Social Media Statistics

Right when you think you’ve grasped your demographics, social advertising strategy and social media statistics 2018, something new changes i.e. Social Media Updates which turns your data into old news.

That’s why it’s so important for marketers to stay up to date with the latest social media statistics and social media updates.

Don’t believe me?

Facebook and YouTube dominate this landscape, as notable majorities of adults use each of these sites.

At the same time, the younger generation (especially those ages 18 to 24) stand out for embracing a variety of platforms and using them frequently.

Some 78% of 18- to 24-year-olds use Snapchat, and a sizeable majority of these users (71%) visit the platform multiple times per day.

Similarly, 71% of people in this age group now use Instagram and close to half (45%) are Twitter users.

While these social media statistics 2018 might not be shocking, it does show how the landscape of the industry drastically changes in just a few years.

To help you out with your current social media marketing efforts, we’re going to get you up to date on the newest stats and trends within the social media world.

Social Media Updates 

Let’s start off with the updates with Facebook, since it is still the largest growing app with the most interactive heights.

Facebook

Facebook has had new shiny toys throughout the year.

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, has a new resolution every year. From learning Mandarin to visiting all 50 states of America.

Last year, however, things for Mark were a little different.

He resolved to fix all Facebook top bugs. And that’s exactly what he worked at.

He was aware of the social media statistics of Facebook.

Keeping the privacy concerns in his mind too, here are a few updates and tweaks that were made on Facebook and its groups!

Music on Facebook Stories

Facebook Stories have been a hit in 2018.

So to enhance the effect, Facebook has launched more updates regarding this part of the platform.

• Music on Facebook Stories, and
• Expansion on Lipsync Live.

These updates might seem like a little piece of information rather than news for advertisers.

But this can actually help an influencer with their strategy to connect to the music industry.

Not only can you add a song to any photo or video, but also you can add stickers too.

What do you have to do to use this feature, you ask?

Just take a picture, either with the Facebook camera or any of your pictures from the gallery, add stickers, and then choose the song that best fits the image.

That’s it!

It’s that simple!

Use the on-screen selector to choose the perfect snippet of your chosen song and drag-drop the sticker wherever you like.

Use it creatively to add fun and flair to your stories.

Lipsync Live

In June 2018, Facebook revived its Facebook Live and added the Lip Sync Live to the product lineup.

Now instead of just plain ol’ going downtown or calling your friends to showcase your talents on your favorite tunes that others might discourage, you can display your lip syncing talent when starting your Live videos!

Live game is a lot more fun with this update but it still was missing the karaoke feel.

That special oomph!

So when November came along, Facebook upgraded its game and added lyrics of the song that could be seen on your screens.

So everybody could sing along with the words, and not asjfhweirhdklfnsdjfo.

Be an absolute hit by pairing your favorite mask or background!

Portal and Portal Plus

It’s a brave new world today!

You can purchase a Facebook-powered smart display that lives in your home with a camera and an always-on microphone.

The Facebook Portal and Portal Plus are not the first smart displays with that sort of functionality, but this is Facebook.

The remarkable thing about all the reviews is that everyone agrees the hardware is nice, and the video chat functionality is top-of-the-line.

However, no one wants to recommend the Portal because no one trusts Facebook, just yet.

The features that make the Portal stand out may be limited, but are very significant.

• The Smart Camera connected to the Portal stays with the action. It pans and zooms automatically to keep everyone in view.
• The Smart Sound feature enhances the voice of whoever is speaking, no matter where they move and kind of dulls the loud sounds at the back.
• Portal supports group calls of up to seven people at the same time.

Since data privacy is already very sensitive when it comes to Facebook, they released an official statement to dispel the myths from the truths on Portal privacy and ads.

Facebook has had a tumultuous year, after all.

Facebook Education

Learning has become more fun with Facebook.

Facebook has partnered with the Goodwill Community Foundation to announce a new website “Learn with Facebook.”

