We are very grateful for all the research that has been done on social media.
Social media studies have given us great ideas to improve our social media marketing, helped us understand the psychology behind social media behaviors and made us better marketers.
To help you better understand the ever-changing social media landscape, we jumped into the latest social media research papers, hoping to discover some under-the-radar insights to help supercharge your social media marketing strategy.
In this post, I’d love to share what we discovered and bring you some insightful and surprising social media studies of 2016, sharing the key findings and actionable takeaways you can try today.
1. Facebook is more than 2 times as popular as the next most-popular social network
Seventy-nine percent of U.S. adults are on Facebook, more than twice the percentage of adults on Instagram (32 percent)
Surveying 1,520 U.S. adults above the age of 18, the researchers found that Facebook is still the most popular social media platform — and by a huge margin. The percentage of U.S. adults on Facebook (79 percent) is more than twice the percentage of adults on Instagram (32 percent), Pinterest (31 percent), LinkedIn (29 percent) or Twitter (24 percent).
It’s also interesting to note that percentage of adults on Instagram has risen significantly over the last few years (from 13 percent to 32 percent), Pinterest has also seen a similar curve with 31 percent of U.S. adults now using the platform — that’s just 1 percent less than Instagram.
The researchers also discovered that Facebook users are much more engaged than other social media platform users. Seventy-six percent of Facebook users use it daily — 55 percent visit several times a day and 22 percent visit once per day. This is a quite substantial increase from the 70 percent reported in 2015.
Instagram, coming in second, has 51 percent of its users using it daily.
(If you want to find out more, the report by the Pew Research Center also goes into the demographics of users on these social media platforms such as gender, age, education and income breakdowns. It could be handy for creating your marketing personas.)
Key takeaways for marketers
As we discovered in our State of Social Media 2016 report, Facebook is one of the best platforms for marketers to reach their audience. Facebook’s newsfeed algorithm seems to be prioritizing videos at the moment, so I’d recommend experimenting with videos and Facebook Live videos. If you have the budget, Facebook ads is a popular option among marketers, too.
2. Over 1/3 of Instagram users are on Instagram for surveillance (yes, surveillance!)
Knowledge-gathering is the No. 1 reason people use Instagram, followed by documentation
Have you ever wondered why your followers chose to use Instagram? Research says: to keep tabs on you (and your brand).
A research team at the University of Alabama performed a study on the motivation for using Instagram. They asked over 200 undergraduate students how often they use Instagram for each of 20 given reasons such as “to follow my friends,” or “to depict my life through pictures.” Here’s the full list:
After analyzing the results, the research team narrowed down the 20 reasons into four main motivators for using Instagram:
- Surveillance — People use Instagram to keep up with or gain knowledge about what others such as their family, friends and strangers are doing.
- Documentation — Many use Instagram to document moments of their lives, and Instagram becomes a virtual photo album for those key moments.
- Coolness/popularity — People use Instagram to appear cool and to gain popularity. Having a following and receiving likes satisfy our psychological need to feel seen and valued.
- Creativity — People use Instagram to portray their skills by posting creative posts.
Here’s how I’d look at the findings: When someone chooses to use Instagram, 36 percent of why they use Instagram is because they want to know what others (or your brand) are doing, 10 percent is because they want to document moments of their life, 8 percent is because they want to be cool and popular and 6 percent is because they want to…