[Image from Engadget]
Recently, Engadget took a look at 10 years of social media and broke the information down into a very interesting social media infographic.
The crown currently belongs to Facebook, a company that’s made some big, big startup purchases on the way, although Twitter continues to pack (arguably) more influence. A whole lot has happened in the last decade, but we’ve tried to squeeze the more interesting parts into something a little more visual.
Social media is big. How big? Well, Facebook currently has 1.23 billion monthly active users. The entire planet has just over 7 billion people, so that means more than one in every seven people on Earth uses Facebook regularly. That’s a lot! It really shows how social media has become a huge part of the everyday lives of people.
71% of online adults are Facebook users and 64% of people use Facebook daily.
What does that mean? It means that this is not a “niche market” that you can ignore. Your customers are on Facebook and other types of social media, regardless of who they are, and they’re using it regularly. That means that these users understand Facebook. If they use the social network on a daily basis, they understand it and they know how it works. They know what to expect and they know what they like. This also means that blatant advertising won’t work. Regular users generally know how to recognize what is an ad and what isn’t and they have subconsciously trained themselves to ignore obvious ads. In order for Facebook ads to work, they need to be interesting and draw attention. Otherwise, you’re wasting your money.
How else do you get their attention? With smart, interesting content. People use Facebook, Twitter and other forms of social media to stay connected. Not only do they want to know what their friends and family members are up to, but they also want to share relevant, interesting and informative content and they want to read the content that those they care about have shared.
One great way to get attention on Facebook is to use photos. The social media site’s latest design update made photos bigger and more noticeable. Stories that have photos attached to them are more easily noticed by users and therefore clicked and shared more often. So what can you take from this? Use images in your stories and continue creating great content. Facebook’s 1.23 billion monthly active users will appreciate it.