It is designed to help provide knowledge about the skills needed to survive and thrive in the modern digital workforce.

This puts a little upvote in the social media statistics when it comes to Facebook.

The 4 major courses that the website covers, for now, are in the vast areas of employment basics: resume writing, etc., interview education and prep, basic digital advertising principles, a coding overview, etc.

Job Search With Facebook

The end of November brought in a plethora of updates for Jobs on Facebook.

It was made to make an effort to help business owners or entrepreneurs connect with a pool of potential employees.

About 1 million peple have found jobs so far as Facebook claimed.

Facebook Attribution

Another awesome feature from Facebook!

It is a new free measurement tool that will give marketers a holistic view of their digital ads.

Thankfully, Facebook’s new data-driven attribution model gives you the opportunity to see how the ads on Facebook are working.

In addition to that, it also sees how Instagram, Audience Network and Messenger are working.

It then measures the estimated incremental impact of the marketing strategies that can improve the business results.

To top it all off, you can see which devices were used by the customers that viewed your ad, and which was the most effective where they converted.

(Also, the themes that Facebook should be rolling out in respect to the occasions. E.g ..)

I mean, loook! how cuuutttee are these!?

Watch Party and Creator Studio

Both of the features, Watch Party and Creator studio are going global!

The Creator Studio can be accessed through Business Manager and allows users to manage their content for all the pages in one place.

You can check your page’s insights, make video publishing and streaming a little easier.

Facebook Snooze

Facebook Snooze is something A LOT of people have been waiting for.

This feature allows people to snooze content that they might find inappropriate or not according to their liking.

The rollout of this feature has started from US, UK, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia.

It will hide the posts containing the exact words or phrases, but for 30 days.

Oh, and how could the world be complete without memes?

Here’s a take on the yearly review that Facebook had launched 😀

Instagram

Instagram was not coming slow in 2018!

It rolled out new features around the holiday season, making marketers intrigued.

A few of them are;

Profiles

Instagram’s feature of dividing the profiles/users into two categories is genius!

Business profiles offer so much more than the personal profiles for businesses that need to flourish.

There are different things to notice between the two profiles, like;

• Cosmetic interface changes
• New icons
• Buttons
• Tabs, etc.

The profiles have a different updated layout differentiating them from each other.

Users will be able to see which of their friends follow a certain profile method.

This feature is very engaging for the marketers and brands.

It gives them the opportunity to leverage social proof.

There is always an influential curve to the situation.

You might think that a brand is cool and all, but once you see your friends following it too, it makes a difference!

Voice Messaging in DMs

A minute-long voice message can now be sent via a direct message on Instagram.

It can be in a private chat or a group one.

Voice market is getting a higher toll and that is why Instagram rolled out the voice messages option.

Unlike other direct messages in Instagram, voice messages are going to stay; instead of disappearing like other content, they’ll stick around permanently.

Take this into consideration if you’re using disappearing DMs as part of a strategy to create urgency for sales, discounts, or events with your customers.

Close Friends

If you want to create segmented lists of users to show certain Stories, now you have your chance.

You can actually create “cost friends lists” on Stories, ensuring that the only people who can view it are those that you’ve chosen to see it.

Good news: business profiles have this ability, so you can actually create a single group of “close friends” to show exclusive content to.

While you have to be careful with this because you don’t want anyone to be excluded, one potential use case for this is to create a close friend group of your top-tier, platinum level, loyalty, and rewards member customers.

IGTV

Yup. Instagram now does TV.

In its latest attempt to become a one-stop-shop for social media, Instagram has released its newest baby: IGTV, probably the most exciting Instagram feature in 2018.

IGTV is available from within Instagram — but also exists as a standalone app — and will allow absolutely any Instagram user (you don’t have to be a brand or celebrity) to create and share videos on the web or through the app itself.

Videos are full screen and vertical, and unlike Stories videos which are limited to 15 seconds, they can be up to an hour long.

