How to Create the Perfect Social Media Strategy with Social Media Statistics and Trends You Cannot Miss in 2024

How to Create the Perfect Social Media Strategy with Social Media Statistics and Trends You Cannot Miss in 2024

Creating your social media strategy is key to ensuring you will reach and engage your users. There are many factors involved in creating the perfect strategy and knowing the trends and statistics of your niche is critical for success.

If you don’t know where to start, don’t worry. In this guide, we’ll bring you to step by step on how to create a perfect social media strategy with the statistics and trends you need to know in 2024.

What Is a Social Media Marketing Strategy?

A social media strategy is a document that details the framework, stages, and steps you will take to achieve your social media goals. It includes the tactics you will use to achieve your objectives and how you will measure progress.

What should be in your social media strategy? 

  • Your business goals
  • Your social media goals
  • The social media channels you are currently using and the ones you projected to add.
  • The goals for each channel and account.
  • The roles and responsibilities of the team and how often you will do reporting.

Why do you need a Social media Marketing Strategy?

To build a brand on social media without a strategy is at least inefficient, and at most, a loss of money. Here are some reasons you need a social media strategy:

  • Build an organic social media presence: the main goal of a social media strategy is to build an organic presence online. For your account to grow in followers and reach, stick to the golden rule of social media: post interesting content consistently.
  • Target your audience more effectively:  a social media strategy simplifies social media management and saves time. Creating a social media calendar and content bank, scheduling the posts for the next week or month will save the time you spend posting.
  • Create a brand message aligned with your business goals

When you have a social media strategy in place ensure that your efforts are more effective by aligning the strategy to your business goals.

  • Better user experience

Social media enables you to offer a personalized experience to your audience. Social media tools enable you to use analytics to create highly targeted social campaigns that influence purchase decisions with personalized offers.

  • How many social media users are in 2022? 

There are currently 4.48 billion social media users up to July 2022. That means 9 in 10 Internet users are on social media. The numbers surged as a result of the pandemic, with 520 million new users from 2020. This amounts to more than 70% of the eligible global population.

  • Most popular social media in 2024

Facebook is still the world’s most used social media platform. Still, there are five social media platforms with more than one billion monthly active users. Four of those five are owned by Facebook.

  1. Facebook = 2.8 billion monthly active users.
  2. YouTube = 2,29 billion
  3. WhatsApp = 2 billion
  4. Instagram = 1.38 billion
  5. WeChat = 1.24 billion
  • Who are the social media users? 

Most social media platform audiences overlap, as people will use more than one social media at a time.

The age distribution of social media users is as follows:

  • 84% of the 18-19-year-olds.
  • 81% of the 30-49 population.
  • 73% of the 50 -64-year-olds.
  • 45% of the 65 plus.
  • How much time do users spend on social media?

The average user spends 2.5 hours a day on social networks and messaging. (DataReportal, 2021)

Users go to social media not only for entertainment and communication with others but for information, business, and shopping. More than half of social browsers use social media to research products for shopping. That makes social media a go-to tool for many purposes.

How to create the perfect social media strategy in 9 Steps

  • What is the goal of your social media marketing strategy? 

You cannot succeed with a strategy if you don’t know what you want to achieve. Without goals in place, you won’t know if you are meeting the ROI expectations.

Decide on what you want to achieve with the social media campaigns. Do you want to have more brand exposure? Do you want to engage your audience?

A good practice is to use the S.M.A.R.T goals framework. This is an acronym that reminds you to define goals that are:

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Attainable
  • Relevant
  • Timely

When writing your goals, keep in mind those attributes. An example of a SMART goal would be:

“Use Facebook to send news about next promotions and increase visits to the site by 20% by the end of the quarter”

Use the right metrics

You can track the number of followers or likes, but they won’t give you an accurate idea about the impact of the campaign on your bottom line. Instead, track metrics like conversion rates, click-though, and engagement.

Not sure what you need to track? Look at the channels you are currently using. For instance, if you use Facebook to drive traffic to your site, you should measure the click-through rate.

  • Know your Audience 

If knowing who is your audience is key for marketing in general, social media is critical. Creating a strategy without knowing who your target viewer is like shooting in the dark in a game of paintball.

Learn as much as possible about your audience and what they like to see on social media. This will help you create content they will engage with, like, comment and share. How do you learn about your audience?

Start by basic demographics like:

  • Age
  • Location
  • Income
  • Industry
  • Interests

If you don’t know where to start, check our guide Who Are the Social Media Users in 2024? 

Once you found out where your audience likes to hang out, collect demographic data from your potential customers’ preferred social platforms.

Look at the age variable, for example. If your product or service is geared to a younger audience, find which platform your potential customers use.

Here are some demographic statistics to get you started (source: PEW Research Center): 

  • Most popular social media platforms for under-30 yrs old users 
  • Instagram
  • Tiktok
  • Snapchat

Age Group on Social Media

Most users between 18 to 29 years old report using Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok with 18-24-year-olds using Instagram (76%) and Tiktok (55%).

  • Adults in the U.S prefer Facebook and YouTube 

Usage on Social Media

  • The use of online social media platforms varies widely in the U.S according to gender and location.

Gender and Location Social Media Statistics

Wide-content media platforms like YouTube and Facebook get the widest audiences. LinkedIn gets the most highly educated users with medium to high income.

All this data will help you create your buyer persona.  A buyer persona is a detailed description of your typical customer. Including name, profession, and interests, this profile puts a “face” to your customers and makes it easier to create content for them to use on social media.

  • Do a competitive analysis

Your competitors most likely are already on social media. So, you can look at what they are doing since they cater to a similar audience.

There are several ways you can gather useful information about your industry and target market:

  • Social media listening

This method is the process of monitoring the Internet and media for mentions of your (or your competitor’s) name, relevant keywords, and account handle. This lets you know what people are saying about them and what they are sharing.

  • Conduct a competitive analysis

This study helps you understand the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors. Applying the traditional competitive analysis to social media means you can benchmark your results against the big names in your industry.

With a social media competitive analysis you can:

  • Identify your competitors for your target audience.
  • Detect which social platforms they are using and how.
  • Understand their strategies’ strengths and weaknesses.
  • Compare your results to theirs and find your weaknesses.
  • Find potential strategic threats.

