WHAT'S NEW

February 25, 2021

by Billy Boey

• 2021
• business
• digital marketing
• marketing
• social media
• social media marketing
• statistics
• trend

The Must-Know Social Media Statistics for You to Cope Online In 2021

Back in the early 2000s with just Myspace and Friendster along with sloppy dial-up internet connection, it was nothing much but a place to socialise for fun. Little did we know that social media will take a pivotal role in just years to come.

Within the last decade, social media has revolutionised the world so much that it became a core component of our daily life. Businesses, socialites, influencers place the highest emphasis on social media to make it big.

Social media is still (and always) progressing in each passing year, with new updates and features, it is going to impact the world like never before. Hence, know your social media. Here’s the updated and must-know social media statistics for you to cope in the digital world of 2021.

GENERAL SOCIAL MEDIA USAGE STATISTICS

• There are approximately 3.5 billion social media users which equates to around 45% of the world’s population. (Emarsys, 2019)
• It is found that people spend 2 hours and 23 minutes daily on social media browsing and messaging. (GlobalWebIndex)
• The top 4 social media apps used by the people are Facebook (95%), Twitter (84%), Instagram (74%), LinkedIn (62%), and YouTube (61%). (Hootsuite)
• Also, the same study by Hootsuite stated that 90% of brands build brand awareness through social media, 77% of them use it to maintain brand reputation, 71% use it for building and managing an engaged community, 61% use it to increase conversions and 50% use it to gain customer or market insights.
• Videos on social media are the number one content tool used by marketers, with almost 93% of marketers gained customers thanks to video contents. Plus, 63% of them stated that it generates the best ROI on social media too. (Animoto)
• As to date, there are 90.4% of Millennials (born between 1980 – 1996), 77.5% of Generation X (born between 1965 – 1980), and 48.2% of Baby Boomers (born between 1946 – 1964) are active social media users. (Emarketer, 2019)
• 91% of all social medias access their social apps via mobile devices. Likewise, almost 80% of total time spent on social apps occur via mobile devices.

FACEBOOK USAGE STATISTICS

• Facebook remains the most widely used social media platform, holding the position of the biggest and most popular social networking service based on global reach and total active users.
• Today, Facebook has over 3 billion users, over 200 million businesses, over 100 billion messages and more than 1 billion stories shared everyday. (Facebook)
• 88% of Facebook daily active users live outside of North America, with majority of the users living in the Asia-Pacific region.
• As of now, there are around 1.82 billion people log into Facebook daily. Up 12% from previous year due to Covid-19 pandemic lockdown and increase of smartphone accessibility.
• 87.1% of businesses with over 100 employees use Facebook for marketing purposes in 2020. (eMarketer)
• Facebook posts have an average engagement rate of 3.8% and an organic reach of 6%. (Hootsuite)
• Facebook users find video content to be the most captivating with 20% of it being a live broadcast. Hence, businesses use videos extensively on Facebook and its subsidiary, Instagram. (eMarketer, Facebook)
• 51% of Facebook users unfollow brands if they post annoying content and 27% flag the brand or page as spam or report and block it. (Smart Insights)

INSTAGRAM USAGE STATISTICS

• Instagram has over 1 billion monthly active users and 500 million daily stories shared.
• On average, Instagram users spend around 15 minutes scrolling through content on the app (Entrepreneur).
• 75% of people between aged 18 and 24 use Instagram. The remnants are people between the age of 25 and 50, with majority of them probably in their 30s.
• 77% of people use Instagram for viewing photos, 51% for watching videos, 45% for sharing content, 23% for networking, and 11% for finding/shopping for products. (eMarketer)
• How-to tutorials are the most watched videos on Instagram with an aggregate of 80%. (Wibbitz)
• 60% of people say they discover new products on Instagram.
• By advertising on Instagram, businesses can reach 57 million youths (aged 13-17 years).
• Influencers are seen as the most effective advertising tool, with 69% of digital marketers plan to invest in Instagram for influencer marketing. (eMarketer)
• Brands are more than willing to work with micro and nano-influencers. The main reasons are cost-effectiveness (56%), connections with their audiences (55%), authentic content (39%), better targeted messaging (38%), and long-term loyalty (9%). (eMarketer)
• The United States has the most Instagram users with approximately 140 million people. It is followed closely by India at second spot, and subsequently Brazil, Indonesia, Russia, Turkey and Japan.

TWITTER USAGE STATISTICS

• To date, Twitter has 330 million monthly active users with 134 million users accessing Twitter daily. (Twitter)
• The United States has the highest number of Twitter users in the world with 69.3 million users, second place is Japan (50.9 million), follow up by India (17.5 million), United Kingdom (16.45 million), Brazil (16.2 million) and so on.
• Users access Twitter mainly for news, as proven and supported by 71% of American Twitter users. (Pew Research Center)
• 47% of Twitter users prefer brands that are culturally engaged. (Magna)
• These factors governed Twitter users buying decision: social involvement being the top-ranked factor, follow up by prices, benefits, brand reputation, industry ratings, and authenticity. (Magna)
• Tweets posted between noon and 10pm (local time) garner maximum engagement. 55% more engagement is received by tweets containing GIFs. (Twitter)

LINKEDIN USAGE STATISTICS

• LinkedIn has nearly 740 million members from 200 countries. (LinkedIn)
• LinkedIn has a listed over 55 million companies, 90 thousand schools, and 36 thousand skills. There are over 14 million job vacancies posted in Linkedin.
• Every second, two or more new members sign up for LinkedIn.
• The United States has the highest Linkedin users of over 176 million members. India takes second place with over 74 million LinkedIn members.
• Nearly 70% of members on LinkedIn are from outside the United States.
• It is considered the most effective B2B platform with 94% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn to distribute content. (LinkedIn)
• 40 million people use LinkedIn to search for jobs each week.
• LinkedIn’s SlideShare proves that visual-centric content works well in LinkedIn. 400,000 content pieces are added to SlideShare per month. On desktop alone, 4 million users view content published on SlideShare daily.
• LinkedIn InMails increase your response rate by 300% higher than emails. (LinkedIn)

The above recent, essential statistics will guide you to make wiser planning and decisions for your businesses and personal growth. It also proves that social media is an integral part for the world of tomorrow. It provides us with more convenience; a one-stop centre for entertainment, connectivity and businesses, providing us all we need in one app. Social media is going to stay for a long time and ever progressing for a better future.