Social media statistics for Instagram changed a little after this release.

They also stick around, making the time investment from video creators really worth it.

Spotify Sharing

Everyone wants to be a part of the Instagram Stories craze.

From apps to help you design amazing layouts to face filters and live streaming, your Stories can have so much potential.

Instagram is now allowing Spotify users to share what they’re listening to in their Stories and even recommend music to their followers via a brand new integration.

The possibility of sharing a sticker of songs, playlists and even whole albums to Instagram Stories will make viewing all the more entertaining.

For Instagramers sharing Stories with their community, this new feature is a welcome addition to the app.

When you share Spotify music to Instagram Stories, your followers can easily click through from the Story straight to Spotify, where they will be able to listen to the song, album or mix you shared.

Feed Posts as Stories

It can be hard to grow your Instagram organically, and Stories can definitely help with that when used in the right way.

But it can be tricky to know how to drive traffic with Instagram Stories.

Ever opened Stories and felt like you were back in the traditional feed?

Brands and celebrities often screenshot their feed to tease and motivate their communities to visit their latest posts.

That strategy is now a thing of the past!

Here’s how to activate this Instagram feature:

• Tap the arrow icon under any feed post
• Tap “Add post to your Story”
• Customize the sticker and your Story, then send!

Mute option

It was super fascinating when we found out we could hit the mute button on people’s Stories!

Well, it’s great news for all you polite ‘grammers out there — you can now “mute” people on Instagram and never have to see any of their posts (and they’ll still think you like them).

What more could you ask for?

Here’s how to activate this Instagram feature:

• Tap the 3 dots in the top right-hand corner of the account’s profile
• Select Mute
• Choose just how much you want to not hear from that person
• Keep everyone happy

Add Username and Hashtag Links to Your Instagram Bio

You can now turn profile usernames and hashtags within your Instagram bio into clickable hyperlinks!

Now, when you include a “#” or “@” in your bio, it will automatically become a clickable link that can lead visitors to a hashtag or other Instagram profile.

Anti-Bullying Filters

Also to protect its community, Instagram is doubling down on its efforts to put an end to cyberbullying on the app.

According to a recent announcement from the F8 Conference, Instagram will soon be able to hide accounts that are promoting hate speech or harassing others.

Instagram also announced that they’re creating a filter that protects users from bullying comments.

Stating at F8 that “This new filter hides comments containing attacks on a person’s appearance or character, as well as threats to a person’s well-being or health.”

LinkedIn

LinkedIn has proven to be a great platform that bridges gaps between employers and employees.

They too stay in the race of development and growth.

Here are a few features that were introduced in 2018.

LinkedIn Videos with Stickers and Text

Every day we see great examples of LinkedIn members using video to connect with their work communities in new and creative.

The two new ways for people to enhance their videos:

• Stickers for sharing everyday work moments. With today’s launch, you can give your work buddy a “Work High Five,” swap ideas on passion projects with “Side Hustle” or share the latest with the “On the Air” sticker. In the future, you’ll see more stickers you can use in your professional life.
• Text styles for adding context so your community knows what’s happening, even when the sound is off.

Salary Insights

A new way for you to explore compensation details on open roles.

There are groups related to marketing and employers too, where you can check this feature out!

This feature will appear on job listings and will show an estimated or expected salary range for the role, based on data from our 546+ million members and employer-provided information.

Voice Messaging

Have you ever typed out a long message and thought about how much faster and easier it would be to say it out loud?

To give you more ways to have conversations, we’ve now added the ability to record and send voice messages to your first-degree connections of up to one minute in LinkedIn Messaging.

Whether you’re responding while walking or multitasking, or need to give an in-depth explanation, voice messages let you more easily and quickly communicate in your own voice with your connections.

Job Searches

An easier way to find the right job.

If you’ve looked for a job on LinkedIn recently, you may have noticed that it looks a bit different.

