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.

Making Writer's Block a Thing of the Past

Following a recent Instagram post, where we touched on the topic of writer’s block, we received a couple of direct messages asking us to elaborate on how we really overcome a creative clog to set about filling an empty page.

It's something I used to face quite regularly when starting out as a writer. I knew I wanted to write but sometimes—deadline looming—I'd find myself staring at a blank screen, not knowing where or how to begin. The longer I spent watching the clock and worrying about what to write first, the worse it would get.

The feeling can be familiar in any creative field; photography, art, music, design, we all face moments where the creative juices just seem to dry up.

I’ve now worked as a writer, in print, online and radio for over 11 years, I have studied a degree in Creative Writing and a post grad in Newspaper Journalism and in that time, I’ve learnt from friends, teachers, colleagues (and my procrastinating self) how to get past the occasional bout of writer's block. Of course, it will still show up from time to time but now I know how to overcome it.

So, for anyone who has ever sat and looked at an empty page or canvas and despaired, here are a few of my favorite ways to get back on track:

1. “The Morning Pages”

An old friend and spoken word writer/performer told me about the Morning Pages sometime around 2002/03 and to this day I still thank him for it. It’s a great creative hack for anyone who wants or loves to write. It's simple: keep a pen and paper next to your bed and every morning when you wake up, before you do anything else, sit up and start writing. Don’t think about what you are writing, don't worry about punctuation, just allow a stream of consciousness to flow. I guarantee that you will be surprised at what you produce in your half-awake state. Granted, the combination of words may not make sense but the Morning Pages will kickstart your day in a creative way. Once you get into the regular habit, you will see the positive effects on your writing.

2. Take a Walk

If the words just will. not. come. and your ideas are feeling stale, a walk can be one of the simplest ways to recharge. Fresh air, a change of scenery and exercise always has me coming back to my computer in a much clearer frame of mind.

3. Inspiration From Others

Ever read a line in a book and feel inspired to put pen to paper? I find that the more I read, the more I write and I’d urge anyone who wants to write as a career to read as much as they can, from as many different sources as they can. Visit a second-hand bookstore, dip into the newspaper and magazine section in your local Barnes & Noble, leaf through a dictionary, read online articles. Carry a notebook and note down interesting words or phrases from real people out on the street. It will all help to inspire and shape your writing.

4. Caffeine and Music

It’s a failsafe combination and one I use every single day. A good cup of tea/coffee and some music in the background is how I start every writing project (in the afternoon, I normally switch to water). The music keeps me stimulated and eases boredom, the caffeine energizes and helps me stay focused. It makes me type faster too…

5. A Change of Scenery

It can be hard to stay creative when you sit at the same computer, in the same place, day after day. Especially if you work from home where the distractions are many. At least once a week, I like to take my laptop to a nearby coffee shop, connect to the free wi-fi and work from there. This week, try working in another space, it’s amazing how change can affect your output.

6. Write

You have to train your body and your brain to write, just as you would with running or any form of exercise. Don’t worry about writing Pulitzer-prize winning material, just write. Trust me, the more you do it, the easier it becomes.

7. Skeleton First, Flesh Later

Before I start thinking about writing an intro or how I want my article to be structured, I will write down all my researched facts, statistics and quotes. This is done in no real order, it’s just a matter of getting the most important points onto the page first. This forms the framework, or "skeleton" of the piece. Then I move the parts of the skeleton into an order that makes sense for how I want to tell my story/get my opinion across, before getting creative and fleshing the rest of it out. It might not work for everyone, but I find this approach very useful, especially if I am writing an article that leans heavily on stats and research. 

Have any questions or comments? Please get in touch. Thanks for reading!

Laura

Happy New Year!

How best to describe 2016? Well...it was certainly eventful and, like most, we weren't too unhappy to bid farewell to those tumultuous 12 months, come December 31.

But wait! Last year wasn't all doom and gloom and certainly, in a business sense, it was very good to us.

As sisters who love online marketing but have very different skill sets, we'd casually toyed with the idea of setting up our own company for a while, until we decided to go for it in early 2016. Officially registered as a business in April, Cake Media emerged as a new Maui startup and we are delighted to have worked with so many great Maui businesses since then. Also, we must admit, we've been pleasantly surprised at how our small company has grown in such a short space of time.

We'd like to say a heartfelt thank you to everyone that worked with Cake Media over the last year. Social media management, graphic design, SEO work, content writing, consulting and more, we are so lucky to be doing what we love and feel honored that so many of you have chosen to work with us.

Happy New Year to each and every one of you and here's to a healthy, happy and prosperous 2017!

Laura and Jenny

Instagram: New 'Likes' and Comment Control

Instagram announced more changes yesterday, with a range of comment control features that are intended to make the social media platform a “welcoming place for everyone.”

As seen in Tuesday’s blog from Instagram co-founder and CEO, Kevin Systrom, users now have the ability to like individual comments and—as the feature rolls out throughout the week—you may notice that each comment now has a heart next to it.

As Systrom wrote, “Liking lets you show support and encourages positivity throughout the community.”

From a social media marketing point of view, this is a great time-saving and engagement-building feature. Some Instagram comments certainly call for an individual response, especially when it comes to customer service queries. However, when you simply want to acknowledge a comment or show your appreciation to a fellow user, you can now tap the heart icon in much the same way that you’d give the thumbs-up on Facebook, double tap an image or ‘like’ a tweet.

The photo-sharing platform has also introduced a way of turning comments off on any post, allowing the image to stand on its own and removing the opportunity for cyberbullying and offensive remarks. Trolls, zero. Instagram, one.

Users can also now remove followers from their private accounts, without blocking them and without notification. As Systrom added, “In the past, once you approved a follower, there was no simple way to undo that decision without blocking them. Going forward, if your account is private, you can remove followers by going to your list of followers and tapping the … menu next to any person’s name.”

There’s more. Another addition to Instagram comments is the ability to anonymously report self-harm posts—connecting people who may need help with helplines and organizations that can offer support.

Making the internet a more welcoming place, taking on online harassment and adding another way to engage with fellow users, we are all in favor of Instagram’s latest changes.

Released this week, the new features should now be available to you. Engage and enjoy!

Thanks for visiting, Laura and Jenny