Which Social Networks to Launch On, by Type of Project

Launch on two or three networks, not seven: the ones your customer uses while they have the problem you solve. A consumer product usually starts with Instagram and TikTok (plus YouTube Shorts), a vertical B2B product with LinkedIn, a tool for professionals with X, LinkedIn and YouTube, and a local business with Google Business Profile and Instagram. Claim the same handle everywhere, but only post where you can keep a steady cadence and answer people.

How to choose: three questions before you open any account

Choosing networks is not about where the most users are. It is about where your buyer is when the problem you solve is on their mind. Before looking at any platform, answer three questions in writing.

1. Who makes the purchase decision? If an individual pays with their own card, think discovery and entertainment networks. If a company pays, think of the network where that person talks about their work.
2. Is your product easier to understand by watching or by reading? A recipe app explains itself in a 20 second video; payroll software for accounting firms explains itself with a case and a number.
3. How many hours a week do you really have? Every network done properly means creating, posting and, above all, replying. Four hours a week is enough for two networks, not seven.

For a sense of scale, Pew Research Center's 2025 study of social media use in the US (5,022 adults, surveyed February to June 2025) found that 84% of adults use YouTube, 71% Facebook, 50% Instagram and 37% TikTok, while Threads and Bluesky are used by about one in ten adults or fewer. Eight in ten people aged 18 to 29 say they use Instagram, and roughly half of that group goes on TikTok at least once a day. Treat these as orders of magnitude, and remember they describe the US market.

Size alone decides nothing. A small network where your niche is concentrated (developers on Bluesky or X, for example) can outperform a huge one where your customer only watches entertainment.

Matrix: which network to prioritise by type of project

This is the matrix we use when launching our own products. It is a starting point, not a law: adjust it to what you see in your first six to eight weeks.

Consumer B2C

Instagram and TikTok first, because discovery happens through short video and the algorithm shows your content to people who do not follow you yet. YouTube Shorts reuses the same videos with little extra work. Threads is a sensible second wave if you already have an Instagram audience, since the two share an identity.

Vertical B2B

LinkedIn almost always, and often only LinkedIn for the first few months. Picture practice management software for physiotherapy clinics: your buyers are not looking for suppliers on TikTok, but they do read other physios and clinic managers on LinkedIn. YouTube comes next, with demos and tutorials your sales team can send.

Prosumer or tool for professionals

Designers, developers, creators or consultants who pay with their own card. X and LinkedIn work for the conversation and YouTube for showing the product in use. Bluesky deserves a claimed handle and a trial if your niche is there (tech and science communities are often active).

Local business

Google Business Profile comes first, because it is what shows up when someone searches for your category nearby. Then Instagram, which works as a shop window and as the place where people ask questions by direct message.

Network by network: formats, starting cadence and limits

The technical limits below are the ones in force according to each network's official documentation as of October 2026. They change often, so check the link before producing a whole series in a particular format. Where we could not verify a limit in an official source, we leave it out.

LinkedIn

• Formats that work: text posts built around one concrete idea, document carousels (PDF) walking through a process, short videos with the founder on camera, and real use cases.
• Starting cadence: two or three posts a week from the founder's personal profile, with the company page resharing the best of them.
• Limit: a post can be up to 3,000 characters, according to LinkedIn Help; anything longer belongs in an article.
• Common mistake: posting only from the company page. In B2B people follow people; the page is proof that the company exists.

Instagram

• Formats that work: vertical reels with the product in use, carousels that teach something (before and after, steps, mistakes) and stories for day-to-day updates.
• Starting cadence: three posts a week (two reels and a carousel) plus stories when there is something to say.
• Limits: Instagram's developer documentation for publishing caps captions at 2,200 characters, 30 hashtags and 20 mentions, and reels published via the API at between 3 seconds and 15 minutes.
• Common mistake: a beautiful grid of brand graphics without a single person or a single product demo.

X

• Formats that work: threads documenting what you are building, screenshots or short clips of a feature, and useful replies in conversations within your niche.
• Starting cadence: one post a day and, more importantly, ten to fifteen thoughtful replies to other accounts in your space.
• Limit: 280 characters per post, and any link counts as 23, according to X's documentation on counting characters.
• Common mistake: posting nothing but links to your site. On X you grow by talking; an account that only broadcasts gets little reach.

TikTok

• Formats that work: vertical videos that hook in the first second, a problem and its solution shown on screen, trends adapted to your product, and video replies to comments.
• Starting cadence: three to five videos a week in the early weeks, because the algorithm needs volume to find your audience.
• Limits: we do not give a maximum length because we could not verify it on an accessible official page; check in the app what it lets you upload.
• Common mistake: uploading the same polished ad you run elsewhere. On TikTok, anything that looks like an ad gets skipped.

YouTube

• Formats that work: full demos, tutorials that answer specific searches ("how to do X with Y"), honest comparisons, and Shorts cut from those videos.
• Starting cadence: one long video a month and one or two Shorts a week is sustainable for almost anyone.
• Limits: Shorts can be up to 3 minutes long, according to YouTube Help on Shorts. By default you can upload videos up to 15 minutes; longer ones require a verified account, according to YouTube Help on upload length.
• Common mistake: abandoning the channel after three videos. YouTube is the slowest network to get going and the one that keeps bringing visits the longest.

Threads

• Formats that work: short opinions, questions to your audience, glimpses of what you are building, informal conversation.
• Starting cadence: one post a day if you already have an Instagram base; otherwise treat it as a second wave.
• Limits: the Threads API documentation limits text posts to 500 characters, videos published via the API to 5 minutes and carousels to between 2 and 20 items.
• Common mistake: pasting your X posts without adjusting the tone.

