Do you know that almost half of ALL people in the world now use social media?

That’s a lot of people when you think about it, and that’s not even one of the super awesome 25 social media marketing stats to turbo charge your engagement I’m going to share with you today.

And
technically, there’s more than 25 of them.

Like this freebie ↓

45% of people
globally use social media in one form in another. That’s 3,480,000,000 people
or, if that’s far too many zeros to count, 3.48 billion people.

*There are 7.7 billion people on the
planet and counting.

As a blogger,
business or marketer, you now have the potential to reach more potential
readers, customers, subscribers than ever before — actual billions of them — using
social media, but you can only reach and engage with those people by better
understanding the platforms you’re using and the people that are using them.

Here’s a very helpful piece of advice: if you feel overwhelmed by ALL of the
social networks, don’t be afraid to pick one at a time to learn and focus on.
Switching from a stat to an idiom …

“Walk before one can
run.”

You’re more likely to fall at the very first engagement-building hurdle if you try to spin too many plates at once and don’t understand what you’re doing with them.

Set an achievable goal, such as learning how to understand and BEST use the individual platforms, one by one. Once you’ve done that, juggling multiple platforms at the same time won’t be such a tough challenge.

These social
media statistics are absolutely going to help you do just that!

1 – 67% of the UK use social media.

That 67%
works out to roughly 45,000,000 — 45 million people.

In the US, the percentage of social media users rises to 70% of the entire population — 230 million people, according to the 2019 study performed by We Are Social and Hootsuite.

There are a lot of people — potential customers, clients or readers — to gain from creating a successful social media strategy, but you’ll need to stand out in order to do it.

It was estimated that close to 90% of businesses in the US are using social media, in some form or another, to promote or boost sales in 2019; and that figure is set to rise as more and more people jump on the bandwagon.

2 – Facebook, Facebook Messenger, and YouTube
are the top 3 networks for every age group globally.

If you’re a
blog/business trying to reach the maximum amount of people, across a number of
age ranges, around the world, it would make sense to focus on Facebook,
Facebook Messenger, and/or YouTube to help get your message across.

In theory,
you’ll have the opportunity to reach more people than on other social
platforms – Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, etc.

Facebook Messenger is actually a VERY helpful little tool to keep in touch with consumers and readers, although it has been estimated that only around 30% of businesses are utilising it.

The service allows brands to connect with their customers or clients, on a one-to-one and more personal basis than other types of communication, such as email.

For
consumers, using Facebook Messenger to chat to a business runs along the same
comfortable lines as using the platform to have a chat with their friends —
and that approachability really appeals to consumers in a world where the
personal touch has all but disappeared.

3 – The social platform with the longest post
lifespan is Pinterest.

An MtoM Consulting study used data from a range of sources to discover that the best social network for post longevity is Pinterest.

Pins on the image-based platform can pick up speed days, weeks, months, and even years after they were first published; and with tools such as Tailwind’s SmartLoop, you’ve got a higher chance than ever before of making it big.

For maximum
results, make a point of using hashtags, keywords, or both in your pin
descriptions to make them search engine optimised and easily accessible. Don’t
forget to create multiple pins per blog post too, and make sure they’re pinned
to all of your relevant boards — including group boards!

4 – 33% of beauty product consumers make their
purchases after seeing positive comments on social media.

And that’s just ONE niche proving just how effective social media (and a positive message) can be. The same study, released by Global Web Index, also showed that 37% of beauty consumers go on to buy something after seeing an advertisement about it on social media.

People ARE
swayed by the things they see and read on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and
other social platforms, and that’s why businesses (not just in the beauty and
skincare industry) are choosing digital marketing over more conventional
methods — taking out a magazine advertisement, throwing an announcement in the
local paper, or even advertising on TV and radio.

The ad
returns outweigh the cost when a social strategy is run the right way.

5 – Digital advertising in the US is expected
to reach almost $130 BILLION.

That’s right,
American businesses are spending a LOT of money on social media and
other forms of digital marketing. They’re also spending a lot less on those
conventional methods I mentioned before.

The same study, from eMarketer, revealed that TV advertising had declined at a faster speed than anticipated, allowing digital advertising to take the top spot and make up almost 55% of all media advertising spending.

Paid advertisements and sponsored posts on sites like Instagram and Facebook are working to increase brand awareness, boost sales, and rocket reader numbers. Bloggers can use these features too.

