Social Media Statistics 2016
- Wednesday, 23 March 2016
- Jeanette du Toit
- Blog
There are incredible opportunities for small businesses who utilize the power of social media. We will look at actual numbers just to show you how powerful it has become.
As you’ve probably noticed, social media constantly changes year after year. The good news is that people are embracing it and moving right along with it every time it changes. Even people who are 50+ in age are jumping into social media at staggering rates.
Social is important today, but even more so tomorrow. 90% of young adults—ages 18 to 29—use social media (compared to just 35% of those over age 65). Fully a third of millennials say social media is one of their preferred channels for communicating with businesses.
And those media consumption habits are unlikely to change over time, meaning that when the millennials start turning 40, their media usage will look much more like that of today’s millennials than of today’s 40-year-olds.
Therefore, as a small business owner, most of your customers and prospects are using it, so it’s time to reach them through this amazing marketing channel that is already made for you.
The following statistics will assist you in understanding why social media is important and how you can use it to the advantage of your business’ performance.
10 Statistics About Social Media
- 52% of online adults now use two or more social media sites. (Pew Research)
- 70% of the U.S. population has at least one social networking profile. (Statistica)
- Of the 7.2 billion people on earth, 3 billion have Internet access; 2.1 billion are active on social media; and 1.7 billion use social networks from a mobile device. (Link Humans)
- The number of worldwide social media users is expected to reach 2.5 billion by 2018. (Statistica)
- The average social media user maintains five accounts. (Link Humans)
- Mothers with children under the age of five are the most active on social media. (Link Humans)
- 90% of young adults (ages 18 to 29) use social media. 35% of those over age 65 do. (Pew Research Center)
- Every minute, Reddit users cast more than 18,000 votes; Vine users play more than one million videos; and and Snapchat users share nearly 285,000 snaps. (DR4WARD)
- The “most important” social networks to teens and young adults (aged 12-24) are now Instagram (32%), Twitter (24%), Facebook (14%), Snapchat (13%) and Tumblr (4%). (Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends)
- But Snapchat isn’t the best place for marketers (at least not yet). “Philosophically, it is important that Snapchat is a platform built for people and not for brands,” Snapchat’s CEO, Evan Spiegel, has stated. (V3B Blog)