27 Compelling Social Media Statistics that Demonstrate its Importance

It seems like everyone is on social media, doesn’t it? Your friends, your family (including your nan) — even some people’s pets.

Your organisation probably has a presence too, whether that’s on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram or all of the above. However, do you actually have a coherent strategy for it? Perhaps you think it’s just something you can leave to one of the younger members of the office, hoping their sporadic cat pictures and ‘Motivational Monday’ quotes gain a couple of likes and retweets.

Here’s why social media marketing should be taken more seriously by your company.

Some general stats to start us off…

• There are 2.2 bn active users of social media - that’s 30% of the global population. (Social Media Today)
• A massive 91% of brands use at least two social channels. (Social Media Today)
• There are as many as 1 million new active social media users every day. (Social Media Today)

Facebook

• The largest of the social media platforms, Facebook boasts 1.79bn monthly active users. (Zephoria)
• 1.18bn of those are logging in on a daily basis. (Zephoria)
• The number of daily active users are even higher for mobile - 1.66bn. (Zephoria)
• 42% of marketers have claimed that Facebook is either critical or important to their business. (Zephoria)
• Time spent on Facebook accounts for one out of every six minutes spent online. (Hootsuite)
• 50 million businesses worldwide have a Facebook page. (Hootsuite)
• In excess of 2 million advertisers regularly use the platform to market their business. (Hootsuite)
• 8 billion videos are watched on Facebook every single day - that’s 100 million hours of watch time. (Hootsuite)

Twitter

There were rumblings recently that Twitter, founded in 2006, isn’t doing as well as it once was, and struggling to add new users. That being said, Twitter is still a platform frequented by 310 million active accounts.

Here’s some more stats worth taking note of.

• 80% of those active users do so via mobile devices. (Twitter)

• 6,000 Tweets are sent every single second - so this is certainly a conversation you want to get involved with. (Hootsuite)

• 80% of Twitter users have @ mentioned a brand in a Tweet. (Twitter)

• Of consumers who @ mention a brand, 60% of them expect a reply within the hour. (Twitter)

• However, a staggering 77% of Twitter users feel more positive about a brand after their tweet has been replied to. (Twitter)

LinkedIn

Of all the platforms we’re looking at in this blog, LinkedIn has been around the longest.

• There are 467 million LinkedIn users across 200 countries and territories worldwide. (Expanded Ramblings)

• LinkedIn is used as a part of the content strategy of 94% of B2B marketers. (Forbes)

• The majority of B2B marketers (66%) rank LinkedIn as the most effective social media platform for their business. (Forbes)

• 81% of B2B marketers are using LinkedIn to help with new product launches. (Infinit Datum)

Instagram

The photo-sharing platform isn’t frequented by as many businesses as Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, but more and more brands are taking Instagram seriously as a marketing channel.

• The photo sharing platform has over 500 million active monthly users. (Instagram)
• On average, 95 million photos and videos are shared on Instagram every single day. (Instagram)
• Almost half (48.8%) of all brands are currently using Instagram for their marketing - and that’s expected to rise to 70.7% next year. (Hootsuite)
• Instagram users engage with brands whose content they see - 75% take an action, such as visiting a website. (Hootsuite)

Social advertising

Social media advertising is crucial to ensure you're able to reach a large number of people relevant to you.

• Over one third (38%) of organisations planned to spend more than 20% of their total advertising budget on social ads in 2015. (Pardot)
• The amount of marketing budget spent on social media advertising is set to hit 24% by 2020. (The CMO Survey)
• One in three millennials would prefer to use social media to communicate with businesses than any other channel. (MarketingSherpa)

Want to discover more compelling statistics that demonstrate how important digital marketing is to organisations of all shapes and sizes in the 21st Century? Download our free eBook, 43 Statistics that Show You Need to Improve Your Digital Marketing Skills.