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30 Crazy Social Media Facts Marketers Need To Know

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30 Crazy Social Media Facts Marketers Need To Know

Social media has become an integral part of our lives.

From Facebook to Instagram, Twitter to Snapchat, TikTok to Pinterest – everyone uses social media platforms to connect with friends, share their thoughts, find inspiration, and stay updated with current events.

It wasn’t too long ago that social media was a small slice of the marketing pie, but now it’s impossible to ignore. You can now find social media content in just about any marketing campaign.

And it’s no wonder marketers are using these sites to reach potential customers and increase sales.

By the time you’re reading this, more than 3.2 billion images will be shared by social media users, 8 billion videos viewed on Facebook, and 65% of those views will come from mobile users – all in one day.

People are in love with social media platforms. Not a crush or infatuation, but the type of love that keeps them up at night and interferes when they’re trying to concentrate – literally.

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If you’re a business owner or marketer looking for ways to boost your company’s visibility online, here are some facts about social media marketing that might change how you think about these platforms and their potential to reach your consumer.

30 Insane Social Media Facts

There are plenty of statistics out there to fill you in on all the details of social media, but many of them are – frankly – boring.

So, why not lighten things up a bit?

You need to optimize your social media strategy, and you need a few numbers to make it happen.

We want to make it easy for you to enjoy, remember, and apply what you learn, so here are 30 insane social media facts to light your marketing fire.

Social Media Usage Stats

  • 1. We like to share the love. The average internet user has 8.6 social media accounts.
  • 2. The number of social media users skyrocketed with 72% of adults using at least one social network.
  • 3. Young adults were early adopters of social media platforms. However, older adult usage continues to increase in recent years with more 50-64-year-olds using Facebook than those 18-29.
  • 4. Need evidence that we’re a visual species? Today in excess of 3.2 billion photos and 720,000 hours of video are shared per day across social media.
  • 5. 59% of WhatsApp users and 53% of Facebook users in the United States post content to their accounts.
  • 6. We spend an average of 145 minutes per day on social media worldwide.

Social Media Marketing Stats

  • 7. As of the third quarter of 2020, 10 million brands are advertising on Facebook. This is a significant increase from 7 million advertisers in the first quarter of the previous year.
  • 8. And it makes sense considering 73% of marketers believe their social media marketing efforts have been “somewhat effective” or “very effective” for their business.
  • 9. This includes B2B marketers who ranked social media advertising second in success (29%) behind paid search (33%) for producing content marketing results.
  • 10. Social media’s ad spend in the United States was $40.3 billion in 2020.
  • 11. According to a report from Dentsu, spurred by an 18% growth in social media, global digital ad spending is projected to grow 10.1% YoY.

Remarkable Instagram Facts We Bet You Never Knew About

  • 12. Instagram reports 50% of users are more interested in a brand when they see ads for it on Instagram.
  • 13. There are 200+ million Instagram business accounts. From mid-sized companies like Fashion Nova (20M followers) to large corporate behemoths like Nike (90M followers), it’s the perfect social platform for visibility and engagement.
  • 14. There are over 2 billion monthly active users on Instagram.
  • 15. Companies use Instagram Stories or influencer marketing with an estimated 500,000 active influencers who are only on Instagram.
  • 16. Instagram users spend 30 minutes each day on Instagram. And for any brand, this kind of social media usage is a marketer’s dream.

    As an example, the fashion brand Adore Me saw great results with its influencer marketing campaign on Instagram and Facebook.

    Content shared by influencers had a two times higher click-through rate, 7% higher sales conversion rate, and 37% lower cost per incremental purchase than traditional creative ads.

YouTube’s Hold On Social Media Users And How To Use It To Your Advantage

  • 17. YouTube is responsible for more than 25% of total worldwide mobile traffic by volume.
  • 18. It is no surprise given social media users upload 500+ hours of content every minute! That’s more content than ABC, CBS, and NBC combined, and enough to keep you glued to your screen – just what marketers need.

    What’s more, even these broadcasting networks now use social media (YouTube included) and it’s not surprising that they do.

    Why?
  • 19. YouTube has 2 billion monthly active logged-in users worldwide. This makes it seem like the entire world is on YouTube; you’ve most likely even visited YouTube today.

    Brands like Nectar use YouTube ads to increase brand visibility. After developing video ad creative that was geared for performance that resulted in a 382% lift in brand interest.

