Social media statistics from 2018 you cannot ignore

RareDevs
RareDevs - Information Technology Blogs
5 min readJan 18, 2019
Social Media Statistics

It’s 2019 and the world of social media marketing will continue to grow.

How do we know it? The statistics from 2018 speak for themselves.

Currently, there are more than 4.12 billion internet users around the world. That equals more than 50% of the world’s total population.

This means that whatever you post online, there is a possibility for you to get a 50% penetration of the world’s population. Not only that, the number of active social media users is 3.4 billion which equals 40% penetration. Just reading that gave you goosebumps, isn’t it?

When you’re online, every click, every view and every second of your activity is being tracked and recorded for statistics. This is done in order to understand the users’ behaviour.

Social media user statistics help digital marketers understand what kind of content is preferred by the audience. When you know about the best type of posts and the time when most of your audience is online, then you can plan your posts accordingly and get maximum engagement. This is more commonly known as social media optimisation and it helps you get better engagement and for generating more leads.

In order to get maximum viewership on the content you post online, you first need to understand about the social media statistics for business. Capturing the audience and changing the perspective of personal to professional is a tricky task that needs you to be armed with the right information. Having correct information will help you realise the benefits you can get from social media.

​These social media user statistics are mostly in billions and millions and will end up blowing your mind. So make sure you have a cleaning crew for mopping up your scattered brains before you go any further.

+ — — — — — — — — — + — — — — — — — — -+
| ​Social Platform | Number of users |
+ — — — — — — — — — + — — — — — — — — -+
| Facebook | ​2.23 billion |
| YouTube | ​1.8 billion |
| Instagram | ​1 billion |
| LinkedIn | ​575 million |
| Twitter | ​335 million |
| Pinterest | ​250 million |
+ — — — — — — — — — + — — — — — — — — -+

Mind blown yet? There’s more — the number of social media users keep changing every quarter and the numbers tend to go only upwards.

Some few exceptions where the numbers may go down are if there has been a serious breach of information or something similar, for example — Google+ and the recent fiasco where information of half a million users was leaked due to a bug. It led to Google taking the decision of shutting down their social media platform Google+ for consumers.

Google Plus

With Google+ shutting down, we may see a hike in other social networking sites. There are several reasons why social media marketing is important for your business today. Here are some important social media marketing statistics that you should know about before marketing your business online.

General social media statistics:

1. Social media and video viewing are 2 of the topmost popular activities on the internet.

2. More than 50% of the users say that they follow at least one celebrity or brand from their social media accounts.

3. 59% of Americans agree with the fact that social media has made customer service easier.

Facebook:

Holding the maximum number of users as a social media platform, Facebook is the King of them all. People use the platform for various purposes such as socialising, advertising and to catch up on the news.

4. Facebook users grow at the rate of 15% year after year.

5. If we talk about social media advertising statistics, more than 5 million businesses were implementing paid advertising on Facebook in 2017.

6. As many as 270 million Facebook accounts out of the total 2.23 billion accounts are fake.

Instagram:

Popular amongst youngsters, Instagram has the 2nd fastest rate of growth according to social media marketing agencies. It is used by brands to target audience in a fun way that interacts with the people and also helps generate more leads.

7. 18–24 age group has the highest number of users on Instagram.

8. Instagram’s user count keeps going up at the rate of 5% per quarter.

9. 7 out of 10 hashtags on Instagram are branded.

LinkedIn:

LinkedIn is one of the best marketing tools for every aspect of business and employment. It’s not just popular with professionals but also with Google. That’s because any business or individual, with a complete profile on LinkedIn, has better chances on being on the first page of Google and for receiving maximum exposure.

10. There are more than 30 million registered companies on LinkedIn.

11. At least 60% of marketers have been able to score one customer through LinkedIn.

12. 77% of organisations are increasingly using LinkedIn for recruitment purposes.

YouTube:

A good source of revenue and for learning things easily, YouTube is a great platform for both the viewers and content creators. It also only allows the creators and users to connect with each other through comments easily. The best part is that the platform is free of cost.

13. The top ads on YouTube generated 539 million views, 14 million hours of watch time and 3.6 million likes.

14. More than 45% of users on YouTube say that they access the website on a daily basis.

15. 11% of YouTube’s total audience falls in the age group of 65 or older, making the platform most preferred by seniors.

Pinterest:

The key to success on Pinterest lies in helping customers make their buying decisions. The platform’s users often tend to use it as a search engine for getting new ideas and to know about the latest products in the market.

16. 50% of millennials use Pinterest every month.

17. 93% of Pinterest users use the website to plan purchases and to discover new brands or products. This goes to show how useful it is to build a strong base on Pinterest if you’re selling something. You can find several social media marketing agencies in India that’ll help you with the same.

18. Shopping websites get 33% more referrals from Pinterest than from Facebook.

Twitter:

Twitter rates high for the number of its daily active users amongst other social media websites. As a positive social media statistic for business, the platform has seen an increase in the amount of ad engagement over the years.

19. Roughly more than 500 million tweets are sent out per day.

20. 80% of Twitter users access the platform from their mobile devices.

21. 74% of Twitter users say that they use the platform to obtain news.

Social media just keeps on growing and growing. There are many trends that influence the growth of your business through social networking platforms. Social media delivers measurable results in sales, leads as well as branding. If you do not have enough time to put in the efforts for a social media campaign, then you can optimally hire social media experts in India.

Originally published at raredevs.weebly.com.

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RareDevs
RareDevs - Information Technology Blogs

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