Social media has become a standard channel of communication for consumers. In the past few years, it has gained significant growth as a legit media outlet and has begun to eclipse some out-of-date outlets like TV as a more desirable channel for getting media content into viewer’s consciousness. Here, I am going to dive into some heady social media facts you will want to be aware of as you are considering your online marketing strategy.
Digital devices are growing on an exponential level. Globally, 46% of consumers with a digital device use social media to make informed purchases. The top three social networks used by business to business marketers include LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. While LinkedIn is supposed to be the source for business marketing, just 62% of marketers say it is effective. 50% say the same for Twitter, and, not surprisingly, only 30% of business marketers view Facebook as an effective business marketing platform.
Because of online marketing’s extensive reach on social media, and the predisposition most marketing professionals have towards brands on Facebook, they are 50% more likely than consumers to like a brand on this platform. When it comes to making purchases, they are 100% more likely to do so as the result of seeing something posted to Facebook.
Twitter is one of the highest-performing online social media platforms, at least when it comes to brand follows, and it shows: online marketers are 400% more likely to follow brands on Twitter. When it comes to purchases, posting a product to Twitter as a method of promotion has shown that marketing professionals are 150% more likely to buy something as the result of a tweet.
That ever-lasting battle of the sexes continues to wage its ongoing semi-conflict on Social Media, with the majority of Social Media users being women, with a 71% usage rate, and men at 62%. However, the battle of the sexes pales in comparison to the majority (73%) of all users who would face a massive panic attack if they lost their wireless mobile device.
Clearly, losing a wireless mobile device is something that is NOT a joke. And finally, 51% of Social Media users experienced some sort of ‘negative’ feeling when they logged onto their accounts on a particular day.
- 316 million monthly users
- 500 million tweets sent per day
- 77% of active users are outside the U.S
- 88% of active users are on mobile devices.
- 6 distinct communications networks
- 65% of users expect a response in less than two hours
- 1.39 billion active monthly users as of December 31, 2014
- Every minute, 510 comments are posted, 293,000 statuses are updated, and 136,000 photos are uploaded
- Our own study indicates on average, native videos on Facebook reach 2.04 times more people, getting 2.38 times more likes, 2.67 times more shares, and 7.43 times more comments
- Photos drive engagement on Facebook pages
- 45% of account holders become very paranoid if they cannot access Facebook.
- 23% of users check their accounts at least 5 times per day
- Drives more referrals than any other social platform
- There are 1.5 million groups on LinkedIn
- 27% of users access LinkedIn through their mobile device
- Over 3 million company pages
- 50% of LinkedIn users have Bachelor or Graduate degrees
- 45% of B2B marketers have gained a customer through LinkedIn
- LinkedIn is adding, on average, two members per second
- Only 20% of LinkedIn users are under the age of 30
- More than 16 billion photos already exist on the platform
- An average user has close to 40 photos
- ‘MTV’ is the most followed brand, with over 1.2 million followers
- 1,000 comments per second are posted
- More than 5 million photos are uploaded every day
Google+
- 359 million monthly active users
- There are now over 1 billion Google+ accounts, and that figure is growing 33% per year
- The biggest age demographic for users is between 45 and 54 years of age
- 18% of marketers plan to increase efforts on Google+ this year
- More than 69% of users are female
- Only 6% have connected their Facebook account
- Food is the top category with 57% of users discussing food-related content
- 80% of total Pinterest pins are Repins
- “Nordstrom” is the most popular brand on Pinterest with more than 4.4 million followers
- Pinterest pins are worth 78 cents each.
Facts like these prove that social media is not going away anytime soon. In fact, year over year, it is becoming one of the most popular primary methods of online engagement with real consumers. While, according to Google, social media is not going to help increase your search rankings anytime soon (because it is NOT a direct Google ranking factor), it is well-known that social media is a primary driver of trust and authority in Google’s knowledge graph, and can help to drive trust and authority indirectly.
Many have attempted to prove that social media can drive rankings. The often-heard mantra of “correlation is not causation” applies here. Just because certain studies show correlative data of improved rankings as a result of increased social media activity is not a reason to suspect that social media is driving rankings. Any test that aims to show social media’s influence on rankings will need to prove that both websites are not engaging in anything other than posting content and posting to social media networks. This means that link acquisition is not happening, and anything else that results in the end game of acquiring links is not happening.
Thus, this is my challenge to you: set up a test that shows social media drives ranking on Google. Create a website. Post content. Share it to Facebook and Twitter. Have your fans like it. Do nothing else while obtaining the usual likes and further shares. Make SURE you do not obtain any external links during the time period of the test. And show your results in a concrete study that proves once and for all that social media can drive rankings. I’d love to see it.
Sources
Image Credits
Featured Image: nopporn/Shutterstock.com
In-post Photo #1: nopporn/Shutterstock.com
In-post Photo #2: Rawpixel/Shutterstock.com
In-post Photo #3: Ditty_about_summer/Shutterstock.com