TikTok’s Fascinating Social Media Statistics

  • 20. On average, TikTok users in the U.S. spend 68 minutes a day on the website; 50 minutes of 15-second videos are soundtracked by music clips. For the most part, the content revolves around lip-syncing, dancing, and comedy skits. It mostly appeals to young people.
  • 21. TikTok has the youngest user base of all social media sites with 68% of its users under 30 and 28% under the age of 18.
  • 22. This is a key reason TikTok increased its year-over-year revenue to $1.9 billion in 2020.
  • Looking at these statistics, the potential for social media marketing is striking.
  • 23. Here’s a platform dominated by youngsters and available in 154 countries worldwide. Surprisingly, marketers are just catching up to it.

    It’s where you go to find a younger, active global audience, exactly what Mango needed for its fashion brand.

Mango’s TikTok Strategy That Earned 14,000 Followers

When Mango, the Spanish fashion brand, needed to create more awareness, they turned to TikTok’s TopView – an advertising tool designed to present your videos as soon as users turn on the app.

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TopView ads are 60 seconds long, full-screen, and play automatically with sound.

For this reason, Mango used the tool to showcase international influencers clad in their outfits. Their videos featured official music and a call to action asking viewers to join the Mango community.

The Game-Changing Results

By day one of going live, Mango’s videos had an engagement rate of 17.1%. The days after, the brand saw an astounding 1,900% rise in followers, from 700 to 14,000 TikTok followers.

A statistics-backed example of how to use social media.

Facebook’s Excellent Open Rate You Need to Know About

  • 24. Businesses on Facebook Messenger exchange over 20 billion messages with consumers per month.
  • 25. Facebook users spend 34 minutes a day checking their feeds, reacting to notifications, and responding to messages.
  • 26. 49% of Facebook users log in to the network several times per day.
  • 27. But that’s not all: 41% of American social media users use Facebook to share engaging content while 25% of them like a company’s post.
  • 28. It’s no wonder there are more than 10 million advertisers on the platform.
  • 29. Of the ad clicks generated by these advertisers, over 18% of U.S. adults complete a purchase.
  • 30. All promising implications to a marketer looking to create ads for Facebook’s 81% of users with income between $60,000 and $70,000.

    It’s social media facts like these that inform a digital marketer’s decision when selecting a platform.

    And, when you’re looking to generate leads, create brand awareness, or increase conversions, you need a platform that’s designed for the job.

My English School’s Smart Facebook Strategy

Luigi Sguerri, Founder and CEO of My English School, needed an efficient way of generating leads for the 33 My English School branches across Italy. Not only that, he needed to turn those leads into conversions.

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This meant finding people who were interested in learning English and were likely to enroll.

Sguerri decided to use Facebook for the platform’s ability to target a wide but relevant range of potential customers, encourage action, and guide potential clients throughout the customer journey.

The strategy involved three campaigns targeting different audiences and ThruPlay billing.

  • Mobile-friendly videos targeted people within 10 km of any of the branches.
  • Lead ads targeted travelers, travel professionals, and people interested in travel.
  • Conversion ads targeted teenagers as well as people aged 55-65 and interested in languages.
  • ThruPlay billing ensured they only paid for videos watched to completion.

Result Within A Month

My English School’s strategy earned them 4,000 quality leads within a month and at less than half the price of previous years’ campaigns.

This was twice as many leads as the past year, 58% cheaper, and the company’s best-ever performance.

Summary

Social media is constantly changing, and it remains critically important to your digital marketing strategy.

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The first step is becoming familiar with these social media facts and some of the successful techniques that have been employed.

However, there is a lot more that goes into creating a successful digital marketing plan.

For example, you may need to understand each platform’s different strengths and weaknesses or the best approaches to use.

It isn’t enough to just show up. You need to also understand the rules of the game and know how to rise above the competition.

These 30 social media facts are just a jumping point. What you do with this information is completely up to you, but we know we’ll see some pretty impressive results.

Featured Image: Darko 1981/Shutterstock

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Content Pruning: Why It Works, and How to Do It

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Content Pruning: Why It Works, and How to Do It

Content pruning sounds pretty appealing: delete a ton of content and see your organic traffic improve. But pruning has risks (like deleting useful pages and useful backlinks), and benefits are not guaranteed: So how does pruning actually work? And when

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8 Free SEO Reporting Tools

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8 Free SEO Reporting Tools

There’s no shortage of SEO reporting tools to choose from—but what are the core tools you need to put together an SEO report?

In this article, I’ll share eight of my favorite SEO reporting tools to help you create a comprehensive SEO report for free.

Price: Free

Google Search Console, often called GSC, is one of the most widely used tools to track important SEO metrics from Google Search.