The days of opening multiple tabs and losing your place in your search are gone.

With the new LinkedIn Jobs search experience, you can scroll through jobs details, save the job that interests you, and see all the most important information.

Information like company size, how many applicants there are, and who in your network can help – right at the top of the page, quickly giving you the context you need to decide if a job is a right fit for you.

YouTube

YouTube has a different niche. TikTok doesn’t fall under that!

It has started to roll out new features of different babies that it caters to.

The sub-platforms. 

One of them being;

YouTube Live

YouTube Live has had a little rough year.

But there have been a couple of changes that were for the betterment.

Live Automatic Caption

Even though it isn’t very wowing.

But YouTube had started to add automatic captions to videos in 2009.

Now YouTube is adding English automatic captions to live streams.

This feature — which is based on YouTube’s live automatic speech recognition (LASR) technology — will have captions with error rates and latency approaching industry standards.

Live automatic captions will be rolling out in the coming weeks as YouTube improves accuracy and latency of the automatic captions.

Live Chat Replay

The best option if you want to connect to the creators with the YouTube community is Live Chat.

What is new?

Live Chat now has a replay option, even if the live stream is over. The YouTube community can still follow the conversation.

The replay of the Live Chat will play as it is along the actual video.

Location Tags

The content creators should be wowed yet again.

YouTube Live now has the option of adding location tags.

YouTube users can explore other videos with the same location tags by just clicking it. Hence improving their social media statistics.

Also, YouTube users can use location tags to activate filters according to a specific place.

Super Chats

Super Chat is a feature that enables creators to monetize their videos and live stream.

YouTube users that are watching the live stream can get the Super Chat.

It is a highlighted message that appears in the chat session of the person’s favorite YouTuber.

Super Chats are pinned to the top of the chat for up to 5 hours.

YouTube TV

YouTube TV is rolling out a bunch of new features to woo cord-cutters away from cable.

Now, YouTube TV introduced a bunch of new features that improve the user experience of the subscription streaming service and enhance its DVR capabilities.

As a growing number of consumers look for ways to cut the cord, YouTube TV has emerged as one of the stronger alternatives to traditional cable TV.

Darker Theme

The dark theme darkens the screen while you browse.

As per YouTube, this not only helps the viewer with absorbing the colors of the video.

But it also keeps the viewer safe from the glare.

No Spoilers!

Sports fans dread the missing the game.

What they dread even more is getting all these spoilers as soon as they go online!

So, to help them, the feature of hiding the scores is introduced.

It helps the viewer by not giving him the final score or live previews of a certain sport.

Google Home

Not getting Google Home connected to YouTube would just be plain ol silly.

So subscribers can easily program their Google Home to help them surf their favorite YouTubers on YouTube TV.

Google and YouTube joining their forces to enhance your TV experience.

Nice!

YouTube Rewind

Okay yeah, it wasn’t an update.

BUT I HAD TO TALK ABOUT IT HERE!

Like how could you say that YouTube rewind is chosen by the audience and not include people whom the audience picked!

This video threw all the social media statistics of YouTube!

Here’s a meme to support my argument!

Snapchat

Sanpchat has been a little behind on the updates.

Instagram is its main competitor, and it has more user growth than Snapchat.

Now in 2018, Snapchat wanted its user base to come back to the standard.

And so it started testing a few features around.

Here are some of them;

Grid View

Snapchat has the grid view now.

Now the centralizing of the image would be even better.

It also helps in keeping the image straight.

Crop Option

The most wanted feature, the crop option.

It was introduced in the 2018 and with this feature, you can crop your picture as per your liking.

Social Media Statistics 2018

Each day the number of social media users are increasing so why miss out on the information you need to reach them?

People might not believe in the power of social media or social media statistics, they might say they hate it. The won’t change any facts though!

Being able to create content that reaches those numbers in 2018 will matter to your business.