Pop £5 or £10 on a Facebook boosted post and you’ll soon see how many extra impressions and reads your blog has the potential to rack up.

It’s time to
start seriously thinking about your blog as a business … and using all the
promotional tools that businesses do.

Facebook statistics

6 – Facebook is home to 2.41 billion regular
users.

And by regular, I mean active on the social platform monthly. According to Statista, Facebook comes in as the #1 social media platform in terms of user numbers.

I don’t mean to bring up *that* bad press situation that Facebook had going on, but we do need to discuss it for just a moment. Even with all of that bad press, Facebook is still growing and gaining more users than ever before.

And that’s despite so many people declaring they’re coming off the social network for good! (The social media temper tantrum that we all have at least once or twice in our lives!)

The moral of this story? Facebook is DEFINITELY worth
investing some time [and money] into, particularly if you’re interested in
targeting the following age ranges … ↓

7 – 86% of US adults and 79% of UK adults (aged
18+) with online access use Facebook.

According to We Are Flint.

It’s good to
know what age range your target
audience is so that you can cater your social media strategy to better suit
them.

It is
unlikely that a brand would use the same kind of language to appeal to a
younger, more on-trend audience as it would to target older and more mature
customers. You can say the same for images, campaign messages, and even the
actual social media platform used for those campaigns.

The same
study revealed that Twitter was only used by 11% of 75+ year olds in the UK, so
it wouldn’t be the best demographic for a brand looking to appeal to that
market.

The trick to appeal to your audience, is to know your audience.

If you have a Facebook business page for your business/blog, you can access your own Facebook analytics to see where all of your traffic comes from — and what kind of people are checking you out.

If you’re attracting the WRONG people — wrong age, location, interests, etc. you can tweak your strategy so that you appeal more to your target demographics.

8 – 85% of all Facebook videos are watched
silently.

… According to a study by Digiday, and backed up by various studies and sources since the stat’s initial reveal in 2016.

If people are
silently watching your videos, any important spoken words are going to be
missed. This is why you should be looking into the idea of adding subtitles to
your videos before or during the upload process.

There are a
number of ways to do this. Some of the platforms even offer this service.
Youtube, for example, gives you the opportunity to add subtitles/closed
captioning, both manually and automatically, during the upload process.

You can also add captions to Facebook videos using SubRip files, or once the video has finished processing you can add automatically-generated captions. It’s best to review and edit these before hitting the publish button *just in case* the speech-to-text software mixes up or misunderstands any of your words.

In-app
editing features can often give you the chance to add basic text to your video,
such as with Instagram stories. There are various downloadable (and free)
applications that will also allow you to add captions to videos before
uploading them to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.

9 – 70% of all American mobile internet users
admitted to using mobile messenger services, such as Facebook Messenger,
regularly.

… According to Hootsuite and We Are Social.

Facebook
messenger is also the #1 mobile app in the US, in terms of number of downloads,
with Instagram coming at #2, Snapchat at #3, and the Facebook app itself at #4.
This by itself proves a point – even people who don’t use Facebook on a mobile
device may still use the Facebook messenger service.

What does
this mean for you?

If you’re a
blogger or business on Facebook, you should absolutely make use of the
messenger tools that are available. Businesses are starting to use the
Messenger service, alongside others, to “push through” advertisements, rather
than reserving them for in-feed slots and paid advertisements.

Perhaps a
“new blog post” shoutout through Facebook Messenger will be something we’ll see
a lot in the future?

10 – 53% of consumers are more likely to buy
when they can contact the business personally and directly — such as with
Facebook Messenger.

In fact, Facebook revealed some pretty surprising statistics about companies/businesses using their Messenger service, giving you some idea of just how valuable it is.

The food delivery service, Just Eat UK, reported that 27% of their customers went on to make a food order within a week after using Messenger for queries.

Being able to
directly communicate with your
audience, whether they’re consumers, clients, or readers, gets you one step
closer to them … and one step closer to understanding what they want.

When you know
what your audience wants (or doesn’t want), you can give them it (or not),
making you more popular and your account much more engaged.

This statistic is particularly important for bloggers relying on affiliate marketing to generate income. Speaking from personal experience, consumers are more likely to click on an affiliate link and buy a product or service when they have the opportunity to ask you more questions/opinions directly.