Most common reporting use case

GSC has a ton of data to dive into, but the main performance indicator SEOs look at first in GSC is Clicks on the main Overview dashboard.

As the data is from Google, SEOs consider it to be a good barometer for tracking organic search performance. As well as clicks data, you can also track the following from the Performance report:

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  • Total Impressions
  • Average CTR
  • Average Position
gsc-performance-overviewgsc-performance-overview

Tip

If you’ve signed up for AWT using Google Search Console, you can view your GSC performance data in Ahrefs by clicking “GSC Performance” from the main dashboard.

But for most SEO reporting, GSC clicks data is exported into a spreadsheet and turned into a chart to visualize year-over-year performance.

organic-traffic-graph-showing-clicks-year-over-yearorganic-traffic-graph-showing-clicks-year-over-year

Favorite feature

One of my favorite reports in GSC is the Indexing report. It’s useful for SEO reporting because you can share the indexed to non-indexed pages ratio in your SEO report.

google-search-console-indexed-pages-reportgoogle-search-console-indexed-pages-report

If the website has a lot of non-indexed pages, then it’s worth reviewing the pages to understand why they haven’t been indexed.

Price: Free

Google Looker Studio (GLS), previously known as Google Data Studio (GDS), is a free tool that helps visualize data in shareable dashboards.

Most common reporting use case

Dashboards are an important part of SEO reporting, and GLS allows you to get a total view of search performance from multiple sources through its integrations.

Out of the box, GLS allows you to connect to many different data sources.

Such as:

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  • Marketing products – Google Ads, Google Analytics, Display & Video 360, Search Ads 360
  • Consumer products – Google Sheets, YouTube, and Google Search Console
  • Databases – BigQuery, MySQL, and PostgreSQL
  • Social media platformsFacebook, Reddit, and Twitter
  • Files – CSV file upload and Google Cloud Storage

Sidenote. If you don’t have the time to create your own report manually, Ahrefs has three Google Looker Studio connectors that can help you create automated SEO reporting for any website in a few clicks

google-looker-studio-partner-connectorsgoogle-looker-studio-partner-connectors

Here’s what a dashboard in GLS looks like:

ahrefs-seo-audit-dashboardahrefs-seo-audit-dashboard
Ahrefs Google Looker Studio integration

With this type of dashboard, you share reports that are easy to understand with clients or other stakeholders.

Favorite feature

The ability to blend and filter data from different sources, like GA and GSC, means you can get a customized overview of your total search performance, tailored to your website.

Price: Free for 500 URLs

Screaming Frog is a website crawler that helps you audit your website.

Screaming Frog’s free version of its crawler is perfect if you want to run a quick audit on a bunch of URLs. The free version is limited to 500 URLs—making it ideal for crawling smaller websites.

screaming-frog-user-interface-screenshotscreaming-frog-user-interface-screenshot

Most common reporting use case

When it comes to reporting, the Reports menu in Screaming Frog SEO Spider has a wealth of information you can look over that covers all the technical aspects of your website, such as analyzing, redirects, canonicals, pagination, hreflang, structured data, and more.

Once you’ve crawled your site, it’s just a matter of downloading the reports you need and working out the main issues to summarize in your SEO report.

Favorite feature

Screaming Frog can pull in data from other tools, including Ahrefs, using APIs. 

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If you already had access to a few SEO tools’ APIs, you could pull data from all of them directly into Screaming Frog. This is useful if you want to combine crawl data with performance data or other 3rd party tools.

screaming-frog-api-accessscreaming-frog-api-access

Even if you’ve never configured an API, connecting other tools to Screaming Frog is straightforward.

Price: Free

Ahrefs has a large selection of free SEO tools to help you at every stage of your SEO campaign, and many of these can be used to provide insights for your SEO reporting.

when-to-use-ahrefs-free-tools-across-the-seo-process-illustrationwhen-to-use-ahrefs-free-tools-across-the-seo-process-illustration

For example, you could use our:

Most common reporting use case

One of our most popular free SEO tools is Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (AWT), which you can use for your SEO reporting.

With AWT, you can:

  • Monitor your SEO health over time by setting up scheduled SEO audits
  • See the performance of your website
  • Check all known backlinks for your website
ahrefs-overviewahrefs-overview

Favorite feature

Of all the Ahrefs free tools, my favorite is AWT. Within it, site auditing is my favorite feature—once you’ve set it up, it’s a completely hands-free way to keep track of your website’s technical performance and monitor its health.

If you already have access to Google Search Console, it’s a no-brainer to set up a free AWT account and schedule a technical crawl of your website(s).

