Social media use continues to grow around the world. A survey from WeAreSocial.net reveals that social media’s year-on-year growth remains strong with global penetration rates now in excess of 30%. Advances in technology, such as the growth of smart mobile devices, has contributed greatly to this and will further drive the development of social media in the years to come.
It is no wonder then that many businesses are now leveraging social media to create brand awareness for their products and services. The popularity of social media in business is so tremendous that businesses of all sizes have started their own social media teams or have acquired social media outsourcing services.
Aside from brand awareness, social media provides businesses with many other benefits, including improved lead generation, more efficient customer service, increased customer engagement, increased website traffic and search ranking, and decreased spending among others.
In order to take advantage of these benefits, businesses must keep themselves abreast with the latest findings on social media usage around the world. This list of facts and statistics will help them understand how fast social media platforms are growing, who are using them and what they are being used for.
General Social Media Stats
The following compilation of general social media statistics showcase the rate of growth of social media around the world as well as some facts on user demographics and usage habits. One of the most interesting trend that marketers must take note of is the rate of growth of mobile social media users as this presents brands with a very important reason to leverage social media for business.
(Source: Cloudswave.com)
(Source: Statista.com)
(Source: Statista.com)
(Source: Statista.com)
(Source: Statista.com)
(Source: Cloudswave.com)
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(Source: SimplyMeasured.com)
(Source: WeAreSocial.net)
(Source: SimplyMeasured.com)
Facebook
Facebook is one of the fastest and most popular social media platforms in the world today. Its popularity with its more than 1 billion users worldwide has made it imperative for brands of all sizes, and across different industries, to utilize the platform as a way to engage with their target audience. Understanding the trends of this platform is vital for brands to get better results for their advertising and marketing strategies.
Facebook continues to improve its platform in order to allow brands to market themselves more effectively. Facebook Ad solutions allow content creation for mobile marketing strategies to take advantage of the growth of Facebook mobile use worldwide.
Their acquisition of both Instagram and Whatsapp will also benefit brands who plan on increasing their use of these platforms in 2015 and the years to come. The platform likewise continues to develop new features for Facebook video, such as the native video auto-play, as Facebook Video views surpassed YouTube for the first time back in 2014.
(Source: Statista.com)
(Source: Cloudswave.com)
(Source: Cloudswave.com)
(Source: Cloudswave.com)
(Source: Statista.com)
(Source: Cloudswave.com)
(Source: Cloudswave.com)
(Source: Cloudswave.com)
(Source: ExpandedRamblings.com)
(Source: ExpandedRamblings.com)
(Source: ExpandedRamblings.com)
(Source: ExpandedRamblings.com)
(Source: ExpandedRamblings.com)
(Source: ExpandedRamblings.com)
(Source: ExpandedRamblings.com)
Twitter
Twitter is one of the most popular social media platforms being used by brands these days, with many using it as well as a customer service channel that addresses customer issues and complaints. Despite its popularity though, it is facing competition from more visual channels like Instagram and Pinterest as the market demands more mobile and visual platforms.
To address this demand, Twitter added Vine, the looping 6-second video app, in 2013. They also eventually started allowing images to appear in the Twitter stream. Most recently though, they brought in the video streaming company Periscope, which allows users to share live video and stories as they happen. The challenge for brands using Twitter these days is on how to become a more visual tweeter as research reveals that tweets with images get 18% more click throughs, 89% more favorites and 150% more retweets.
(Source: Cloudswave.com)
(Source: Cloudswave.com)
(Source: Cloudswave.com)
(Source: Cloudswave.com)
(Source: ExpandedRamblings.com)
(Source: ExpandedRamblings.com)
(Source: ExpandedRamblings.com)
(Source: ExpandedRamblings.com)