If you’re looking to slay the digital marketing dragon, you’re going to need social media as one of your weapons.

Social media has been a rising player in the digital marketing game for so long now that many are wondering when it’s going to start losing steam.

The answer to this question? Not anytime soon.

People are in love with social media platforms. Not a crush or infatuation, but the type of love that keeps them up at night and interferes when they’re trying to concentrate – literally.

Social networking has become the go-to activity when we’re bored, have a little downtime or just have a compulsion built from habit.

We’re spending nearly 2 hours every day on social media sites, and what happens there sticks with us.

This is why social media is such a powerful marketing and advertising tool for small and medium-sized businesses. You need to build brand awareness, generate traffic and all that other good stuff, but it’s hard to accomplish when you’re small and relatively unknown.

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Social media helps to level out the playing field and exposes smaller businesses to a larger portion of their target audience.

But, alas, leveraging the power of social media marketing requires an understanding of what makes it tick. What are people doing there, and how are they interacting?

30 Insane Social Media Facts

There are plenty of statistics out there to fill you in on all the details of social media, but many of them are – frankly – boring.

So, why not lighten things up a bit?

You need to optimize your social media strategy and you need a few numbers to make it happen.

We want to make it easy for you to enjoy, remember, and apply what you learn, so here are 30 insane social media facts to light your marketing fire.

Social Media Usage Stats

We like to share the love. The average internet user has 7.6 social media accounts. Between Q2 and Q3 of 2017, the number of social media users skyrocketed by 121 million. Mature users aged 55-64 are more than twice as likely to interact with branded content than their younger social media consuming counterparts. Followers aren’t the only ones talking. 96 percent of social media users that talk about a brand online, don’t even follow the brand’s profile. Need evidence that we’re a visual species? Today, more than 3.2 billion images will be shared on social media posts. 49 percent of social media users share product information with the hopes of improving the lives of others. We spend a lifetime average of 5 years and 3 months on social media.

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Facebook Stats

Facebook will lose 2 million users under the age of 25 this year. Think the United States has the highest number of Facebook users? Nope! India beats us out by about 30 million lovers of Facebook. Indonesia and Brazil are in tight competition for a distant third place. 8 billion videos are viewed daily on Facebook. We need to act like mature adults because 5 million Facebook accounts belong to rule-breakers under the age of 10. But, don’t worry. Moms are keeping an eye on them, and they’re also the biggest brand boosters on Facebook, with 58 percent of them following their favorite brands. Humor wins. Men and women are equally likely to share funny videos or articles and news content on Facebook.

Instagram Stats

Who has the highest number of followers on Instagram? Talk about self-love – Instagram itself is the winner with over 233 million followers. Poor Selena Gomez comes in at a distant second. 80 percent of Instagram users follow at least one business profile, and 200 million of those users are consistently checking in to see what their favorite brands are up to. Sorry Snapchat, Instagram stories are 2 times more popular than you. Top brands love Instagram, which is demonstrated by the 85 percent of them that hang out on the network.

YouTube Stats

More video is uploaded to YouTube every month than the three major broadcasting networks created over the course of six decades. YouTube is the second largest search engine, taking second to Google with 3 billion searches a month. There goes the lunch hour. The average YouTube session is 40 minutes. YouTube claims ownership of more than half of the time people spend watching video. This includes the entire internet and television.

Twitter Stats

There’s a lot of empty space on Twitter. Although there are 1.3 billion Twitter accounts, only about a quarter of them – 336 million – are active every month. 3 years, 2 months and 1 day – this is how long it took to go from the first tweet to the billionth. Now we’re tweeting 200 billion times per year. You better be on your toes. 53 percent of Twitter users expect a response from a business in less than an hour. But, if they’re upset or have a problem, that number rises to 72 percent. 80 percent of Twitter users access the network from their smartphone.

Pinterest

Is Pinterest an effective social platform for conveying the message and value of your brand? Women think so, with 81 percent of them trusting Pinterest as a source of reliable news and information. Consumers that land on your site through Pinterest are 10 times more likely to complete a purchase than visitors that have come through other referrals. They also spend more, with an average spend of $140-$180 compared to those coming from Facebook that spend an average of $60-$80.

Social Media Marketing Stats

5 million brands are advertising on Facebook, a number that’s roughly equivalent to the population of Colorado. Social media’s worldwide ad spend was $35 billion in 2017, accounting for 16 percent of all digital ads.

Summary

Social media is constantly changing, and it remains critically important to your digital marketing strategy.

It isn’t enough to just show up, you need to also understand the rules of the game and know how to rise above the competition.

These 30 social media facts are just a jumping point. What you do with this information is completely up to you, but we know we’ll see some pretty impressive results.

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Featured Image: Josh Rose/Unsplash