In the opening months of the year, now is the perfect time to evaluate your marketing strategies to see what has been most effective in the past 12 months and to set goals for how your marketing plan can be optimized for greater impact in 2022.
While there are many important marketing activities that your team should be focusing on, social media is one of the biggest areas of opportunity to reach and expand your audience, build relationships, and further the mission of your organization.
Here are 15 stats for social media marketers to pay attention to, as well as what they might mean for your 2022 marketing strategy.
Users Spend a Considerable Amount of Time Daily on Social Media.
People spend an average of 2 hours and 25 minutes on social networks and messaging daily. (GlobalWebIndex)
The average US Facebook visitor spends approximately 38 minutes per day on Facebook. (Visitor Queue)
Internet users are expected to spend more than 1/3 of their internet time on social media. (Neil Schaffer)
For better or for worse, the people your organization is trying to reach with its important messages are spending a considerable amount of time on social media, particularly Facebook. If you want to reach your target audience where they are, then you’ll need to spend a considerable amount of time on social media yourself.
A majority of users are spending upwards of multiple hours on social media a day. Work to get your messages in front of them on a consistent interval.
The Number of People Active on Social Media Is Only Going to Grow.
3.96 billion of the earth’s 7.67 billion people are registered on a social media platform. That’s roughly 52% of the world’s population. (Backlinko)
Facebook had 2.85 billion active users in 2021, and 93% of marketers are using it. (Animoto)
Up to 81% of teenagers are active on social media. (Pew Research)
The number of active social media users worldwide is truly staggering, with more than half of people on earth registered on at least one social media platform. And with the vast majority of Generation Z active on at least one social media platform, those numbers are only bound to increase.
It’s safe to say at this point that social media is not a fad, and it should be an integral part of any marketing strategy. With each passing year, the opportunity to connect with a larger audience through social media continues to expand.
We Live in a Mobile-First World.
98.3% of Facebook users access the platform on mobile devices. (Statista)
As marketers develop content for social media, they should do so with the understanding that most users in their audience will interact with that content on mobile. In short, social media marketers and content creators who aren’t thinking seriously about mobile aren’t thinking very hard.
Social Media Is the New Front Door.
55% of consumers learn about new brands on social media. (Sprout Social)
Almost 45% of internet users research products on social media. (Hootsuite)
It has long been said that an organization’s website is the new front door, as a majority of people will investigate a company, store, or church online long before showing up in person and entering through the physical front door.
More recent data seems to indicate that the digital front door is being pushed even further back, with many people investigating an organization based on the dynamic content that appears on their social media accounts, even more than the more relatively static content on their website. People want to learn about your organization, and they’re going to social media to do it.
You Can Find Your Audience in a Variety of Online Spaces.
A typical user is present on almost 9 social media platforms. (We Are Social)
As of January 2021, TikTok has 689 million global active users. (DataReportal)
While your marketing team might not have the marketing resources to have a large footprint on every social media platform, 2022 may be the year for you to focus on repurposing content across multiple platforms. Quality is always far more important that quantity, but creative content marketers can find ways to leverage the content they already have to cultivate a multi-channel approach.
One specific area of opportunity in 2022 is TikTok, which has reached critical mass when it comes to users. Savvy marketers are thinking strategically about how to leverage the platform to connect with their audience.
Video Is Vital.
93% of brands get a new customer because of a video on social media. (Sprout Social)
64% of marketers plan to invest more in short-form video in 2022. (HubSpot)
Videos that take up the full screen (9:16 ratio) see a 60% lift in impressions. (Search Engine Journal)
Video content is perhaps the most important kind of content for marketers to focus on in 2022, and many marketers are planning to devote more time to creating more short form videos. In particular, vertical video has become increasingly effective with the advent of platforms like TikTok and the continued popularity of Instagram Stories and Reels.
Social Media Is No Longer Optional for a Successful Marketing Strategy.
When asked how important social media is to their overall marketing strategy, 88.5% of brands said that it was either “very important” or “somewhat important.” (Buffer)
While social media isn’t the only important aspect of a successful marketing strategy, it is a vital opportunity for brands and organizations to connect with their audiences, whether through organic reach or paid advertising content.