Readers have even asked me – on Facebook messenger – if I have a discount code or affiliate link that they can buy through, to say thank you.

Twitter statistics

11 – 58% of US and 62% of UK 18-24 year olds
use Twitter.

… According to a We Are Flint study.

The best way
to engage with those 18-24 year olds is to read what they’re saying, actually
get involved with conversations that you feel you have an opinion on or can
offer information for, and respond to the ones that reach out to you.

As mentioned in 6 Effective Ways To Brand Yourself On Social Media, you need to put the “social in social media” and you can do this by commenting, liking, following, responding, and more.

That last one — responding to those who reach out to you — is very important. It might come across as a little rude if you don’t; those not getting a response from you are likely to feel unhappy about it and won’t bother in future.

That’ll reduce your engagement overall, in case that wasn’t obvious … exactly the opposite of what you’re trying to achieve.

You can’t
just throw a bunch of tweets out there and hope for the best, either; you
actually need to include yourself
into conversations. Invite yourself in! Just start talking to people –
answering their questions, giving opinions when it’s asked for, etc. That’s
really all it takes to get started.

Twitter is a
very conversational platform,
perhaps one of the most social of them all. You should make the most of that.

12 – Users spend roughly 8.5 minutes on Twitter
per session.

Twitter is a much more fast-paced social media platform than the likes of Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram.

The lifespan of a tweet is much shorter than the lifespan of a post on the other platforms, according to recent We Are Social studies, and that’s why it’s recommended that you tweet more frequently than you Facebook-post or Insta-share.

No one can
say *for sure* exactly how many tweets is the right amount of tweets for
follower growth and killer engagement rates, but it goes without saying that
you won’t get any of it if you don’t
tweet at all.

Start by
sharing a couple of tweets per day, then add more as your followers grow and
engagement increases. You’ll soon get a feel for how much is too much … and
when you’re not posting enough. You can also learn from the examples of other
popular Twitter’ers.

How many
times per day are they posting?

How many of their tweets do you see?

There are plenty of Twitter marketing tools to help you post and be active on the platform even when you can’t be, such as scheduling apps or sites, and some of them are even free to use. At the very least, they’re usually free to try.

13 – The lifespan of a tweet is between 15 and
20 minutes.

Speaking of the lifespan of tweets, a recent poll by MtoM Consulting revealed they get their most engagement within the first 20 minutes after being shared.

There are a
few tricks that you can use to increase the lifespan of a tweet. One of these
is to wait until a few hours later before retweeting it. (Yes, we all do it. You can, too.)

You could
also quote tweet yourself.

Responding to
other people’s comments on your tweets will help too. Your response will show
up in your followers’ timeline, which might encourage them to look at the
original, first tweet and comment on it, if they haven’t already done so. In
turn, that generates even more engagement.

Alternatively,
you could look at creating Twitter threads — which brings me very nicely to my
next stat and helpful tip …

14 – 
Threads on Twitter get 63% more impressions than single, non-thread
tweets on their own.

… According to a recent Buffer experiment.

A thread on Twitter is a series of connected Tweets from one person. With a thread you can provide additional context, an update, or an extended point by connecting multiple Tweets together.

Bloggers can use this to their advantage in a huge number of ways. For example, how about an end-of-the-month Twitter thread that promotes all posts published for the past month?

You could even go as far as to pin the first tweet in the thread to the top of your profile, making all recently published posts super accessible for regular and potentially new readers alike.

Maybe you
should create a thread of related posts that carries on from a “BRAND NEW POST”
tweet.

Or how about
a thread of your favourite blog
posts? Or a thread of your favourite posts from other bloggers?

The
possibilities are endless. Literally endless. They all amount to more published
tweets, more engagement, and more growth!

Oh, and more
readers or followers for your blog.

Winning.

15 – The first hashtag [ever] was used on
Twitter on 23rd August 2007.

Chris Messina gave the online world what it so desperately needed – a hashtag that would help us to categorise, find, and later mute things that we would or wouldn’t want to see online.

how do you feel about using # (pound) for groups. As in #barcamp [msg]?

— Chris Messina (@chrismessina)

Hashtags are one of the most valuable tools in marketing, not just on Twitter, but also on Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook. If you’re not using them, it’s about time that you did.