How do you carry on a social media competitive analysis? 

#1. Identify your competition: Use the keywords you try to rank for and find the top 10 more relevant to your business. Input them into the social media platform search bar and you’ll see who is your competition.

#2. Use social media analytics to find who your audience follows.  Both Facebook Audience and Twitter analytics have features that can give you an idea of which brands your target viewers are following. For instance, in Facebook Audience, you input your target audience demographics and you will see which pages have the most likes. If they are relevant to your industry, add them to your competitor’s list. Then narrow the list to the top three most close competitors.

#3. Map their strengths and weaknesses: Now that you know which social media platforms your competitors are on, find how much you can about their social media strategies.

  • What techniques are they using?
  • What is working and what isn’t?
  • What is their engagement rate?
  • Their post frequence
  • Their most popular hashtags.

Use the data to do a SWOT analysis. SWOT is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

STRENGTHS

  • Metrics where you perform better than competitors

WEAKNESSES

  • Metrics where you perform worse than competitors.

OPPORTUNITIES

  • Untapped areas where you can perform better than your competitors

THREATS

  • New competitors or new campaigns can threaten your posture with your audience.
  • Do a social media audit

If you already have a social media strategy in place, you should analyze how your efforts are doing so far. Your analysis should answer the following questions:

  • Who is engaging with your social media content?
  • How do your social media efforts benchmark against the competition?
  • What is working in your strategy and what not?
  • Which channels are performing well?
  • Which content is performing well?

Hootsuite has a very easy-to-use template that can help have clear visibility on your answers.

  • Decide the channels you will use

Now you will have information to make strategic decisions about where you should focus your social media strategy.

Pay attention to how each channel is aligning with your social media goals (the ones you defined at the beginning). Next, focus on the ones that are performing better. You don’t need to pull out permanently from the other channels, you might decide to take the time to improve the strategy on those.

Define your strategy for each network

This will depend on what you want to achieve for that channel. For instance, a fashion brand may benefit from Instagram Stories and Snapchat.

Defining each channel strategy should include writing the mission statement for each one and more:

  • Set up a profile for each network, complete, with high-quality images and a bio that includes a mission statement.
  • Assign responsibilities to your team, who will manage the company’s Twitter and the Facebook page, for example.

To help you select your network, here are the top platform statistics for 2024:

Biggest Platforms Statistics

Biggest Platforms Statistics

Image source

Facebook

Facebook continues dominating the social media market, even more since acquiring Instagram. Facebook owns 4 of the 5 most social media apps.

Usage 

  • Users spend 35 minutes a day on Facebook on average.
  • The platform has 2.5 billion monthly active users.
  • 74% of all internet users visit the site daily

Demographics

  • Most Facebook users are from 18 to 49 years olds. Although most teens are now users of other platforms like TikTok, Facebook still maintains an active audience of over 100 million teens.
  • 96% of users get on to the platform via smartphones and tablets.
  • 42% of users have taken a break from the platform in the last year.

Statistics source

Trends for 2024

  • Facebook shopping: You can make your Facebook shop, group products into categories, tag products in photos you share, create collections, and enable in-app checkout to encourage purchases.
  • User-generated content: It is one of the best ways to engage your audience since it is fun for them to see their photos and videos shared by brands. Pro tips: ask permission to share the post on your page, create a unique hashtag for users to share photos of your products, and link back to the product featured in the photo.
  • Facebook Stories: Stories have become increasingly popular, especially because you can cross-post your stories to Facebook and Instagram. Pro tip: Create unique aesthetics, uploading photos, videos, and boomerangs.
  • Augmented reality: The platform enables users to create their augmented reality ads and posts. Pro tip: Create interactive ads that enable your users to try their products. Build filters for Instagram and Facebook stories.

Instagram

This is the platform you need if your audience is on the younger side. With most Instagram users being under 29 years old it is perfect for marketing and building brand awareness with teens.

Usage

  • Users spend an average of 53 minutes a day on Instagram.
  • The platform has 1 billion monthly active users.
  • 42% of internet users visit the site daily.

Demographic

  • 67% of Instagram users are aged 18 to 29.
  • The gender distribution is almost the same with 51% of male and 49% female users.
  • Instagram claims that 90% of its users actively follow a business account.

Trends for 2022

  • Instagram shopping: Use shoppable posts to sell to your audience. The platform’s visual style facilitates displaying products and engaging buyers. Pro tip: add purchase links in Instagram stories.
  • Influencer marketing: Collaboration between brands and influencers has been around some time and this trend will continue to grow. Pro tip: promote hashtag campaigns by using a network of influencers.
  • Instagram Live: Live streaming allows for two-way communication. They can comment and ask questions in real-time. Pro tip: Launch a product live on Instagram to create expectations and drive sales. Use a live video so you demonstrate how to use your product in different ways.
  • Interactive Content: Interacting with your audience is one of the best ways to engage them. Instagram has several ways to make your content interactive, you can ask a question, create a poll, and more. Pro tip: Create a quiz, start a countdown for an upcoming post, experiment with interactive Instagram Stories stickers.

TikTok

The most downloaded platform of 2020 has a particularity, most users are on the younger side, although adults are getting on quickly on the platform.

Usage 

  • Users spend 53 minutes a day on TikTok.
  • There are 1 billion monthly active users.
  • TikTok has a billion views every day.

Demographics

  • 56% of TikTok users are male and 44% are female.
  • 41%  of all TikTok users are under 24 years old.

Trends

  • More brands and influencers will use TikTok for marketing purposes.
  • Generation Z watches more Tik Tok than television.
  • Brands and influencers will collaborate to create content in episodes.
  • More companies are encouraging users to make and share videos on TikTok using their products using a branded hashtag.

Twitter

Twitter has a smaller number of users than Facebook and Instagram. However, the platform has a staggering 500 million non-registered users audience.

Usage

  • Users spend 3 minutes daily on Twitter.
  • There are 330 million active monthly registered users.
  • There are almost 500,000 new accounts daily.

Demographics

  • The majority of Twitter users belong to the age bracket of 18-29 years old, with the next category being the 30 to 49-year-olds.
  • 66% of Twitter users are male and 34% female.

