👀 The seven most important social media insights you need to know
Social media data and trends to fuel your inspiration and drive growth.
Happy Friday! 👋
This week, we’re mixing things up and focusing solely on seven of the most impactful social media insights that will give you an edge over your competition.
Ready? Let’s do it…
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👀 Creators are outperforming brand engagement rates
On Instagram, creators’ engagement rates are over 1000% higher than brands (0.3% vs. 3.5%). These engagement rates are particularly interesting as they represent the inherent trust that exists within a creators’ community.
What can we do about it?
Many brands are still not prioritising creator-driven content. Whilst in theory, costs will prohibit many businesses from working with creators and influencers with over 100k followers, smaller creators can deliver outsized impact. Smaller creators’ engagement rates are the highest, and in my experience, I’ve always found working with this size of influencer to be the most effective approach.
📹 Video dominates time spent on social
The chart below shows the average daily watch time of videos across TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Discord. Across every platform (except YouTube) video consumption has jumped significantly and now 60% of all time spent on social is spent watching video (!)
What can we do about it?
No prizes for guessing my suggestion here; we need prioritise short-form video content. It’s essential for organic growth.
It’s not just these platforms leading the way either, Video creation on LinkedIn is up 34% and we’ll be seeing their new recommended videos feature very soon.
📺 YouTube becomes the first streaming platform to reach 10% of TV Viewership
Not only is social media used by over 5 billion people worldwide, it’s also starting to take a sizeable share of the TV viewing market. YouTube recently overtook Netflix to become the world’s most used streaming platform, taking 10% of overall TV viewership. This demonstrates YouTube’s increasing dominance along with shifting user consumption habits.
What can we do about it?
Building off the first two trends of rising ‘creator’ engagement and increased consumption of video, brands should start to consider themselves as ‘media companies’ and use personalities to build a ‘media engine’ for their business.
Creator-led content will not only be beneficial for your short form content, we should be considering how we can create long-form content in partnership with others too. Also, YouTube ads will increase in importance for brands too, but likely get more expensive too, unfortunately…
💡 Nearly three in five consumers find social media influencers to be a useful source for tech information
Survey data reveals that nearly three in ten consumers (58%) across markets find social media influencers as a useful source of tech information - placing the category among the top three.
What can we do about it?
Across most categories, influencers continue to impact buying preferences and purchase behaviours. My suggestion is to take a long-term view for those you choose to work with. Influencer partnerships go wrong when we see them as just a vehicle to reach a new audience. Influencers are powerful when they become true advocates for your business and you work with them across multiple mediums (long and short form video, webinars, speaking, podcasts etc.).
🚀 Reddit is the fastest-growing social media platform
Reddit is having a wonderful time right now, with their recent IPO and partnerships with Google and OpenAI, there’s a sense of renewed momentum around the platform. Traffic is way up and media companies are reporting 132% increases in click-through rates.
What can we do about it?
Reddit requires a different approach to other social networks and for businesses to adopt a ‘community-first’ mindset. This means getting involved with conversations (not just dropping links) and listening to what communities are saying. Reddit is a wonderful place to get a perspective on the narrative of an industry and the problems people are facing. It’s also delivering good results for advertisers too.
📉 X is seeing a large decline in EU users
Is this the beginning of the end? It’s hard to know how many more blows X users can be dealt before they walk. For now, it seems that the mass exodus that many predicted a year ago is starting to happen.
What can we do about it?
Twitter was the platform that got me into social media, but like many others, I avoid X if I can now and I honestly can’t recommend it as a good place for businesses. Things may change, but there’s better immediate opportunities for brands to grow on social.
🔍 New data helps shine a light on attribution
Rand Fishkin is my marketing hero. He’s devoted his professional life to sharing incredibly useful and well-researched data freely and openly. This latest research will help us as marketers explain attribution in a way that our stakeholders will finally understand and shine a light on why our data only shows a tiny amount of traffic was driven from social, when in fact the impact was much larger.
What can we do about it?
Google, Microsoft/Bing, and DuckDuckGo account for ~70% of all traffic referrals. But, where people are spending time is NOT 70% search. That is not where 70% of visits go. To try and attribute correctly we need to to the following:
Make sure every lead form has a ‘how did you hear about us’ field and allows people to add additional detail.
Ensure the sales team (and every other customer facing team) asks every customer ‘how did you hear about us?’ and ensure this data is reflected accurately in your CRM
Run a report after 3 months after making these changes and you’ll start to see the impact of social on leads, pipeline, sales velocity and average sales prices.
Two more things before you go:
📚 Recommended reading:
The Marketing Meetup have introduced the Summer School 😊☀️🎓
They’ll be delivering you 4 weeks of very useful micro learning, teaching practical social media tips, and the latest in AI for marketers.
All for free. Delivered straight to your inbox. Check it out here.
📍 If you work in B2B and are based in the UK, you’ll want to be here…
Join us on 6th November in London for a one-day event that will help shape the future of social media in B2B.
We’ve just confirmed a wonderful list of speakers and we’d love to see you there.
Whether you're a brand marketer or agency professional, you'll leave armed with actionable insights, inspired by innovative strategies, and connected to a network of B2B marketing pioneers.
📬 See you next soon!
That’s it for this month, I hope you found this useful 🙌
Made with ❤️ by Andy