32 Eye-Opening Social Media Network Stats & 1 Reason Not To Jump In

One of the easiest ways to engage with your audience is to utilize social media networks. Not to state the obvious here, but social media networks are all about being “social”—interacting with people. And, it’s how many businesses are building their brand, earning the loyalty and trust of their audience, and gaining new customers.

It may be a relatively new marketing strategy, but it’s one that you need to spend some time investing in. (And, if you think you can do just as well as others and not do social media, no offense, you’re naively optimistic.)

Here’s why.

(1) Social media has a 100% higher lead-to-close rate than outbound marketing.

100% is a pretty big deal. And if that isn’t enough, the internet is pretty much where everyone does their research now, and about (2) three-quarters of all Internet users are members of at least one social network.

It’s where 75% of internet users spend time while online.

And, shockingly, it’s not just one or two demographics comprising that 75%.

The Pew Research Internet Project did a study on social media networks. They found that 74% of online adults are social media users, and here is exactly what that statistic fleshes out to look like:

It doesn’t matter whether you’re male or female, what your age is, how much education you’ve received, or what your income level is. In every category, at least 49% use social media networks (74% being the average).

Are you sold? (If you aren’t, just hang on!)

Let’s look at some statistics about how specific social media networks perform for businesses.

Facebook

(3) 42% of marketers report that Facebook is critical or important to their business.

(4) 77% of B2C and 43% of B2B companies acquired customers from Facebook.

(5) Worldwide, there are over 1.32 billion monthly active Facebook users (MAUs), which is a 14 percent increase year over year.

Twitter

(6) B2B marketers who use Twitter generate, on average, twice as many leads as those who don’t.

(7) 77% of Fortune Global 100 companies have a Twitter account.

(8) Though advertising on Twitter costs nearly six times as much as Facebook ads on a cost-per-thousand (CPM) basis, the click-through rate (CTR) for Twitter ads is 8-24 times higher.

(9) 72% of people that follow a brand on Twitter are more likely to purchase from them.

(10) 85% of B2B marketers use Twitter.

LinkedIn

(11) 45% of B2B marketers have gained a customer through LinkedIn.

(12) 89.7% of LinkedIn users find it moderately to extremely useful to growing their network and developing their business.

Google+

(13) Websites using the +1 button generate 3.5x the Google+ visits than sites without the button.

(14) Over 40% of marketers report that Google+ is “useful to critical” for their business.

(15) Google+ actually averages more visits per month than Facebook.

Pinterest

(16) Pinterest is now the 3rd most popular social network in the U.S. in terms of traffic.

(17) Pinterest is retaining and engaging users as much as 2-3 times as efficiently as Twitter was at a similar time in their history.

One Reason Not To Jump In

Simply adding social media networks to your marketing strategy isn’t going to translate into a surplus of traffic, leads, and customers. Unfortunately, they’re not like a genie and a magic lamp where you state what you want and poof!—there it is. (And they certainly won’t save your crappy business.)

To see the best possible results from social media networks, you need to knowexactly where your buyer personas and target audience are spending their time. That’s the only way using social media is going to pay off for you.

Once you do your research and identify those specific social media networks, attack them. (OK, attack is a little forceful… but you know what I mean.) If you’d like some guidance for researching your buyer personas, check out this article, and HubSpot’s Persona Profile Checklist and Buyer Persona Development Worksheet.

To give you a head start on some of your research, here are some specifics about the audiences on the networks mentioned above.

Facebook

(18) Age 25 to 34, at 29.7% of users, is the most common age demographic.

(19) Facebook users are 53% female and 47% male.

(20) In Europe, over 223 million people are on Facebook.

Twitter

(21) The fastest-growing age cohort on Twitter is 55-to-64 year-olds, up 79% since 2012.

(22) China has the most Twitter users, pulling in at 35.5 million users.

(23) 50% of Twitter users are male.

(24) 45% of Twitter users are between the ages of 18-29.

LinkedIn

(25) Only 20% of LinkedIn users are under the age of 30.

(26) 56% of LinkedIn users are male, 44% female.

(27) 300 million use LinkedIn. 100 million are in the US, and it reaches 200 other countries and territories.

Google+

(28) Two of the biggest user groups on Google+ are college students and software developers.

(29) 63% of Google+ users are male.

Pinterest

(30) 80% of Pinterest’s users are female.

(31) 30% of Pinterest users are women 25-34 years old.

(32) Top Pinterest categories are food and drink, crafts, home décor and women’s fashion.

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