Trends

  • Twitter is still one of the main sources of news for users.
  • Video advertising has grown on Twitter, representing 67% of the platform advertising. Tweets with video attract more engagement than tweets without video.
  • Twitter is one of the main platforms for company discovery, meaning that 30 out of 50 brands’ Twitter accounts show up on the first page of Google.

LinkedIn

This is one of the fastest-growing social media platforms, and with a very specific user base. With 1 out of 3 adults on LinkedIn, the platform has the largest demographic of users 30 to 49-year-olds.

Usage 

  • Users spend 6 minutes a day on LinkedIn.
  • The platform has 303 million monthly active users.
  • There are 5.26 million new accounts monthly.

Demographics 

  • The age range is evenly spread from 18 to 64-year-olds, with the largest percentage of users (37%) belonging to the 30-49 age bracket.
  • There are slightly more men than women on LinkedIn (57% against 43%).
  • 40 million LinkedIn users are reportedly in “decision-making” positions.
  • 30 million companies are on LinkedIn.
  • 94% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn to distribute content.

Trends

  • LinkedIn Stories:  These posts are visible for 24 hours and can be up to 20 minutes long. The aim is to introduce more dynamic engagement between users.
  • Personalized Ads: Dynamic ads can target segmented audiences with accuracy and impact. Pro tip: use it to scale up individualized campaigns and customize them according to your marketing objectives.
  • Video Chat Integration: This feature aims to promote better communication between companies, employers, and candidates. Accessible both on desktop and mobile apps. Pro tip: Use this feature for interviews.

YouTube

Usage

  • There are 2 billion YouTube users as of June 2021.
  • The number of daily active users reaches 122 million.
  • Users spend an average of 18 minutes daily on the platform.
  • 1 billion hours are watched daily on YouTube.

Demographic

  • 56% of YouTube  users are male
  • 44% of YouTube users are female
  • 37% of millennials 18-34 years old watch YouTube daily.
  • Users between 15-35 years make up 77%  of the YouTube users.

Trends

2021 was a great year for YouTube. Because of the pandemic, most users relied on video for entertainment and replacing in-person activities. The platform usage then grew exponentially. Thus, several hot trends are developing on YouTube in 2022.

  • Short format content: YouTube rolled a feature called “Chapters” which enables viewers to skip to key sections of a video. Also, YouTube Shorts are 60-sec videos optimized for the mobile experience.
  • Mobile-first: talking about mobile, it’s changed the way YouTube content is consumed. Most people consume videos on the go, and the platform is adapting the content to simplify this experience.
  • Challenge videos: these videos feature two people competing in a split-screen format. The trend is catching on as a way to engage users.
  • Branded channels: These channels are making serious money on the platform, by monetizing subscribers, selling merchandise, and featuring a branded profile photo and banner, which are easily recognizable.

Reddit

This platform, although not considered one of the “big names”, boasts a surprisingly high engagement. It offers a great opportunity to run ads, but they need to be highly targeted.

Usage

  • On average, users spend 16 minutes a day on Reddit
  • The platform has 430 million monthly active users
  • The site receives  21 billion monthly screen views
  • 44% of the traffic is via the mobile app.

Demographic

  • Most Reddit users are men (74%)
  • The age bracket is dominated by users under 30 years old, with the second large age group from 30 to 49 years old.

Trends

  • Reddit is great for highly targeted advertising since the platform communities are wary of traditional online advertising.
  • Use content marketing to promote a product or service on Reddit. Sponsored posts, with images and a call to action, can work wonders.
  • Promoted video allows you to play embedded videos on the feed. It can be autoplay, with a call to action and multiple aspect ratios.

Pinterest

The “DIY” platform has been growing for several years, with a 30% annual increase in users.

Usage

  • There are 320 million monthly active users.
  • Users spend 14 minutes a day on Pinterest.

Demographic

  • Pinterest has the largest percentage of female users of all social media platforms, 70% of their users are female.
  • 93% of pins are made by female users.
  • 85% of female users use the platform to plan life events.
  • Men use it primarily to bookmark ideas and projects.

Trends

  • Stories: On Pinterest Stories you can share video, images, and text, and the viewer can expand on it by clicking on an icon in the top left of the screen.
    • Use Pinterest trends to uncover potential topics: this feature enables you to discover top searches and trending topics, helping you maximize your marketing efforts.
  • Pin-to-sales: Pinterest is promoting advertising and shopping features. You can turn a catalog into browsable product Pins that connect to Shopify and convert users.
  • Build your social media brand

Once you know the channels you will use, and how you will use them, it is important to keep in mind the strategy needs to align with your brand voice. Your brand voice is how you present your company on social media.

With every content piece, every comment, and post, your audience is creating an impression of your brand. Here are some tips on how to find it out:

Tips and strategies

  1. If your brand was a person, how would it be? What adjectives would you use to describe your brand?

In our case, it would be: Confident, Visionary, Casual, and Professional.

Step 1: Ask which adjectives would describe your brand? You can pick from this list or make your own:

Adventurous, Artistic, Bold, Bright, Calm, Caring, Casual, Cheerful, Clever, Conservative, Daring, Detailed, Dramatic, Down to Earth, Easy, Efficient, Elegant, Endearing, Energetic, Fantastic, Familiar, Fashionable, Fierce, Fun, Functional, Glamorous, Impressive, Informal, Inspiring, Liely, Majestic, Modern, Natural, Nostalgic, Organic, Pleasant, Professional, Quirky, Rustic, Sassy, Savvy, Sleek, Smart, Sophisticated, Stable, Tasteful, Tranquil, Unconventional, Unique, Upbeat, Urban, Vintage, Wishful, Youthful.

Step 2: Pick 4-5. And create every content around them.

Step 3: Avoid jargon, write as you talk. Keeping a conversational style gets to the point and engages people.

Step 4: Stay away from sensationalism. In short, avoid clickbait like the plague. A clickbait headline can make people click on your posts, but good and informative content will make them return to your company for reference, information, and purchasing. Don’t create noise, focus on the quality.

Step 5: Keep it consistent. Even if you have different people writing for different channels, keep the message and tone consistent.