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Price: Free

Ahrefs’ SEO Toolbar is a free Chrome and Firefox extension useful for diagnosing on-page technical issues and performing quick spot checks on your website’s pages.

Most common reporting use case

For SEO reporting, it’s useful to run an on-page check on your website’s top pages to ensure there aren’t any serious on-page issues.

ahrefs-seo-toolbar-overviewahrefs-seo-toolbar-overview

With the free version, you get the following features:

  • On-page SEO report
  • Redirect tracer with HTTP Headers
  • Outgoing links report with link highlighter and broken link checker
  • SERP positions
  • Country changer for SERP

The SEO toolbar is excellent for spot-checking issues with pages on your website. If you are not confident with inspecting the code, it can also give you valuable pointers on what elements you need to include on your pages to make them search-friendly.

If anything is wrong with the page, the toolbar highlights it, with red indicating a critical issue.

severity-highlight-ahrefs-seo-toolbarseverity-highlight-ahrefs-seo-toolbar

Favorite feature

The section I use the most frequently in the SEO toolbar is the Indexability tab. In this section, you can see whether the page can be crawled and indexed by Google.

indexability-tab-ahrefs-seo-toolbarindexability-tab-ahrefs-seo-toolbar

Although you can do this by inspecting the code manually, using the toolbar is much faster.

Price: Free

Like GSC, Google Analytics is another tool you can use to track the performance of your website, tracking sessions and conversions and much more on your website.

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google-analytics-screenshotgoogle-analytics-screenshot

Most common reporting use case

GA gives you a total view of website traffic from several different sources, such as direct, social, organic, paid traffic, and more.

Favorite feature

You can create and track up to 300 events and 30 conversions with GA4. Previously, with universal analytics, you could only track 20 conversions. This makes conversion and event tracking easier within GA4.

Price: Free

Google Slides is Google’s version of Microsoft PowerPoint. If you don’t have a dashboard set up to report on your SEO performance, the next best thing is to assemble a slide deck.

Many SEO agencies present their report through dashboard insights and PowerPoint presentations. However, if you don’t have access to PowerPoint, then Google Slides is an excellent (free) alternative.

google-slides-screenshotgoogle-slides-screenshot

Most common reporting use cases

The most common use of Google Slides is to create a monthly SEO report. If you don’t know what to include in a monthly report, use our SEO report template.

Favorite feature

One of my favorite features is the ability to share your presentation on a video chat directly from Google Slides. You can do this by clicking the camera icon in the top right.

share-video-chat-google-slidesshare-video-chat-google-slides

This is useful if you are working with remote clients and makes sharing your reports easy.

Price: Free

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Google Trends allows you to view a keyword’s popularity over time in any country. The data shown is the relative popularity ratio scaled from 0-100, not the direct volume of search queries.

Most common reporting use cases

Google Trends is useful for showing how the popularity of certain searches can increase or decrease over time. If you work with a website that often has trending products, services, or news, it can be useful to illustrate this visually in your SEO report.

Google Trends makes it easy to spot seasonal trends for product categories. For example, people want to buy BBQs when the weather is sunny.

Using Google Trends, we can see that peak demand for BBQs usually happens in June-July every year.

bbq-google-trends-graphbbq-google-trends-graph

Using this data across the last five years, we could be fairly sure when the BBQ season would start and end.

Favorite feature

Comparing two or more search terms against each other over time is one of my favorite uses of Google Trends, as it can be used to tell its own story.

google-trends-comparison-examplegoogle-trends-comparison-example

Embellishing your report with trends data allows you to gain further insights into market trends.

You can even dig into trends at a regional level if you need to.

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regional-trends-via-google-trendsregional-trends-via-google-trends

Final thoughts

These free tools will help you put together the foundations for a well-rounded SEO report.

The tools you use for SEO reporting don’t always have to be expensive—even large companies use many of the free tools mentioned to create insights for their client’s SEO reports.

Got more questions? Ping me on X 🙂



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Study Reveals Potential Disruption For Brands & SEO

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Study Reveals Potential Disruption For Brands & SEO

A new study by Authoritas suggests that Google’s AI-powered Search Generative Experience (SGE), currently being tested with a limited group of users, could adversely impact brand visibility and organic search traffic.

These findings include:

  • When an SGE box is expanded, the top organic result drops by over 1,200 pixels on average, significantly reducing visibility.
  • 62% of SGE links come from domains outside the top 10 organic results.
  • Ecommerce, electronics, and fashion-related searches saw the greatest disruption, though all verticals were somewhat impacted.

