Much like the universe, the world of social networking is vast and ever expanding. There are simply too many networks available to be able to manage a successful marketing campaign on all of them. Every marketer should ask themselves, “Which networks do I need to focus on to reach the most people and have the greatest impact?”
This is an important question to ask because creating a successful social presence is a huge time commitment. The last thing you want is to waste hours behind a keyboard every week building a profile no one cares about. Most marketers invest at least five hours a week in social media efforts. I’m going to share the top networks marketers were focused on this past year based on a study done by Social Media Examiner.
Top 7 Social Networks
It’s no surprise that Facebook is still the top dog, followed by Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, and Instagram. These seven networks dominate over all others by a large margin. Facebook has declined 1% and Twitter declined by 4% from 2014. But the focus on Google+ increased 2% and Instagram increased by 8% from last year. The change with Instagram is a pretty significant shift in trend. But overall, not much has changed this year from last.
Keep in mind these figures were gathered from a pool of over 3,700 marketers with a varying range of experience from < 1 year to 5+ years. The diagrams below show the difference in network focus between marketers with less than a year experience versus those with 5+ years’ experience.
New Marketers
Experienced Marketers
As you can see there’s a significant difference between the networks and concentration of marketers using each network when comparing the two groups. Over 70% of marketers with 5+ years’ experience use five of the top seven social networks.
Time Comparison on Social Marketing
I thought it was worth mentioning a comparison of time spent on the networks as another perspective. The distribution above shows where marketers are spending their time between people who invest 1-5 hours and 40+ hours per week. As you can see, there are some pretty big margins. The marketers who invest the most time were more focused on Instagram by 42%, YouTube by 30%, and Pinterest by 28%.
The Single Most Important Platform
When marketers were asked to choose the single most important social network for their business this is what they said:
Facebook is still the leader followed by LinkedIn and Twitter. The big change from 2014 was an increase to LinkedIn by 4%.
But check out the results when marketers were asked which social network was most important for business to business and business to consumer marketing.
B2B
B2C
Look at the difference between the two. Facebook drops below LinkedIn by 11% and Twitter becomes significantly more important to B2B marketers.
Hopefully you will be able to put this information to use. Take the time to plan an effective social media marketing strategy that works for your business. Do not be afraid to alter your campaign to get more out of the time you invest.
Which social network is most important to your business?