  • Schedule everything with a social media calendar

Scheduling your content is critical when you want to reach your users at the right time. It also prevents misshapes, forgetting to post, and missing trends and opportunities.

How to create a social media calendar

There are a few key steps for creating the perfect social media calendar:

  •   Define your goals and your content mix.  What do you want to post? Make sure it aligns with your social media strategy and goals. For instance, you would want a percentage of the content to drive traffic to your website, while others to support lead-generation goals.
  • Set your posting schedule. Look at the channels you chose, what are the best times to post on each channel? Make sure to plan your calendar so you can reach your users when they are on the platform. Check also the ideal frequency. For instance, for LinkedIn, a post a day is enough, while Twitter requires 5-6 tweets daily to drive engagement.
  • Plan the calendar. You can use a spreadsheet or a template. Most project management applications, like Monday and Asana, have their own social media calendar templates. HootSuite has a free social media calendar template to download too. Using a template saves you time and effort.
  • Remember important events and dates.  Depending on your product or service, there can be dates that are relevant for you. For example, if your market is electronics, planning around Black Friday is important. If your market is chocolates and flowers, you should plan posts leading to Valentine’s day.
  • Measure, evaluate and adjust the strategy. Rinse and repeat

Your social media strategy is dynamic, and you may find that some strategies don’t work as you expected and others work better than you thought. That’s why tracking, measuring, and analyzing the strategy is essential. How do you do it?

Track your performance metrics: Besides analyzing each social network analytics, you can use your website performance metrics and even heatmaps to see how visitors are moving on your website.

Once you have the data, use it to evaluate how well the strategy is performing. Tracking the metrics will help you understand several factors about the performance of the social media campaign:

  • Which channel is performing well
  • Which channel is underperforming
  • What content is working and what isn’t.

Use this data to A/B test different versions of posts, campaigns, strategies, understanding what works and what doesn’t. Besides tracking metrics, you can also use surveys, polls, and even your email newsletter to find out if you are meeting their expectations and the type of content they would like to see more.

Next, adjust the strategy as needed, and repeat.

Biggest trends for social media

These social media trends can help you guide your strategy. Pay attention and follow up so you can apply them to your social media strategy:

  • TikTok will continue to grow

After the explosion of 2020 that made it the most downloaded app, TikTok has not stopped growing. Don’t think that it is only for young audiences. Many brands are understanding that sooner than later everybody will visit TikTok, not just teens, and sponsor content to promote their products and services.

An example of a great TikTok campaign is Chipotle’s annual “Boorito” challenge for Halloween. They offered a discount for customers that ordered in a Halloween costume, asking customers to post a video to TikTok showcasing their outfits and using the custom sound created for that occasion. They created a branded hashtag #Boorito and #Contest.

They even teamed up with top influences like Addison Rae to fire up the challenge.

Boorito

Source

The prize? The top 5 posts will get free burritos for a year.

The results: 3.6 billion views in TikTok.

  • Live streams help connect with customers. 

2020 was the year for live streaming, and the trend is still strong. Even now, when things start to go slowly back to normality, everybody is comfortable with streaming live and many companies are taking this as an advantage.

Live streams let you connect and engage your customers in real-time. An example of using Livestream to connect with customers is “Mr. Robot: Debt Deletion”  The creators of the show “Mr. Robot” launched the show by deleting $100,000 debt live on the Twitch site. Since the primary demographics of the show is the gaming audience, Twitch was the perfect social media platform to do it.

Twitch

Source

  • Augmented reality

Virtual and augmented reality became mainstream, taking brand messaging to a new level. Instead of telling a story, you can let your customers immerse themselves into your story. Companies are taking the opportunity and producing VR tours. An example is what the Hacienda Patron Spirits did with their Virtual Hacienda Tour. The VR tour can be experienced by using the Oculus headset, the Google Cardboard, smartphones, and tablets and guides you through tequila production from a bee’s perspective.

[Embed video 360° Video of Hacienda Patrón Tour | Patrón Tequila]

  • Artificial Intelligence

Modern social media marketing requires artificial intelligence tools to keep up with the fast pace of social media trends. An AI tool enables you to listen to social mentions, analyze sentiment drivers in your audience conversations, searches, and comments. Without AI, most marketing analytics cannot be possible these days.

  • Psychographics

We talked about demographics for each social media platform. The thing is today’s social listening goes beyond typical demographic attributes like gender, location, and income. Many social analytic solutions today understand the sentiment or psychographic data of your audience when commenting or mentioning your brand. They allow you to understand if their impressions are positive or negative.

Which Is The Fastest Growing Social Media Platform?

No, it is not TikTok

In fact, according to the Pew Research Center, while TikTok remains the most downloaded app, the social media platform that is growing the fastest is….

YouTube

81% of users in the U.S (over 2 billion people!) use YouTube. Yes, it is a quarter of the world’s population. This represents an increase of 8% since 2020.

Final Thoughts

Well, this was a handle!  Creating your social media strategy is not an easy feat, and requires being on top of the latest statistics and trends. But a social media strategy needs to be aligned with your overall business and monetization goals, starting with reaching your audience at the time they are most receptive to conversion. At CodeFuel we use artificial intelligence to leverage high intent data, so your marketing efforts reach the right user at the right time. Learn more about how we help achieve results by signing up.

Social Media Demographics Study – Who Are The Social Media Users in 2024?

Social Media Demographics Study – Who Are The Social Media Users in 2024?

Who isn’t on social media these days? Thanks to mobile technology, every phone comes with social media channels to connect with others, engage and share content and entertain.

Companies around the world are tapping into the benefits of engaging social media channels in their strategies. But which channel is the best for your company? Finding this out will depend on your audience. Therefore, understanding who are social media users is critical for success.

Here we prepared a guide with the top statistics and figures you need to understand your social media users in 2024​. This updated guide on demographics will give you the figures you need to define an informed strategy, such as usage, age, gender, country, and behavior.

Follow our 2024 Guide to Social Media Demographics and discover who is the audience on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest, YouTube, Snapchat, and Tiktok. Bookmark this page to have it handy.

So, How Many People Use Social Media?

Let’s start from the basics: how many social media users are in the world? Is social media really everywhere?