Adapting to generative search may require a shift in SEO strategies, focusing more on long-form content, expert insights, and multimedia formats.

As Google continues to invest in AI-powered search, the Authoritas study provides an early look at the potential challenges and opportunities ahead.

High Penetration Rate & Industry-Wide Effects

The study analyzed 2,900 brand and product-related keywords across 15 industry verticals and found that Google displays SGE results for 91.4% of all search queries.

The prevalence of SGE results indicates they impact a majority of websites across various industries.

The research analyzed the typical composition of SGE results. On average, each SGE element contained between 10-11 links sourced from an average of four different domains.

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This indicates brands may need to earn multiple links and listings within these AI-curated results to maintain visibility and traffic.

The research also suggests that larger, well-established websites like Quora and Reddit will likely perform better in SGE results than smaller websites and lesser-known brands.

Shifting Dynamics In Organic Search Results

With SGE results occupying the entire first page, websites that currently hold the top positions may experience a significant decrease in traffic and click-through rates.

When a user clicks to expand the SGE element, the study found that, on average, the #1 ranked organic result drops a sizeable 1,255 pixels down the page.

Even if a website ranks number one in organic search, it may effectively be pushed down to the second page due to the prominence of SGE results.

New Competition From Unexpected Sources

The study revealed that SGE frequently surfaces links and content from websites that didn’t appear in the top organic rankings.

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On average, only 20.1% of SGE links exactly matched a URL from the first page of Google search results.

An additional 17.9% of SGE links were from the same domains as page one results but linked to different pages. The remaining 62% of SGE links came from sources outside the top organic results.

Challenges For Brand Term Optimization & Local Search

The study reveals that SGE results for branded terms may include competitors’ websites alongside the brand’s own site, potentially leading to increased competition for brand visibility.

Laurence O’Toole, CEO and founder of Authoritas, states:

“Brands are not immune. These new types of generative results introduce more opportunities for third-party sites and even competitors to rank for your brand terms and related brand and product terms that you care about.”

Additionally, local businesses may face similar challenges, as SGE results could feature competing local brands even when users search for a specific brand in a regional context.

Methodology & Limitations

To arrive at these insights, Authoritas analyzed a robust dataset of 2,900 search keywords across a spectrum of query types, including specific brand names, brand + generic terms, brand + product names, generic terms, and specific product names. The keywords were distributed across 15 industry verticals.

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The study utilized a consistent desktop browser viewport to quantify pixel-based changes in the search results. Authoritas also developed proprietary “alignment scores” to measure the degree of overlap between traditional organic search results and the new SGE links.

While acknowledging some limitations, such as the keyword set needing to be fully representative of each vertical and the still-evolving nature of SGE, Authoritas maintains that the insights hold value in preparing brands for the new realities of an AI-powered search ecosystem.

Why We Care

The findings of the Authoritas study have implications for businesses, marketers, and SEO professionals. As Google’s SGE becomes more prevalent, it could disrupt traditional organic search rankings and traffic patterns.

Brands that have invested heavily in SEO and have achieved top rankings for key terms may find their visibility and click-through rates diminished by the prominence of SGE results.

SGE introduces new competition from unexpected sources, as most SGE links come from domains outside the top 10 organic results. This means businesses may need to compete not only with their traditional rivals but also with a broader range of websites that gain visibility through SGE.

As Google is a primary source of traffic and leads for many businesses, any changes to its search results can impact visibility, brand awareness, and revenue.

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How This Could Help You

While the rise of SGE presents challenges, it also offers opportunities.

Taking into account what we’ve learned from the Authoritas study, here are some actionable takeaways:

  • As SGE favors in-depth, informative content, businesses may benefit from investing in comprehensive, well-researched articles and guides that provide value to users.
  • Incorporating expert quotes, interviews, and authoritative sources within your content could increase the likelihood of being featured in SGE results.
  • Enriching your content with images, videos, and other multimedia elements may help capture the attention of both users and the SGE algorithm.
  • Building a strong brand presence across multiple channels, including social media, industry forums, and relevant websites, can increase your chances of appearing in SGE.
  • Creating a trustworthy brand and managing your online reputation will be crucial, as SGE may feature competitors alongside your website.

Looking Ahead

While the long-term impact of SGE will depend on user adoption and the perceived usefulness of results, this study’s findings serve as a valuable starting point for businesses and SEO professionals.

By proactively addressing the challenges and opportunities SGE presents, you can increase your chances of success in the new search environment.


Featured Image: BestForBest/Shutterstock

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