30%, AI tools by 23% and review sites by 19%.

The same research found that 75% of consumers used more than one channel during their most recent local search. A single search might go like this: someone sees your Facebook post, searches your name, checks the map listing and opens the website. A mistake at any stop, such as the wrong hours, can end the trip.

That is why the Google Business Profile deserves attention before any new social account. According to Google, listing your business with a Business Profile is free, and the profile appears on Google Search and Maps. Businesses can add photos and hours, post offers, events and updates, and respond to customer reviews. No one can guarantee where a profile or a website will appear on Google, but since more than half of the searchers in BrightLocal's survey began on Google Search, a complete and accurate profile is a sensible first job.

The website is where all of these paths end. If a customer taps from Facebook to a site with old hours, a slow page or no clear way to book, the social effort is wasted. The services section of our home page explains the website design and social media support we offer.

05A Short Plan for Choosing and Reviewing

The steps below are short, and most of them fit into a single afternoon. Work through them in this order:

• Write down your one or two main customer types and their rough age range.
• Ask your last ten customers how they found you and which social account, if any, they looked at.
• Choose one main platform for your main customer type and one supporting place. Add a third only after several months of steady posting.
• Make the Google Business Profile, the website and the main social page agree on hours, phone number and address.
• Put a review date on the calendar eight to twelve weeks ahead, and compare messages, calls and bookings, not only likes.

Your answers may change with the calendar. If your customer base shifts when seasonal residents return, revisit the choice at the start and the end of the season instead of once a year. And since storms are a fact of life on the Gulf Coast, keep at least one place, such as your Facebook page or Google profile, where you can post a closure or reopening notice quickly.

Once you have chosen, the next question is how often to post. Our article on how often a business should post on social media compares published ranges for each major platform, and our overview of social media management for Sarasota businesses explains what the work involves if you would rather hand some of it to someone else.

If you want a second opinion on which platforms fit your customers, tell us about your business through the start a project form. We will say plainly where your time is likely to be well spent, and where it is not.