According to studies, more than half the world’s population — 4.33 billion people — use social media. 

That suggests that 9 in 10 Internet users use social media each month.

Social Media Use Around the World

As of April 2021, there were 521 million new social media users from last year, indicating an annual growth of 13.7%.

Mobile access is a great part of social media growth, as 99% of social media users access via their mobile phones.

How often people use social media?

The average user spends 2hrs 22 minutes a day on social media. This varies according to the platform though, as people spend more time on some social platforms than others.

Which platforms are the most popular?

Facebook is by large the most common social media platform, followed by YouTube and Instagram.

Most Used Social Media Platforms

Source

Social Media Users By Country

Usage of Social Media varies by country too. According to Statista, China is the country with the most users, with over a billion users expected by 2025, followed by India with half a billion.

The United States is in 4th place, Japan in 10th. Surprisingly, the United Kingdom is in 14th place with 50.89 million users expected by 2025, followed by South Korea with 45.53 million users.

United States

Social media adoption in the U.S has grown from only 5% in 2006 to 72% in 2020.

Social Media United States

Age group: The same research shows that most users are in the range of 18-29 years old. 

Age Demographics Social Media United States

UK

According to statistics, in January 2020 there were 45 million social media users in the UK, this number had increased to 53 million by the start of 2021. That means 77.9% of the UK population uses at least one social media platform.

Social Media UK

Source

Time spent on social channels:  The British spend 1h 49 minutes every day on social media.

Age of social media users: Most social media users are in the range of 18-34 years old.

Age Demographics Social Media UK

The most used social media platforms in the UK are YouTube and Facebook. Interestingly, this is one of the few countries where Facebook is in second place as the most used social media platform.

South Korea

According to Statista, the number of social media users in South Korea will reach 45.5 million by 2025, from 41.4 million in 2017.

Social Media South Korea

Age group:  the highest social media penetration — 86.9%— was among the 20-29 years old as of 2019.

The largest group of Instagram users in South Korea, as of March 2021 are women between 25 and 34 years old.

The most used social network in South Korea is Facebook.

Australia

According to Statista studies, in January 2021, almost 80% of Australians were active social media users, compared to 58% in 2015.

Age group: The use of social media is dominated by the 25-34-year-old group. Younger Australians, from 14 to 28 years old, prefer to use Instagram.

Most popular network: Facebook still leads as the most widely used social networking service, followed by YouTube and Instagram.

South Africa

Statistics show that social media users in South Africa will reach over 26 million by 2025, from 22.89 million in 2019.

Social Media South Africa

Social media users increased by 3 million between 2020 and 2021. As of January 2021, 41.9% of South Africans used social media.

Age group: According to a Digital Report by Data Report, the largest group of users of social media are in the range of 25 to 34 years old.

Age Demographics Social Media South Africa

Time spent on social media:  South Africans spend an average of 3 and a half hours on social media every day.

Time Spent on Social Media South Africa

Most popular Network:  Interestingly, the most popular network in South Africa is WhatsApp, followed by YouTube in second place and then Facebook.

Most Used Social Media South Africa

Now that we explored the basics of key markets, let’s analyze the demographics of the social platforms, who are the users?

Understanding the audience is critical to define a successful social media strategy for your business. 

Facebook

Source

2021 Facebook Demographics

Facebook is still the undisputed leader of social networks, although now YouTube and Instagram are getting close. Their reach and broad audience make it a clear choice for most companies looking to market and advertise their products.

Active users/month

  • 2.7 billion people use Facebook every month.

Age Facebook users

Age Demographics Facebook Users

Income

  • Facebook is used by over 80% of households regardless of the income break.

Gender

The gender division is not that marked among Facebook users, as there are 8% more users that identify as male than female.

Facebook Users By Gender

Device usage

  • 98% of Facebook users access through mobile. 
  • While over 80% access only through a mobile phone. 17% access both through mobile and computer.

The takeaway

  • Despite new competitors, the world crisis, and all that happened in 2020, Facebook is still the most used social platform.
  • Although most users are millennials, boomers form half of the audience, which results in an attractive opportunity to run ads.
  • The massive reach of Facebook means that it is only logical to advertise there even if you only share your posts from other platforms.

Instagram

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2021 Instagram Demographics

Instagram is the network for sharing photos and video, turning steadily into a marketplace of its own.

Active users/month

  • 1 billion people use Instagram every month.

Age of Instagram users

  • The largest age group is of 25-34-year-olds (33.1%)

Age Intagram Users

Time

  • Instagram users spend on average 53 minutes per day on the platform.

Income

  • In the U.S, 60% of users that earn more than $100k/year are on Instagram, while only 44% of the lower-income range (less than $30k/year).

Gender

According to Statista, there is almost the same % of male than female Instagram users.

Distribution of Instagram users worldwide as of January 2021, by gender

Percentage of users
Male 49.2%
Female 50.8%

Device usage

  • 11.96% of the world’s active mobile Internet users access Instagram daily.
  • Since Instagram doesn’t have a desktop app, until a few years ago, there won’t be a possibility of using the social network from PC. Nowadays, marketers and businesses adapt their browsers to be able to use Instagram from desktops.

The Takeaway 

  • Instagram is steadily growing in the last few years and now is the second most-used network after Facebook.
  • The launch of Instagram Reels positions Instagram as a competitor with TikTok.
  • In fact, Instagram is competing fiercely for the younger user’s attention with TikTok and Snapchat.

LinkedIn

2021 LinkedIn Demographics

The social media network for professionals and B2B works by different rules as other social networks. Its focus on providing value, networking, and lead generation make it a no-brainer when it comes to promoting your business.

Active users per month

  • There are 756 million members of Linkedin of which 260 are monthly active users.

LinkedIn Active Users

Age distribution

The age group with the largest LinkedIn active users is 25-34 years. However, the target demographics focus on professionals 30-49 years old.

  • 60% of people 25-34 are on LinkedIn.
  • Only 3% age 55%+ use the platform
  • 17% of Internet users use LinkedIn

Time

According to Similar Web, users spend an average of 7.30 minutes every day on LinkedIn, at which time they visit about 6 pages.