Bluesky

• Formats that work: short posts and conversations in technical, scientific or creative niches; links with context.
• Starting cadence: few posts and plenty of participation in your niche's feeds.
• Limit: 300 graphemes per post, according to the post record definition in the AT Protocol that Bluesky runs on.
• Common mistake: keeping a generic bsky.social handle when you could use your own domain (explained below).

Google Business Profile

• What matters: the right category, real opening hours, current photos, posts with updates and replies to every review.
• Requirements: under the Google Business Profile guidelines, only businesses with premises customers can visit, or that travel to customers, are eligible; the name must be the real-world one, without taglines or added keywords, and PO boxes are not accepted.
• Common mistake: stuffing keywords into the business name. It breaks the guidelines and can cost you the profile.

A few networks done well beat seven abandoned ones

An abandoned account is worse than no account: someone arriving from your website who sees a last post from eight months ago concludes the project is dead. That is why we recommend rolling out in two waves.

1. Week 0: claim your handle on every network in the matrix, even those you will not use yet. Fill in the bio, avatar and link everywhere.
2. Weeks 1 to 8: post and reply only on your two or three A networks. On the others, pin a post saying where you are active.
3. Week 8: check which network brings visitors with intent (sign-ups, demo requests, sales), not just followers. Double down on what works and cut what does not.
4. Second wave: add a B network only once the cadence on your A networks feels easy.

Rule of thumb: if you cannot answer a comment within one working day on a network, you do not yet have capacity for that network.

How to claim the same handle on every network

Being findable under the same name everywhere reduces friction and stops someone else taking your brand. Do it on the same day you buy the domain.

1. Pick a short name using only letters and numbers. Networks accept different characters: YouTube, for instance, allows hyphens, underscores and full stops in handles and limits them to 3 to 30 characters, according to its help page on handles. Letters and numbers avoid surprises.
2. Check availability everywhere before announcing the name. If it is taken on a key network, settle on one shared variant (adding app or hq, for example) and use it on all of them.
3. Sign up with an address on your own domain, not your personal email, so the account belongs to the company and can be handed over.
4. On Bluesky, use your domain as your handle. Bluesky lets your username be your own domain by adding an _atproto TXT record to your DNS, as its guide to domain handles explains. It is free proof that the account is yours.
5. Turn on two-step verification and keep logins in a shared password manager, not in one person's head.

Consistent bios and UTM-tagged links

Your bio says in one line what you do and who it is for, with the same promise as your website. If LinkedIn says "software for clinics" and Instagram says "your best partner for growth", you look like two different companies.

• Same promise, different register: the core message is identical; the tone adapts to each network.
• Same avatar everywhere: the logo or the founder's face, but the same image.
• One UTM-tagged link per network. The utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign parameters tell your analytics where each visit came from, as Google Analytics Help on URL parameters explains. For example, ?utm_source=instagram&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=bio.
• Normalise the values: always lower case and always the same name for the same network. Instagram, instagram and ig end up as three separate sources in your reports.
• Link your profiles from your website footer to close the loop: the site confirms the accounts and the accounts point to the site.

Customer care on social: answering well from day one

As soon as you post, people ask questions: pricing, whether it works for them, a problem signing up. Every unanswered comment is visible to everyone who comes after. You do not need special software at the start; you need a habit and a few rules.

• Check comments and messages at fixed times, say twice a day, in each network's own app or the messaging tools each platform provides. Two reliable checks beat glancing at it now and then.
• Set a response target and keep it: on your A networks, the same working day. If a network makes that impossible, take it off your active list.
• Answer in public what helps everyone (pricing, features) and move to private anything involving personal data (accounts, payments, specific incidents).
• Keep written template answers for your five most common questions, and always personalise them with the person's name and situation.
• Reply to every Google review. Google's help page on reviews says helpful replies show you are responsive to customers, that replies are checked before they appear, and that the reviewer is notified.

What not to do

• Deleting legitimate criticism or hiding awkward comments: people notice, and it makes things worse.
• Arguing in public with an angry customer. Acknowledge, offer a fix and move the conversation to private.
• Asking for sensitive data (passwords, card numbers) by direct message.
• Replying with an automated message that does not answer the question asked.
• Letting only one person know how to log in: when they go on holiday, customer care disappears.

LaunchSuite has no message inbox and does not manage replies to comments: use each platform's own apps or messaging tools for that. What it does is help you post consistently, which is what starts those conversations in the first place.

Setup checklist for every profile

Run this list for each network before you announce the launch. If an item does not apply to a network, tick it anyway so you know you considered it.

Plan for the first weeks

1. Before launch: claim handles, complete profiles with the checklist and prepare ten or twelve pieces of content for your A networks.
2. Launch day: post on your A networks with the same message adapted to each, link from your site and coordinate with the rest of the plan in our guide to launching a web project and the product launch checklist.
3. Weeks 1 to 4: fixed cadence, same-day replies and a weekly note of which posts drive UTM-tagged visits.
4. Weeks 5 to 8: repeat the formats that work, drop the ones that do not and start collecting feedback from early users, as covered in reviews and social proof.
5. Week 8: decide whether to add a second-wave network.

When each network lives in its own tab, the problem of ten tools and ten tabs to launch appears. In LaunchSuite the calendar with native Facebook and Instagram publishing and the UTM links live alongside the rest of the launch.