They have the potential to help you find lots of extra people that you wouldn’t have found with non-hashtagged tweets. People follow those hashtags, and they specifically hunt them out to find what they’re looking for.

Instagram statistics

16 – Instagram has the most Instagram
followers*.

There are 311
million accounts following Instagram’s own account. Next in line is Cristiano
Ronaldo, with 180 million followers. Ariana Grande can grab herself the third
spot, with 162 million followers.

Why do you
need to know this information? Because you can use it! Look at what the popular
accounts are doing, particularly those in the same niche or industry as you.
Those popular people are setting the trends.

Everything. Scrutinise
it. Make a note of the things you like, the things you don’t, and the things
you could put into action on your own Instagram account.

*at the time of writing.

17 – 49% of adult women use Instagram in the US
versus 45% of men.

But that
doesn’t mean that 49% of your
followers are going to be women. You can find this out for yourself very
easily, though; Instagram Insights is the way to do it.

With a
business Instagram account, you can use Insights to get … well, insights into
your audience.

You will get information such as the age ranges of your followers, whether they are male or female, what days and times of day your followers are mostly online, and a lot more — and all of it can be used to better tweak your social strategy for the better.

It makes sense to post to the platform when your followers are actually online to get the best and quickest engagement.

How well do
you really know your audience? 

18 – The Instagram  algorithm uses *this* factor to “rate”
your content …

A spokesman for Instagram let a sneaky little trick slip during an interview with Business Insider — one of the surprising factors the Instagram algorithm takes into account when “ranking” content.

It is — very
simply — whether or not people are SEARCHING
for your account name before interacting with the content shared. You can use
this trick to try and hack your way through the algorithm. Simply ask for
people to search for you on Instagram, rather than giving them the actual link.

This seems
counter-intuitive, I know, but just hear me out for a second. If you give a
visitor an Instagram link, they’ll
be taken to the Instagram website within Twitter when they click on that link,
which will then ask them if they want to open the actual Instagram app.

As you can
see from the above image, I’m not even signed
in when the Instagram website opens up inside Twitter. If I wanted to like,
comment, or follow, I’d need to sign in first. And when I do sign in, I’m taken
to my own profile page and NOT the profile I was originally on.

By using your
name and a search-for call-to-action — not a URL — you’re making life a bit
easier. The visitor can simply copy and then paste your username “the
search-for term” to find you.

If people are
searching for you, the Instagram algorithm is going to think that your content
is worth showing to more people, increasing impressions and, in turn,
engagement.

19 – 54% of consumers make a purchase after
seeing a product on Instagram.

Facebook IQ released this surprising stat about Instagram, after two polls studied the behaviour of regular users.

Over 70% of those people also agreed that the platform was not just relevant, but also entertaining, creative, and popular; and 80% of consumers in the same study said that Instagram played a big factor in whether they purchased something they were thinking of buying.

Are you
making the most of this opportunity? If 54% of consumers go on to make a
purchase after seeing a product either being endorsed or advertised on
Instagram, wouldn’t it make sense for you to take advantage of that?

If you’re a
blogger talking about a specific product in your latest Insta-post, throw a
“link in bio” to the product you’re talking about. You could check to see
whether or not you have an affiliate link for that product and add that to your
bio link, making some money while you’re there. (Remember to be upfront about
your affiliate status, though.)

It probably
wouldn’t hurt to tag the company or business whose products you’re talking
about, too. If you’re not on their radar already, you will be after a few
well-engaged, tagged posts on Instagram or in your Stories. A shoutout [repost]
from them could mean a ton of extra likes, comments, and followers for you.

20 – 63% of Americans use Instagram every day.

21% access the site weekly, according to the Pew Internet study, and 16% of adult Americans use Instagram less frequently than that.

What that means is that more Instagram users than not are daily browsers, and that’s why it’s recommended that you post to your feed or share Instagram Stories at least once per day if you want to see an increase in followers and/or engagement.

It’s not just posting or sharing that’s important though; you will also need to engage (like and comment) on the posts of others to get the ball rolling, particularly those in the same niche as you.

Instagram is a community, and engagement all round — on your feed, Stories, other people’s content, following new people, etc. is the best way to make that community work for you.

And it should
go without saying, but … it’s probably for the best that you don’t play the
follow/unfollow game. People see it, they don’t like it, and they will call you out for it, leading to
countless existing followers slipping away.