Income 

  • Linkedin members are on the higher income side, with 60% of households with an annual income of over $100k/year using LinkedIn.
  • Also, 40% and 49% of medium-income households (from $60k/year to $80k/year) use LinkedIn.
  • On the contrary, only 2% of the lower-income range (under $30k/year) use the network.

This can be explained as LinkedIn is a network for B2B and professionals, which tend to be in the medium/high-income range.

Gender

LinkedIn Gender Distribution

Image source

Device usage 

  • Contrarily with the other social networks, LinkedIn is used primarily on desktop. It makes sense since people use LinkedIn for professional/business purposes. According to SimilarWeb, 32% of LinkedIn traffic from desktops comes from the U.S.
  • However, the LinkedIn app has been downloaded 500,000,000+ times from the Google Play Store, according to Google Play. That represents a 400% increase from 2018, where it was a mere 100 million downloads.
  • 57% of the impressions on LinkedIn come from mobile.

The takeaway

  • While it could seem that LinkedIn is for older professionals, millennials make up a quarter of the platform.
  • Marketing and advertising efforts on LinkedIn can be productive since it has a high-educated and higher-earning demographic. Since its audience is primarily B2B, requires very specific marketing activities and is a top market for lead generation.

Twitter

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2021 Twitter Demographics

One of the strengths of Twitter, besides allowing everybody to express their opinion, is that you can tag almost any business or person simply by tagging them in a Tweet. This helps companies with their social listening and brand analysis.

Active users per month

  • There are 330 million monthly active users on Twitter.

Age distribution

  • More than half of Twitter users ( 63%) are between 35 and 65 years old. This percentage refers to global users.
  • In the U.S., most Twitter users (42%) are younger, between 18-29 years old.

Time

Business

  • 75% of B2B businesses market their products/services on Twitter.

Income

  • 42%  of users hold a degree, which suggests a higher-earning audience, good for advertising.

Gender

  • Globally, there are twice more men (66%) on Twitter than women (34%). In the U.S,  this rate is 61.6% male and 38.4% female Twitter users.

Twitter Gender Distribution

Device usage 

  • Twitter is mostly a mobile social media platform, and 80% of users access Twitter from their mobile device.
  • According to Google, the app was downloaded over a billion times.

The takeaway

  • One of the keys to Twitter’s success is that is easy to use and generates short-term interactions.
  • Since it is dynamic, it is a good place to share updates, attract the interest of the users and generate discussions.
  • Most (80%) of tweets are generated from the 10% of most active Twitter accounts. That means Twitter is a place of influencers.

Youtube

Image source

2021 YouTube Demographics

Youtube video range goes from recipes and tutorials to funny cat videos, entertainment, and music. If it can be on video, is on YouTube.

Active users per month

  • There are 2 billion active users on YouTube

Age distribution

  • Most users (85%) are in the 15-25 years old age group.
  • Interestingly, more than half of users over 56 years old also use YouTube (58%).
  • ¾ of people 26-55 also use YouTube.

Youtube Age Distribution

Time

  • People spend on average 41.9 minutes on YouTube every day. This amounts to almost 5 hours per week.
  • Combined, people watch over a billion hours of YouTube videos.

Income 

  • YouTube usage is spread across all income ranges, with a slightly higher penetration (89%) in the highest income range —$100k/year—.

Gender

  • 72% of female Internet users are on YouTube and also 72% of men.

Youtube Gender Distribution

Device usage 

  • More than 40% of YouTube watch time comes from mobile devices, and 34% on the TV. This represents a shift to connected TVs since by 2019, 49% of YouTube viewing was mobile and 27% on TV.

Youtube Device Usage

Source: emarketer.com

The takeaway

  • YouTube has proved to be popular in a wide age range with a peak of popularity among 15 to 35-year-olds.
  • More than half of YouTube’s users use the platform every day, making YouTube the most used video network for the Internet.
  • All this suggests YouTube offers great advertising opportunities as it is still growing.

Tiktok

2021 TikTok Demographics

TikTok is becoming the next video-sharing platform, catering to people between the age of 13 and 40.

Active users per month

  • TikTok has 1 billion monthly active users. That’s an increase of 1.1 billion from 2018.
  • The platform has 100 million active users in the U.S.

Age distribution

  • Most TikTok users are in the age range of 10-19 years old (32.5%). While this shows a focus on the youngest users, the percentage of users aged 20-29 is increasing, reaching 29.5%. This suggests that TikTok’s audience composition is becoming older.

Time

  • The users spend an average of 52 minutes per day on the platform. Younger users spend up to 80 minutes per day on the app.

Income 

  • 40% of  TikTok users belong to the highest income range, making more than $100k/year.

Tiktok Users Income in US

Gender

  • 60% of TikTok U.S. users are female and 40%  are male.

Device usage 

  • In April 2021, TikTok had 39.2 million mobile unique visitors,  which means an increase of 300% from the 12.6 million or April 2020.

The takeaway

  • It is without a doubt that since its launch, TikTok has had unprecedented growth. Currently available in 150 countries, the platform is quickly becoming the app for sharing video content. 
  •  The platform announced that soon it will allow monetization, with shoppable videos, for their creators.

Pinterest

Source

2021 Pinterest Demographics

The social network for makers, Pinterest has long evolved from a platform to look for recipes and DIY tutorials to a more B2C marketplace. Its users also reflect this trend.

Pinterest trends

Source

Active users per month

Age distribution

  • The largest group of users are between 50-64 years old, followed by the 30-49 years old group.

Percentage of U.S. adults who use Pinterest as of February 2021, by age group

Share of respondents
18-29 32%
30-49 34%
50-64 38%
65+ 18%

Time

Income 

  • Pinterest attracts more users that earn more than $75k/year, as well as those with college degrees or higher education.

Gender

Pinterest Gender Distribution

  • The gender gap in Pinterest is pretty marked with considerably more female pinners than male.

Device usage 

  • 58.78%  of Pinterest traffic comes from desktops.

  • According to Pinterest, 85% of their users have downloaded the app.

The takeaway

  • The majority of female users are one of the characteristics that differentiate Pinterest from other social platforms.
  • Although according to the stats, older users are the majority of the audience, recently there has been an increase of GenZ and millennials using the platform.
  • It is product-focused and offers a good opportunity for ads because of the high-earning audience.

