Social Media Statistics You Need to Know

We are always on the lookout for new and useful social media statistics, as they provide interesting bite-sized pieces of content to share across our own social media channels, as well as key information about an industry that is evolving and growing by the day. 

Every year We Are Social releases a huge amount of stats, centered on the growth and usage of social media across the globe. It makes for intriguing reading and, we think you'll agree, there's some pretty mind-boggling numbers in their latest offering, "Digital in 2018" from Hootsuite and We Are Social.   

Below, we give you some of the key takeaways and the figures that impressed us the most. Enjoy!

Did you know:

• There are now 3.196 billion people using social media, which is up 13% from last year.
• 11 new people start using social media every second, which is about 1 million people every day.
• More than 3 billion people around the world use social media at least once a month.

• The total number of global Instagram users increased by a third over the past year.
• There are more than 800 million monthly active users of Instagram.
• Instagram age demographics skew younger, with roughly 30% falling between the ages 18 and 24, and another 30% falling between 25 and 34.
• The most popular Instagram hashtags are, in order, #love, #instagood, #fashion, #photooftheday, and #beautiful.
• Instagram users are also highly likely to use Facebook (95%) and Pinterest (54%).
• Users under the age of 25 spend 32 minutes a day on the platform, while those over 25 spend 24 minutes a day on it.
• 80% of Instagram users follow at least one business on Instagram.
• More than 300 million accounts use Instagram Stories every day.
• Around 50% of businesses make regular use of Instagram Stories.
• The number of daily videos produced daily on Instagram has quadrupling over the past five years.
• About 60% of top brands use the same filter for every post, creating a consistent brand “feel” on the platform.
• 60% of Instagram users claim they’ve discovered at least one new product on the platform.
• Instagram has a follower interaction rate of 2.2%, higher than any other social network.
• Instagram posts with hashtags tend to get 12.6% more engagementthan those without.

Digital in 2018 Global Overview from We Are Social

• The total number of Facebook users has grown 15% year-over-year, with more than 2.17 billion users at the beginning of 2018.
• On Facebook, the number of users aged 65 and up has increased by 20% over the course of the past year.
• Though the number of teenagers using Facebook is growing, it’s growing at a slower rate than other demographics, at just 5%.
• Organic reach and engagement has dropped 10% over the past year.
• The average reach of a post is just 10.7% of your total page likes.
• The average Facebook engagement rate for all types of page posts is just 4.20%.
• The average Facebook engagement rate for video posts is 5.23%, for photos it’s 4.4%, and for page links it’s 3.9%.
• 95.8% of social media marketers believe Facebook offers the highest ROI of any platform.

• Twitter has more than 330 million monthly active users.
• Roughly 46% of Twitter users are on the platform daily.
• More than 36% of Americans aged 18 to 29 use Twitter. That percentage drops with each subsequent age group.
• Like many other platforms, individuals with a college degree are more likely to use Twitter. 28% of degree-holders use the platform, compared to 24% with some college education, and 14% with a high school education or less.
• 80% of Twitter users accessing the platform on a mobile device, and 93% of video views are on mobile.
• Roughly 500 million tweets are sent per day, which illustrates Twitter as one of the most active social media platforms.

Facebook Messenger Bot Updates - An Overview

Earlier this month, at the 2017 F8 developer conference, Mark Zuckerberg revealed significant updates to Facebook Messenger Bots.

What are Messenger Bots? In a nutshell, Chatbots (shortened from Chat Robots), are a form of interactive artificial intelligence, designed to simulate human conversation. They assist with simple tasks, such as online ordering, checking into flights and/or hotels, plus helping businesses to answer repetitive questions from their customers.

Image from Facebook Newsroom 

They have been around for a while on Facebook, ever since the Beta version was launched in 2016. The initial rollout did experience problems, most notably in terms of users having the ability to search for bots. However, with Messenger 2.0 there is now a Discover tab, where you can search for the best bots, places and businesses on Messenger. This includes bots specific to certain regions, in categories such as Food and Drink, Entertainment and News (note that developers must apply to have their bot included in Discover). 

Also, Chat Extensions now allows groups of friends to interact with a bot as part of a group chat—they can order to-go food together, make a shopping list, choose a hotel and book their stays as a group, paying for this all natively through Messenger.

Facebook also now lets businesses create Messenger Codes. Here, customers can launch a conversation with the right bot just by scanning a QR code (although whether QR codes will experience a surge in popularity is a completely different conversation…).

It’s worth pointing out at this stage that Facebook Messenger has 1.2 billion monthly users Worldwide. These users are already checking back multiple times daily to chat with friends. Now they can chat directly with, buy and receive updates from businesses without having to download any new apps. 

David Marcus, image from Facebook Newsroom 

As David Marcus, VP of Messenger, said at F8: "We think of Messenger as being like the new social living room for the world, where people can hang out, share, chat, play games or buy things, while still being able to reach nearly everyone, wherever they are. We now think we are combining two tools of the past — the telephone directory (the way we used to find people) with the Yellow Pages (the way we used to find businesses)."

Right now bots are made through third parties and creating a professional one for your company is a job for a web developer. However, small businesses without the necessary resources can experiment with Facebook’s new Smart Replies feature. As Facebook put it, “This is where Page admins can now turn on automatic replies powered by artificial intelligence.” Available to restaurants in the United States and getting rolled out later in the year, this feature turns a company's most frequently-asked questions, such as business hours and location, into automatically generated replies.

Here are the thoughts of Pepijn Rivers, Chief Marketing Officer of Booking.com: "With more than 1.2 billion active users, Messenger gives us the perfect opportunity to extend the reach of our own messaging platform, enabling us to potentially converse with a significant chunk of the earth’s population. It also serves as an additional channel to supply our customers with the information they need - we simply take our chatbot straight to them. Just as with the Booking.com app, it empowers travelers to reach out to us anytime, wherever they are in the world."

It’s not yet clear whether Messenger Bots will be the resounding viral success that Facebook are driving for but to us it really does feel like the next big thing.

Have you tried using Chat bots yet? Let us know below.