The websource Social Media Examiner released a compilation of study data that provides a picture of current social media trends all businesses and organizations should be aware of when making decisions on their sm strategy. For a quick 5-minute scan of the trends, here is the data provided by the SME’s post:
- Total social commerce sales that could be tracked to social networks hit $3.30 billion through 2014, up 26% from 2013’s $2.62 billion, which is quite a leap. Overall traffic to retailer websites originating from social networks ticked up 7%.
- Christmas 2014 and Internet sites are the number-one place consumers go to buy gifts in US. In 2015, Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest (and even Amazon.com) are busy developing buy-type buttons and promotions to help marketers track sales directly to the platform.
- March 2015 US study reveals that mobile access to the Internet has quadrupled over the past four years, and desktop has risen 37%. The study also found that the predominant Internet activity on mobile was social networking. 31% of all traffic to the top 10 digital sites was mobile-only visitation (top three are Google, Yahoo and Facebook).
- 44% of Americans now are listening to streaming audio. Monthly audio podcast consumption grew from approximately 39 million monthly users in 2014 to approximately 46 million in 2015, an increase of 18%.
- 87% of podcast sponsors are mid-tier, dot.com companies selling web-based services (subscription) or ecommerce products (Dollar Shave Club). One-third of the podcasts had no sponsors at all, indicating that the host was most likely selling his or her own products or services.
- Move to mobile – and Facebook still dominates the sm narrative. Facebook not only became the provider of 61% of all social logins, but also makes up 72% of all ecommerce social logins. Facebook’s 61% stretches far ahead of Google+’s second runner-up status at 22%.
- 70% of Facebook’s users engage with the site daily. That number increased 7% from 2013, and beat Instagram’s daily user number of 49%.
For instructive commentary, we suggest reading the article in its entirety:
Social Media Marketing Trends Gaining Traction in 2015: New Research