Snapchat

Source

2021 Snapchat Demographics

Although it was overlooked for a long time, Snapchat is wildly popular among younger users.

Active users per month

  • Snapchat has 265 million monthly active users.

Age distribution

  • 75%  of their users are aged 13-34.

Snapchat Age Distribution

Source: MarketingCharts.com

Time

  • Snapchat users spend on average 30 minutes per day on the platform.

Income 

  • 42% of medium income ($70-80k/year) households use Snapchat.
  • 32% of the lower-income range use the platform.
  • 39% of the higher-income households use Snapchat.

Gender

  • There is a gender disparity in Snapchat in favor of female users which are almost double than the male.
  • 61%  of Snapchat users are female.
  • 38% are male.

Device usage 

  • Snapchat is only available from mobile.
  • The app is the second most used app on mobile devices.

The takeaway

  • While the platform doesn’t create much buzz, it is the most popular social network among teens, even before TikTok.
  • The audience is very engaged, opening the app an average of 30 times a day.

Which Networks Are the Best for You According to Your Industry?

The data and figures we mentioned are meant to be a general indication of the audiences for each social media platform.

To define your marketing strategy, you should look at the specific demographic for your target audience and compare it with the data we presented.

Finding the right social network for your company depends on your audience and your industry. First, find out where your users are hanging out on social media. Then look at their demographic characteristics.

Different industries may need different channels. For instance, if your company caters to teenagers, you should look to promote your products on Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok.

If your company offers B2B services, then Linkedin or maybe Facebook is your platforms. If your audience is DIYves, then look at Pinterest and Instagram.

Why Are Demographics Important for Your Monetization Strategy? 

Demographics is critical for marketing and monetization strategies. Demographics help you understand the characteristics of your audience.

It explains who is your user and helps you with customer segmentation, helping target exactly your ideal customer. You should use demographics to make your marketing efforts more effective.

How a One-Stop Monetization Solution Can Help

Instead of searching and analyzing myriad statistics before you even start with your monetization efforts, leverage a monetization solution. This will simplify the task, segmenting and profiling your audience so you can monetize your digital properties effectively.

CodeFuel is a one-stop monetization solution that makes highly targeted monetization much easier. The solution allows you to leverage search, display, and shopping ads with intent-based targeting. Therefore, offering relevant ads and news to your audience. Learn more about how CodeFuel can help here.

Essentials for a Winning Social Media Marketing Strategy

Essentials for a Winning Social Media Marketing Strategy

Social media continues to be a powerful way for brands to reach their audiences. They can use it to create more awareness of their brand, to build customer loyalty, and to increase sales.

But just having a presence on social media is not enough to do any of that. You need to create a thoughtful social media marketing strategy that incorporates the latest best practices so you can maximize your results.

Here are a few tips for doing that:

Identify Your Goals

This should be step #1 in any marketing strategy. You can’t know what tactics to use if you don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish.

You must identify your goals, and you must be specific. Your goal shouldn’t be “get more followers,” but rather “get 1,000 more followers in the next month” or “increase brand exposure 30 percent this quarter.”

Your goal should also be measurable. So if your goal is “create more positive brand associations,” you have to have a way to determine if you’ve met that goal. You might look at the number of reviews you get or the number of positive brand mentions. Whatever you decide, you must choose a way to specifically measure your goal to determine if you’ve been successful.

Research the Competition

The competition provides a wealth of data that can improve your marketing strategy.

To start, you should be researching your competition to find out what those brands are doing to reach their audiences. What social networks are they on? How frequently are they posting? What kind of posts are they sharing? How many followers do they have? From where are they getting brand mentions?

With intensive research, you can identify the strategies that are having the most success with your target audience and then you can try to replicate them on your own channels.

You also need to research your competition to find opportunities that these brands are not exploring. For example, you might notice that none of your competition is sharing live video, but since you’ve had success with it, you decide to offer more of these videos to set yourself apart.

Getting as much information as you can about the competition can help you find new opportunities for growing your brand and ways to distinguish your brand.

Have a Separate Content Strategy

Most people don’t think of social media as a place to share content, except to share links to content. But you can and should create original content specifically for sharing on social media.

Many social networks are making this easier. Facebook is rolling out a new feature that displays articles instantly in the news feed. LinkedIn has a publishing platform that lets you originate content right on site. Even Twitter users are finding ways to share content through the use of images that aren’t capped by the character limit.

When you share content on social media, you are able to engage your users better and you create more opportunities for sharing. You can share more in-depth content than what the standard update allows, which lets you offer useful information, engaging stories, and more.

By sharing unique content on your social media channels, you give your followers a reason to be there. They know they aren’t going to get that same content on your website, so they follow you on social media so as not to miss anything.

Create a Team

Two heads are better than one. Ten heads are better than two. And so on.

A lot of brands put a single person in charge of handling their social media, but they would be better served by having an entire team responsible for the job. With more people on the team, a diversity of ideas can be generated. One person may become narrowly focused – a team of creative thinkers can play off each other to come up with unique ideas that get more results.

Assign each team member a specific role, such as handling all video content or researching the competition. Don’t overlook jobs like customer service or lead generation. Determine what the team members’ strengths are, and assign everyone where they will make the most impact.

Hold a weekly meeting with this team and encourage regular communication. With more people sharing responsibility for the same goals, you have to make sure that everyone is on the same page and that individual efforts are working together to achieve the same resolution.

There may well come a day that social media is obsolete, but we can’t see that day arriving any time soon (if at all). You can’t afford to treat social media like a novelty or an accessory to your marketing strategy. You need to create a dedicated strategy to your social media marketing, and these tips will help you make it a successful one.

Tips for Getting Started and Being Successful with Facebook Live

Facebook Live has introduced an innovative new option to reach your audience.

You no longer have to confine yourself to updating short video updates after an event has passed or to “live blog” with snippets of text as you report from an event. Now, you can broadcast a stream in real time to your audience just as if you were reporting a news program.

Since this is a relatively new feature, you may still be a little confused about how to start using it or how to get the most out of it to influence your audience.