Pinterest statistics

21 – Pinterest is now home to over 300 million
users.

In August of this year (2019), Pinterest announced it had reached the impressive total of 300 million users, just two years after the platform reached it’s 200 million user goal.

Bloggers are
starting to realise the importance of Pinterest as a method of promotion, as
are many businesses, and if there was ever a time to jump on the bandwagon, now
would definitely be it. 300 million people might see your pins … which link
right to your blog!

It doesn’t take a lot to get started. You simple create a Pin, upload it to Pinterest, make sure that you have an appropriate description that also includes hashtags and keywords for best results, and a link back to your blog.

The best thing about using Pinterest to promote your blog is that pins frequently pick up traffic weeks, months, and sometimes even years after they were initially published.

As we said in
stat #3, Pinterest pins have the longest lifespan of any social media post.

22 – The most popular pin topic is
food/recipes.

In fact, the Statista study showed that over 75% of most-shared pins on the platform are based on food/cooking, with “other” coming in second – 10%.

If you’re a
food blogger that hasn’t yet jumped on the Pinterest bandwagon, you are missing
out … big time!

If you’re a
lifestyle blogger (or generalised blogger) that’s been thinking of adding
food-based content to your blog for a while, Pinterest is definitely the place
for promotion with great results.

If you enjoy
pinning the pins of other people/bloggers, it is definitely worth considering
having a recipe/food-based board that you can pin to. People will repin those
from your board, on your profile, which might just earn you
extra followers.

23 – Less than 27% of men in the UK are on
Pinterest.

45% of women in the UK are happily pinning away; however, the majority of users are aged between 25-34, closely followed by the 18-24 age group. (As shown by We Are Flint.)

In the USA,
40% of men are on the social platform, followed by 65% of women. The most
common age group for users is 25-34 (69%), with 18-24 and 35-44 year olds
coming in joint second (62%).

Essentially,
according to those statistics, Pinterest is the best social platform for those
hoping to target a mostly-female audience, aged between 18-44.

24 – Half of all new Pinterest signups in 2018
were men.

Which means that now is a good time to start focusing on more male-orientated pins or content! eMarketer even suggested that the site will have a 70% female and 30% male user base by the end of 2020.

Things change
on social media so quickly, whether it’s the rules and guidelines, an
algorithm, or even how we — bloggers, businesses and consumers alike — use it.
It is important to keep up with those changes as best you can, adding new
things to your strategy where necessary.

If you’re working under the assumption that Pinterest is a female-focussed platform, you’ll be cutting out at least 30% of your potential audience (and blog readers) without even trying, based on those estimations.

Pinterest [business] Analytics can help you to keep on top of changes without having to read every press release filled with information that probably isn’t relevant to you, and you should get to grips with that area of the site in the same way that you would with Facebook Analytics or Instagram Insights.

25 – 84% of people use Pinterest to help them
make purchasing decisions.

The Pinterest stat means that visitors looking at the products themselves, reviews, examples of other people wearing/using/whatever it, and opinions that will help them make a decision one way or another.

To buy or not
to buy, that is the question.

If you’re trying to sell a product, whether you’re a business or a blogger with an opinion on an affiliate product (or even with digital products of your own), Pinterest is one of the best places to do just that.

The platform is a very visual one, which allows you to show off the best points. The best practice pin size is also larger than images on other platforms, which means you have room to play around with text and really SELL whatever it is. And then there’s the new video pin option that seems to be picking up speed.

Once upon a time, Pinterest was perhaps considered a “second-rate” platform for self or business promotion, but that is most definitely not the case now. It’s a platform that should be taken seriously – very seriously.

Infographic: 25 social media stats and facts

We’ve wrapped all of these stats up into an infographic that you can publish on your blog.

Note: If you’d like to republish this infographic, save the infographic to your computer, upload to your blog and include a credit link back to this post.

Wrapping it up

Social media gives us the power to reach billions of people. But we can only do this if we understand which social networks to use, and how to use them.

Use the social media statistics and data in this article to inform your social media strategy but don’t forget what I mentioned in the intro – avoid spinning too many plates.

Focus on learning how to best use each individual platform. Once you’ve mastered one, move onto the next. Eventually, juggling multiple platforms at the same time will be far easier.