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Since social media first became mainstream in 2004, it has grown exponentially. What first started out as platforms for people to connect with each other is now much bigger. Social media today is the domain of advertisers, brands, products, services, influencers, and much more than just simple human-to-human interaction. Thanks to widely available and competitively priced internet options like Optimum internet all over the United States, most of the stats we look at deal with social media use in the U.S.
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, etc. all have billions of users all over the globe. In fact, according to Emarsys, around 42% of the world’s population uses social media. That amounts to roughly 3.2 billion people all over the globe! One of the reasons brands and businesses are actively engaging with people on social media is because there is simply a very big audience to tap in to. Furthermore, many companies are helping brands to use social media for branding and promotion with their apt social media marketing services.
Social media offers alternatives to brands that go above and beyond traditional radio, television, and telephone marketing. Advertising on social media is fairly cheap and simple, which levels out the playing field for small mom-and-pop businesses and multinational corporations in terms of ad spend. Social Media plays a vital role in lead generation as well.
Platforms like Facebook and Instagram allow brands to advertise their products and services to targeted audiences and generate quality leads. Thanks to their sophisticated algorithms gathering and analyzing social data, these platforms are able to create what is known as the social graph. The platform already knows things like your name, age, occupation, gender, interests, friends, and acquaintances. It also knows all of these things about ALL the people in your friends list or followers, and about all the people in their lists. This gives the platforms a significant edge, allowing brands to target very specific audiences based on demographics, geolocation, interests, and other data.
You can see why advertising on social media is so popular. Traditional marketing and advertising channels don’t really allow you to select a specific audience. And even if they do, there is no guarantee your target audience will see your ad. On the other hand, social media allows you to target very specific audiences. Social media platforms also offer analytics, which is very important to keep optimizing your social media advertising campaigns.
Social media has evolved from a communications platform to a commercial platform. Businesses generate significant revenue from advertising on platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. On the other side, 37% of consumers find inspiration to make a purchase on the social media platform they use, according to this report by PWC. This makes social media the biggest source to influence consumer buying decisions.
Let’s have a look at some of the most important social media statistics for 2020.
Author Bio–
Yash Chawlani is a Digital Marketing Strategist associated with UnboundB2B, who specializes in SEO, Social Media Optimization (SMO) and Content Marketing. You can connect with him on LinkedIn and Twitter.