Tech blogger Hillel Fuld sat down with CodeFuel Vice President of Marketing Angie Geffen to talk about this new technology and its potential. You can check out that session here, or you can read on to get some top tips for getting start and being successful with Facebook Live:

Create a Unique Offering

Everyone and their grandmother can post a video of themselves reacting to watching a show or singing along to a popular song — and does.

You need to create something unique that is worthwhile for your audience to watch.

Take advantage of the access that only you have to create unique videos. For example, if you attend an industry event, broadcast live from that event. If you can snag an exclusive interview with an expert in your field, broadcast it live instead of waiting to post it after the fact.

The fewer people that are offering something, the more interesting and special it seems to be. Make sure you are among those that are offering something rare.

Invest in Good Equipment

You can take video with any smart phone with a camera, but that doesn’t mean you should.

Low-quality video will reflect poorly on your brand. Your audience may think that the products and services you offer have the same poor quality and they won’t buy.

Invest in a good quality camera and other equipment to improve the look and sound of your videos. You may want to purchase items such as a high-quality microphone, green screen, professional backdrops, and good lighting.

You don’t need the best setup that money can buy, but you should purchase the highest quality you can to create a professional-looking video.

Create a Content Strategy

Just like you create a content strategy for your blog, you need to create a content strategy for your Facebook Live videos.

Developing a calendar is the best way to create your strategy, as it will include a clear list of dates and video topics that you can plan around to create a steady stream of videos.

However, if you aren’t able to develop a plan in that much detail, you can at least develop a plan for the frequency of your videos, the type of videos you will produce, or even the roles that your team members will take in creating these videos. Therefore, you may not know what you will record until the week of the video, but if you at least know that you are going to put out a video every week, you can be thinking ahead and planning accordingly.

Don’t be Afraid to Experiment

Recording live video can be very challenging. Don’t feel like you have to have every aspect of your video planned or that you can’t deviate from your plan.

You will make mistakes on camera. The unexpected will happen. Instead of trying to prevent that, it is better to remain flexible and focus on how you can learn and grow from those mishaps.

If your mic drops out during a recording, you can make changes to your tech setup to ensure that mistakes like that don’t happen again. If someone you are interviewing goes rogue during your talk, you can create a better vetting process for on-camera guests.

The way you handle mistakes and mishaps on the air will also show your audience what kind of service and professionalism you have to offer them. If you’re able to roll with the punches and act with grace under fire, you will inspire your audience’s trust and confidence.

Loosen Up and Have Fun

The best videos are those that are fun, and if you are having fun, your audience will appreciate your video more.

Plus, if you are having fun, you’ll be more open to learning and adapting as you adjust to using this new, experimental platform. Make funny jokes and asides as you are recording. Respond to mishaps in funny ways. Show off your personality!

Your audience will feel more engaged with the video if you are having fun, and they will be more likely to comment on your stream and to watch your future live videos.

Facebook Live offers a great way to engage your audience and to create more exposure for your brand. Use these tips to get started with the platform and start connecting with more of your followers.

Best Ways to Monetize Your Facebook Page

Your Facebook page is not just a powerful tool for reaching audience members and creating exposure for your brand. It is also a powerful money-making tool on its own.

The more followers you have on your Facebook page, the more opportunities you have to increase your revenue. You just need to develop the right monetization strategy.

Here are a few of the best ways to monetize your Facebook page:

Sell Sponsored Posts

You are already sharing links on your Facebook page, so why not get paid to do it?

If you have a nice sized following, other companies will pay you to promote their products or services. Bloggers may even pay you to share their posts.

Just make sure that any posts you share offer some value to your audience. Otherwise, you risk alienating your followers and losing what you have worked so hard to build.

Also, be careful about the ratio of sponsored posts that you share. Your audience may not be able to ID every sponsored post, but they will know if the majority of your content is paid for, and they will question your authenticity.

Share Affiliate Links

Affiliate links are like sponsored posts, but you get a percentage of the sale instead of a flat payment for the advertisement.

You choose the products you want to promote, and if your audience buys through the link you share, you get a small percentage of the sale. Affiliate marketing is a great way to build a passive income because you can get paid again and again without having to do more work.

Again, pick quality products that actually serve a need for your audience, and don’t overload your page with affiliate links. Savvy followers will ID these links immediately and may stop following you if you share too many.

Create Landing Pages

Why sell other people’s products on your Facebook page when you can sell your own?

You can create custom landing pages for Facebook that go straight to your own products or services. You can then promote these landing pages through Facebook ads, or you can share the link to your followers.

The landing pages are not separate from your Facebook page. They are located in tabs on your page.

Consider creating landing pages for special sales, specific products or services you want to promote, a special offer for your followers, and so on.

Add a Facebook Shop

You can sell products straight from your Facebook page with a shop.

You can create special iFrame pages that nest in your Facebook page. These pages can function just like an ecommerce store, and followers can buy products straight from the page.

If you don’t create products to sell, you can still add a Facebook shop for affiliate products. Display the items like a gallery on your own ecommerce shop, but have them lead to the seller when users click on the items. They will then pay the seller, and you will get a cut.

Host Contests and Giveaways

Contests and giveaways provide many benefits, including helping you to generate more exposure for your brand and opening up a revenue stream.

You can offer your own products and services as the prizes in your contests, which will help you generate more of your own sales. Your users will share links to your page or the contest to enter, and you will get much more exposure and traffic, which will lead to new sales.

You can also charge other companies to offer their products or services as the prizes in your contests. They will be willing to pay to get the exposure that your large audience offers. Plus, you’ll still get the exposure, as well, since users will share links to enter.

Explore all the opportunities for exposure from your contests and giveaways, such as asking people to share the contest on their social networks, to follow you on all your social networks, to sign up for your email list, and more. Each action would be another entry, which improves their chances to win.

Write Reviews

Writing reviews is a bit like sharing sponsored posts, but you are in control of the content.

You can charge companies for the review and then write about your real opinion of the product or service. You will be providing value for your audience while also making some extra money.

In addition to the payment for the review, you can also get the product or service for free as well as some discount codes for your customers.

As with all sponsorship opportunities, make sure you only review products or services that are actually useful to your audience.

Monetizing your Facebook page is a delicate balancing act. But if you can get it right, you can profit off that huge following you have worked so hard to build.