Which Social Network Should You Start With? Audience, Content and Effort

Start everything and everything stops

When starting a business account, many companies think, "Let's just create accounts on all the major networks." But each network suits a different format of post, a different length of text, and different images and video. If the person in charge, who also has other work, tries to run four or five, the time for each shrinks and updates tend to stop on all of them.

An account that has stopped updating can make visitors wonder, "Is this company still in business?" We recommend narrowing to one at first, two at most, and building a routine you can keep up.

Three tests for choosing

Choose your first network with these three tests.

A network that passes all three is your first candidate. If the audience is there but you have no content, you will not keep going, and if you have the content but your audience is not there, it will not reach anyone.

Test 1: Is your audience there?

First, check which networks the audience you decided on in strategy for a business account uses. As a public survey, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications' 2025 White Paper on Information and Communications summarizes usage rates by age group. These are the figures from the 2024 survey (Japan).

The same white paper puts LINE's usage rate at 94.9% overall and 91.1% even among people in their 60s (both 2024). For X and Instagram, the white paper sums up that usage is higher among younger people, but that it has spread to a wide range of ages, with more than 40% of people in their 50s using them.

What this tells you is that if you want to reach mainly younger people, X and Instagram are strong candidates, and there are also a fair number of users aged 50 and over. But these numbers show whether people use the network, not whether they read company posts. Asking customers close to your audience, "Which networks do you usually look at?" gives you a more reliable clue.

Test 2: Do you have content to post?

Each network is good at a different form of post. Choose the one that matches the content you can keep posting without strain.

It is easier to choose if you think this way: Instagram for businesses with many chances to take photos (restaurants, beauty, housing, retail); X or LinkedIn for businesses that often explain in writing (professional services, B2B, specialist services); and short-video networks if someone can shoot video. How each network works is explained in more detail in how Instagram's recommendations work and Threads basics.

Test 3: Can you keep up the effort?

Finally, estimate the effort to make one post. A text-only post can take 15 to 30 minutes, but posts where you take, select and edit photos, or shoot and edit video, can take several times that.

Divide the time you have each week by the effort per post and you get the number of posts you can keep up. Ask whether that number is enough on that network. On a fast-moving network, one post a week gives few chances to be seen, and on a video network, five a week is too heavy for many companies. How to think about frequency is explained in how to decide posting frequency.

When you expand to a second

When you have kept your chosen frequency on the first network for two or three months, consider a second. There are two directions to expand in.

One is a network where you can reuse the same content. If you post short text, X and Threads; if you post photos, Instagram and Facebook Pages. The forms of content are close, so you can expand with little extra effort. But rather than posting the same text as is, changing the length and phrasing a little for each network suits each network's readers better.

The other is a network that reaches a different audience. For example, a company that reaches customers on Instagram adds LinkedIn for recruiting. In this case, you need to think about content and writing separately, so the effort is larger.

Either way, check whether starting the second has lowered the frequency of the first. If it has, it is not yet time to expand.

Is it fine just to create an account?

Some people create a company-name account even on networks they do not plan to use. That does help keep others from using your company name, but accounts you create also need protection against takeover. Accounts you do not use tend to get less attention at login, so if you create one, set up two-factor authentication too. Writing "We mainly post on (network)" in the profile saves visitors from getting lost.

Networks you can connect in SNS TOWN

As of October 2026, SNS TOWN lets you connect X, Threads, Instagram, Facebook Pages and LinkedIn, and create and schedule posts from one screen. For Instagram, professional accounts are supported; for Facebook, Pages; and for LinkedIn, personal profiles. YouTube Shorts and TikTok are coming soon. What you can do on each network is explained in connected networks.

The composer switches how it counts characters, how many images you can attach, and whether polls and threads are available, to match the network of the account you chose in the header. When you expand to a second, cross-posting lets you pair X with Threads and Facebook Pages with Instagram, and publish to both in one action. The number of accounts you can connect depends on your plan, which you can check on pricing. How to connect is explained in Connect social accounts.

Frequently asked questions