From the latest market research it is clear that in recent years consumer behaviour has been evolving, rapidly. The pandemic has acted as a catalyst and supercharged incredible changes in business, primarily through online presence. Social networks in particular have completely transformed marketing.
58.4 % of the WORLD'S population now use social media. This equates to 4.62 billion people with a further 424 million new users coming online in the last 12 months.
75% of these people (3,465,000,000) said that they turn to social media when researching products and services that they’re thinking of buying.
When PR experts were asked last year which areas they felt they needed to gain more insight into social networks topped the list. These were namely in the fields of social influencer outreach and social network strategy. Basically this means that in 2022 ‘social search’ should be one of your top priorities.
What are the key facts in regards to digital use in the world today?
More than two-thirds of the world’s population use a mobile phone with global users having increased by almost 100 million (+1.9 percent) over the past 12 months.
There are now 4.88 billion internet users around the world. This equates to almost 62 percent of the world’s population. The latest data shows that global internet user numbers have increased by more than 220 million (+4.8 percent) over the past year.
For context, the world’s population reached 7.89 billion at the start of October 2021, representing an increase of roughly 80 million people compared with this time last year. Current growth rates indicate that the global population will exceed 8 billion by mid-2023.
There are currently 4.55 billion people in the world using social media. That figure is more than 400 million higher than it was this time last year, equating to year-on-year growth of almost 10 percent.
On average 13 new users start to use social media for the first time every single second. Current trends suggest that social media users will pass the equivalent of 60 percent of the world’s total population in the first half of 2022.
Social search
Search success will depend on an understanding of how people research brands and products on social media platforms.
The latest research shows that the typical social media user now spends roughly 2½ hours per day using social media platforms.
For context, that adds up to more than 37 days per year!
So, given how much time people spend on social media it’s not too surprising to learn that people turn to social platforms looking for information.
Social networks are now the second-top channel for online brand research after search engines and, amongst internet users aged 16 to 24, they’re already the top channel.
Social media
In order to raise the profile of your company you need to create a powerful social media marketing plan that achieves the results you want through all the various media.
Strategies must include:
Improving the competitive advantage of your brand
Risk mitigation
Protecting your brand
Each post must have a certain goal. Write with a purpose in mind
Growing your brand organically
Paid ads when closer to holidays and popular events
Bring more bookings and conversions
Better customer insights
Increasing the acquisition of new customers
Improving your brand awareness
Plan on getting more visits and service inquiries
Showcase your social media sites on your website
Improve the customer experience
Positively improving your employee’s experiences on the various social media platforms
Customer retention increase
Get promoted by influencers
Consistently work on strategies to go viral (viral marketing) By this you will be making your customers and prospects do the marketing for your hotels
Engage a reputable hospitality social media agency if your content strategy is failing
Target new sites like Pinterest which has over 440 million active monthly users.
Facebook is the largest social media platform globally with 2.85 billion monthly active users worldwide. This is followed by YouTube at 2.3 billion then WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, TikTok and Instagram all bringing in over a billion users each.
Right now there are 1.9 billion daily users accessing Facebook’s platform with an average increase of 6.89% year upon year.
YouTube
YouTube has an incredibly diverse user base. It is visited by nearly a quarter of the world’s population boasting 2 billion monthly users viewing over a billion hours of video content each day.
70 percent of people say they bought a brand as a result of seeing it on YouTube.
Instagram is estimated to have had 1.074 billion users worldwide in 2021. This is 73.5 million more than its number of users in 2020
Instagram engagement is on the rise for businesses. This means that brands can generate over 4x more interactions on Instagram compared to Facebook.
More than 80% of businesses consider Instagram engagement as the most important metric.
TikTok
TikTok announced that it had passed the 1 billion monthly active user figure at the end of September 2021 making it just the seventh social media platform to join the exclusive billion-user club.
47.4% of those users are below the age of 30 and over half of those users are teenagers. For brands targeting younger audiences TikTok is a gold mine as, if you create entertaining and unique content, your videos have a high potential to go viral.
But what about the UK?
Closer to home the use of social media platforms in the UK have also increased and is predicted to do so for the foreseeable future. Last year the UK was home to 60.37 million active social media users, an increase of over nine million since 2017.
Facebook users in the United Kingdom
Throughout recent years, Facebook has held a steady dominance over the social network market. Facebook had 51.34 million users in the United Kingdom as of December 2021. Two years prior, the number of users was 44.86 million.
YouTube
In the UK YouTube generates 15 BILLION hits per month with an 80% penetration rate of those hits. As advertising becomes ever more visual, particularly with videography YouTube will retain and generate a large audience base.
In 2021, social media app Instagram had a total of 33.45 million UK users. Over 80% of these users follow at least one business profile with 20% of those engaging with a business profile EACH DAY.
TikTok
TikTok has 17 million active users each month in the UK spending, on average, an hour a day on the platform, the majority of which are of the younger generation using smartphones. The app is downloaded a million times a month in the UK.
Well they're established, but what’s on the rise?
Snapchat!
Snapchat has delivered healthy growth in global advertising reach over the past year adding 24 million new users since December 2021 to take the platform’s total global ad reach to 538 million.
In Summary!
Each of these trends offers exciting new marketing opportunities, but each one also requires marketers to adopt new approaches, develop new skills, and publish new kinds of content.
As with everything else in marketing, your first step should be to identify what you want to achieve.
Specifically, which audiences are you hoping to reach? What do you want those people to do once they find your account and your content?
These objectives will vary from brand to brand so be sure to identify the outcomes that actually matter to you.
For example, some marketers may want to drive immediate sales; others may simply want to increase their social media following or influence.
People’s online search behaviours are evolving all the time, especially as new tools and interfaces become more widely available.
This increased diversity and complexity can make search seem overwhelming, but the associated opportunities can quickly justify the necessary investments of time, effort, and money.
Ultimately, making your digital activities as visible as possible increases the chances that these activities will achieve their intended objectives. So, approach new search opportunities with the same level of enthusiasm that you’d approach a new social media platform that offers huge new reach.
