Social Media Survey Results: Facebook Leads the Way
Social media is changing at light speed—and so is the way people use it. In our latest survey about social media activity, we affirmed some of our knowledge and learned a few new things as well.
Facebook was way ahead of the pack for every single social media purpose we measured, including spreading marketing messages, business and professional networking, staying up to date on the news, connecting with friends and family, and entertainment.
In fact, Facebook dominated most categories, with only a few exceptions:
- Corporate Messaging:Twitter was a distant second place for corporations disseminating their marketing messages and communicating with clients (Facebook had 81 percent of respondents to Twitter’s 58 percent and LinkedIn’s 46 percent). Blogs were a strong fourth place when it came to corporate message distribution (42 percent).
- Business and Professional Networking:The only real category rival Facebook had was in business and professional networking, for which LinkedIn came in only slightly behind (Facebook had 77 percent to LinkedIn’s 69 percent and Twitter’s 42 percent).
- Entertainment:YouTube and then blogs, respectively, were the second and third choices after Facebook for entertainment purposes (Facebook had 77 percent, where YouTube had 54 percent and blogs had 46 percent).
Companies that interact with clients through social media do so either once a month (23 percent) or several times a week (19 percent), with a handful of people using it daily or even several times a day (12 percent each) to communicate with customers.
Unfortunately—yet unsurprisingly—62 percent of respondents’ companies do not have a formal plan for social media marketing. Without a plan, these companies could be damaging—or certainly not furthering—their corporate branding, turning off potential clientele, and wasting valuable staff time. Social media can be a liability if not used as part of a strategic marketing and communications framework that includes metrics for success measurement. Companies without a plan should work to develop one with their marketing teams or bring in outside professionals for assistance.
