Every year the English-language marketing resource Social Media Examiner surveys thousands of marketers and publishes a large industry report on how businesses work in social media. We have translated the third part of the 2016 study — it is devoted entirely to platforms: which social networks SMM specialists use, how that set changes with years of experience, and how much time they spend on them. This will save you roughly 15 minutes of reading the English original.
The seven platforms that stayed unchanged for a long time
For a long stretch of time Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Google+, Instagram and Pinterest were the "top 7" venues for marketers, with Facebook leading in popularity by a wide margin. Every other social network stayed in the shadow of these seven giants.
The shift began in 2015: Instagram grows, the rest lose ground
The turning point came in 2015 — Instagram jumped from 36% to 44% in popularity among marketers. The other large social networks slipped that year: Twitter fell from 79% to 76%, LinkedIn from 71% to 67%, YouTube lost 2% (from 55% to 53%), Google+ lost 7% (from 56% to 49%), and Pinterest went from 45% to 40%.
The chart below shows clearly which social networks SMM specialists use more and which they use less — including platforms that have appeared recently.
How much time goes into social media — and what that changes
The next chart shows which social networks marketers spend more advertising time on. Some interesting conclusions follow from it. Those who invest more than 40 hours a week in social media are considerably more interested in promotion on Instagram (47% more), YouTube (36% more) and Pinterest (28% more) than those who give social media 6 hours a week or less.
A marketer's experience changes the set of venues
The report examines separately which platforms marketers with different lengths of social media experience use. The picture is consistent: almost everyone starts with Facebook, and over the years the activity spreads across the remaining networks.
| Experience in SMM | Platforms in use |
|---|---|
| Less than 12 months | Those who have only recently set out on the social media marketing path choose Facebook as their number one — by a wide margin over the rest. Twitter and LinkedIn come next. |
| 1–2 years | Facebook and Twitter remain the main social networks for SMM activity. |
| 2–3 years | Facebook and Twitter lead in popularity by an enormous margin in this group as well. |
| 3–4 years | Practically all marketers with this much experience favour Facebook — 96%. |
| 4–5 years | As marketers build up experience, their marketing activity expands to all the other social platforms. |
| More than 5 years | The most experienced SMM specialists try to spread their activity evenly across all social networks. |
How the survey was conducted
Participants for the survey were sought by email. The survey was run in January 2016: letters were sent to the addresses of 400,000 marketers with a request to take part. After 5 days the survey closed with 5,086 respondents taking part.
To understand how marketers use social media, Social Media Examiner commissioned the 2016 Social Media Marketing Industry ReportSocial Media Examiner
Who responded: business size and segment
- The largest group of participants (38%) works in small business — from 2 to 10 employees.
- Next come the self-employed — 23% of those surveyed.
- 18% of those who took part in the survey work in commercial organisations with a staff of 100 or more.
- More than half of the participants (65%) are marketers from the B2C segment, the remaining 35% are from B2B.
Industries, age, gender and geography
The report gives a separate breakdown of survey participants by industry.
Age
Most survey participants (69%) fall into the 30 to 59 age bracket.
Gender
Women slightly outnumbered men, making up 57% of all participants.
Country
Most respondents (52%) work in the USA, followed by the United Kingdom (8%), Canada (6%) and Australia (4%).
Segment
65% of participants represent B2C and another 35% B2B. This split noticeably influences the choice of platforms.
What to take away from the report
The main storyline of the third part of the study is not so much the reshuffling inside the "top 7" as the dependence of the platform set on two things: the time a team actually spends on social media, and the number of years in the profession. Newcomers concentrate on Facebook, experienced specialists work more broadly, and the visual venues open up to those who put a full working week into SMM.
You can read the report in the English original on the Social Media Examiner website. We translate and publish the most interesting English-language e-commerce and SMM material — come and read it.
