Know-How Exchange : Social Media

Twitter and Facebook are the most common social media engines, but there are a zillion to choose from. In order to choose you will want to use ones that are relevant to your industry and are compatible with your current medium. Different social media sites are set up for blogs, companies, etc.

I would start with Twitter and Facebook, but be sure to seek out ones that are more in your vein of business as well.

In your point: "Before finding out what social media platforms to use I need to find out what platforms do they use and how?" who is "they"?

The primary platforms used in business social media are Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, Pinterest, and LinkedIn ... although not necessarily in that order.

As for what programs to use, your best bet is to do long tailed keyword searches using platform, niche, category, geographic, and company names as your primary modifiers across a range of the primary search engines: Google; Yahoo; MSN; Bing; AOL; Ask, and others on the list you'll find here: https://www.ebizmba.com/articles/search-engines.

Then, list the frequency of appearances on page 1 of each SE across the board, and ideally, the top 5 of page 1, because those pages will all have higher rankings.

The stumbling block you need to overcome lies in the following sentence of your question: "We are planning to use social media to acquire new customers."

This point illustrates a fundamental lack of understanding
on your part of the role, function, and purpose of social media in ANY niche, not just in B2B or B2PS.

Note the following point and note it well: DO NOT USE SOCIAL MEDIA TO SELL. That's NOT what social media is for. You got part of it right in a later point about engaging people. THAT'S IT! It's all about engagement, but it's NOT about sales leads.