Social Media Statistics from 5 Major Platforms You Can’t Ignore

The role of social networks in digital marketing efforts has always been significant.

Statista is reporting a steady growth in the usage of social media over the past few years. And it’s redundant to mention that social media became a lifesaver for small businesses after the coronavirus outbreak in early 2020.

Many of them didn’t have time and resources to create websites, so Facebook and Instagram were their only chance to attract clients and survive.

Since the role of social media continues to increase, we decided to dedicate a separate post to social media statistics worldwide.

According to Sprout Social Index, Edition XVI, digital marketers primarily use social media to increase brand awareness, increase web traffic, and grow their brand’s audience. The major findings that the survey recorded were:

1. Social media fuels bottom-line growth,
2. Brand awareness remains a top priority,
3. Marketers aren’t using social data to its fullest potential,
4. Visual social platforms are popular with younger consumers,
5. Creativity separates great brands from the rest.

We think you’d also like to know what format of posts users enjoy the most. Consumers want to see more

1. stories (43%),
2. Live videos (40%),
3. User-generated content (30%),
4. AMA sessions (24%), and
5. Stickers, widgets, Q&As, filters, etc (21%) (source).

Now it’s time to move from generalized findings and understand what social media statistics tell about each major social platform. Let’s start from Facebook:

Facebook

This social network still dominates the market. The above-mentioned report from Sprout Social says 74% of marketers and 68% of consumers plan to use this platform more actively.

1. Facebook is the primary distribution channel for content, while company website is only the second (source).
2. Facebook also remains the top social channel with the highest return on investment (source).
3. The most used Facebook features include Facebook Business page, Facebook Advertising, and Facebook groups (source).

Since the number of business profiles and ads increase on this platform, the level of competition increases as well. Thus, you should focus not just ensuring presence but look for ways to stand out.

Instagram

This social network is the second by popularity after Facebook. 68% of marketers and 50% of consumers plan to use more of Instagram (source).

1. Instagram reached 1 billion users back in 2018 and now has 500 million daily active users (source).
2. Instagram is the second social network from where companies see the most ROI and again the second social media platform where global marketers invest their budget (source).
3. When asked “Which paid channel is providing your company highest ROI”, Instagram was in the top 3 after Facebook and Google Paid Search (source).
4. Instagram’s audience is young and 71% of them is under the age of 35 (source).

Check out one of our latest posts to see how to use Instagram for online stores.

Twitter

This social network is the third by popularity after Facebook and Instagram. 53% of marketers and 34% of consumers plan to use more of Twitter (source).

1. The total number of monthly active Twitter users is 330 million as of the 4th quarter of 2019 (source).
2. Twitter is the third social network from where companies see the most ROI and again the third social media platform where global marketers invest their budget (source).
3. 34% of Twitter users are females and 66% are males (source). Meaning that you will definitely be present on this platform if being a male is among your buyer persona characteristics.
4. 38% of Twitter users are between the ages of 18 and 29, 26% users are 30-49 years old (source).

Though Twitter is not the primary social network for online stores, you can get Twitter for eCommerce ideas from one of our latest posts.

Reddit

Though Reddit isn’t so popular as Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, it still provides digital marketers with tangible results. To achieve it, we should first know how Reddit is different, what you can and can’t do there.

Reddit will best work for businesses who already have communities and would like to connect, constantly engage with them on a specific topic.

If you try to share spam under sub-Reddits of other users, your “campaign” will probably not succeed. Here are some social media facts on what’s going on Reddit:

1. There are over 430 million monthly active Reddit users (source).
2. Reddit has 11 million average active users daily (source).
3. 64% of Reddit users are between 18 and 24 years old (source).
4. 54% of Reddit users are from the US (source).
5. The majority of Redditors have a degree or college education (source).
6. Users make 40 million daily searches on Reddit (source).

As you can see, the majority of Reddit users are from the US, are young, and educated. We can conclude that low-quality and spammy content will not never work here and you should try hard to build an engaged, interested community.

Pinterest

This social network is a search engine, a place to drive traffic for your website, and sell the products of your online store.

Here are more Pinterest social media statistics that will encourage register your online store on this platform if you haven’t yet.

1. The number of Pinterest users is more than 320 Million (source).
2. The United States has the highest number of Pinterest Users. There are 43.03% Pinterest desktop users in the US (source).
3. 71% of Pinterest users are female, while only 20% are male (source).
4. 34% of people aged 18-29 years use Pinterest. The total adult population of Pinterest users was 28% (source).
5. 63% of millennials have used Pinterest to discover new products to buy (source).
6. Most popular searches on this platform include categories like food, travel, health, and beauty (source).

If you are a B2B SaaS company, we will probably hold you back from being present on this platform as it will take time, designer’s work, creativity and leave with no results.

But if your target customers are female, live in the USA and love taking care of themselves, Pinterest is your way to go.

Delivering social media content your audience will remember

Did you just create your social media accounts and don’t know where to start? Or maybe you haven’t been seeing significant traffic, engagement, and leads from your social profiles…

Contact the Andava team, tell us about your company and let’s turn your social media profiles into your followers’ favorite pages.