Digital Marketing: The Biggest Social Media Sites - iContact

• Updated on: 2017-06-30
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Social media networks are a major resource for both small and enterprise-level businesses when promoting their brands, interacting with customers, andintegrating with their email marketing campaigns. But with so many social media sites out there, which ones should you pay attention to?

To help answer that question, let’s take a look at the biggest social media sites by comparing active users, engagement, and demographics.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that Facebook is the most popularsocial medianetwork. AsStatistaasserts, Facebook has more than 1.7 billion active users and holds an 18% market share, which is 7% more than its closest competitor, WhatsApp, which is owned by… Facebook.

Here’s a closer look at the most popular social networks in the world, ranked by the number of active users:

Statista points out that despite the diversity of social platforms, the “leading social networks are usually available in multiple languages and enable users to connect with friends or people across geographical, political, or economic borders.”

When examining the most popular social networks, you also have to look at how all those users actively participate on social channels. Back in 2014,comScorereported that “Facebook remains the goliath of social media, leading all social networks with 81% reach of the total U.S. digital population and nearly 230 billion minutes of user engagement.” Additionally, the time spent on Facebook was “18 times that of the next-biggest social network.”

A more recent report fromBusiness Insiderfound similar statistics. “When looked at on a per-user basis, Facebook is still the leader in engagement by a wide margin, but it’s followed behind by Snapchat, which has fewer users than Twitter or Instagram. Tumblr ranks just behind Snapchat on our engagement index, followed by Pinterest.”

Interestingly, LinkedIn was the “least effective in getting users to engage.”

The report also found that platforms are becoming more varied. “Facebook has seen a decline in user posts but a big rise in news consumption and video viewing.” Snapchat, on the other hand, “is still favored for messaging, but its Live Stories and Discover channels are turning the app into a media distribution platform.”

TrackMavenalso found that the “engagement ratio for businesses on Instagram is more than 10 times greater than that on Facebook.”

One final piece of information comes fromTrueSocialMetrics, which found that YouTube is actually the most engaging social media site. For every one comment, there are 12 shares and 23 likes on average. Facebook came in second, but Twitter and Google+ had the fewest. Perhaps that’s not surprising, given that any one tweet has such a short lifespan, while content like videos lasts longer.

ThePew Research Centerexamined the characteristics of the following five social channels:

However, if you’re looking to reach millennials, Snapchat might be your best option.In fact, just under half of its users are between the ages of 18 and 24.

When it comes to active users, channels like Twitter and Google+ areleft in the dustcompared to Facebook, WhatsApp, WeChat, and Instagram. While that may spell trouble for Twitter, sites like Snapchat and Instagram are thriving thanks to the embrace of younger users. It’s expected that by2019, nearly two-thirds of all millennial smartphone users will be on Instagram. So if you haven’t yet explored these social media sites, it’s time to jump on board before it’s too late.