2018: a new year, a new you, and a new opportunity to develop or improve the online marketing strategies using social media statistics!

Starting off with:

General Social Media Statistics

Close to half the world’s population (03 billion people) are on some type of social media

64% of online shoppers say that a video on social media helped them decide on a product to buy.

Only 43% of online stores receive significant traffic from their social media pages.

Acknowledgment is key: 77% of Twitter users appreciate a brand more when their tweet is responded to. It takes about 10 hours on average for businesses to respond to a tweet, even though customers want a response within four hours.

Content marketing is a top priority of B2B businesses after brand building and social media engagement.

59% of adults between 18 and 29 are using Instagram.

The average person spends about 20 minutes on Facebook or one in every six minutes a person will spend online.

57 billion YouTube users watch about 5 billion videos on average every single day. Of the 2.1 billion total accounts on Facebook, 270 million profiles are fake.

86% of women will look at social media before deciding to make a purchase.

People are accessing 69% of their media on their smartphones.

89% of people on smartphones are using apps, while only 11% are using standard websites. Unsurprisingly, Facebook is the most popular app at 19%(measured by time spent).

Pinterest is number one for mobile social media, with 64% of referral traffic being driven by smartphones and tablets.

57% of all mobile users will not recommend a business if their mobile website is poorly designed or unresponsive.

40% of all mobile users are searching for a local business or interest.

Mobile websites that load in 5 seconds or less will end in a viewing session that’s 70% longer than their slower counterparts.

92% of American teens accessed the internet on a daily basis, where 56% claim to connect several times a day, and 24% are connected almost constantly to the internet.

What Happened In A Minute In 2018?

There was so much activity in just a minute around the world that it was a little tough keeping up.

The social media statistics were going crazy up and down.

Here are a few things that popped up!

Woah!

Talk about people being active on social media!

It was a good year for online shops too!

People got a wee bit lazy and ordered everything online.

So to have minimum verbal communication.

Umm… that’s not how the world is supposed to work, is it?

Social media statistics indicate how Google was at a great advantage with the searches and apps.

Picture this!

Get it?

Both these apps are kind of each other’s competitors and boy oh boy! They weren’t coming slow in 2018!

Social media statistics show the kind of communication that was the most popular in 2018.

Again, shows how the anxiety to have a verbal communication has heightened!

Social Media Statistics Of Our Favorites!

Twitter

• Total Number of Monthly Active Twitter Users: 330 million
• Total Number of Tweets sent per Day:500 million
• Percentage of Twitter users on Mobile: 80%
• Number of Twitter Daily Active Users: 100 million

Pinterest

• Total Number of Monthly Active Pinterest Users: 175 million (source)
• Number of Pinterest Users from the US: 75 million
• Number of Pinterest Users from Outside US: 100 million
• Total Number of Pinterest Pins: 50 billion+
• Approximate Number of Pinterest Boards: 1 billion+
• Total Number of Pinterest Users who save Shopping Pins on Boards Daily: 2 million

Summing Up!

Social media is a place to have meaningful interactions that may result in awesome business achievements.

Social media statistics are always to be kept in mind when digital marketing is put through.

The world today is known as a Global Village. Why?
This is because it has become effortless to communicate! Social media is a place to form connections. But it can be very overwhelming and overpowering at times.

Millennials or even Generation Z are the people that believe in better visuals rather than word of mouth!

It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, but when it comes to visual marketing, you need to stay vigilant of every new update that comes to the digital world.

Social media statistics can give us important insights and course of actions that can help formulate an effective marketing plan.

We have the numbers to track everything we wish to manipulate and highlight in our marketing actions, combine it with the best skills of SEO and BOOM! You become a king of the visual marketing world!

Utilize them, and you can change any business plan around for better success!

Ending on a lighter note, memes on how awesomely we’ll stay in touch with everything we need to do in 2019!

Happy New Year and Happy Updating! Social Champ For The Win!