Consistent success with social media marketing is driven by understanding what's working and what's not.
And to do that, you first need to determine which key performance indicators (KPIs) you should be measuring.
An infographic (below) from Media Update looks at five social media KPIs that every marketer should be watching: engagement, loyalty, growth, conversions, and reach.
The infographic looks at what each KPI is and which metrics are associated with it.
https://tinyurl.com/54s2xx96
Social networks have transformed marketing and, as this post shows, their popularity is still growing in our latest global social media statistics research summary for 2024.
Networks vary in popularity with different demographics and they're still evolving. Research by Global WebIndex that we reference in this article shows that globally,
62.3% of the world's population uses social media. The average daily usage is 2 hours and 23 minutes (April 2024).
We'll keep this post updated during 2024 as the latest statistics are published drawing on our recommended top 10 digital marketing statistics sources. We'll be pointing to new data on the popularity of social media from Global Web Index (worldwide), Pew Internet Surveys (US) and OfCom (UK), and, most recently, the Datareportal January 2024 global overview, with the January review expected in the next few weeks.
This post will apply the latest reports to our answers in 7 key areas crucial to understanding consumer use of social networks:
Now more than ever, marketers need to make smart decisions when planning their digital distribution channels. So reviewing the latest social media diffusion and usage stats is a crucial part of any company's digital marketing strategy.
Datareportal regularly updates its global compendium of social media statistics, which we recommend as it gives some great insights into the world of social media. It's a great download for including slides for your presentations. Note that their data is compiled from other sources of which the Global Web Index panel is the best source, although only available to paid subscribers. If you're researching social network adoption, it's worth checking out GWI's top 10 2023 social media statistics and their free annual report of social media trends.
According to the Datareportal January April global overview, we can see that social media growth has continued to increase:
The full report from Datareportal contains insights collated from different data providers across 200+ slides. It provides country-specific data for the vast majority of the world, so you might want to check out the slides of the countries in your core markets to get a better idea of the current state of social in the areas you operate. In this post, we focus on the social media data which starts at slide 205 in the report.
This chart, by Datareportal, summarises the importance and growth of social media today.
Although the average daily time spent on social has slightly decreased (4 minutes), the growth of adoption remains high. Currently, 93.3% of internet users are using social media, and the gender split is fairly balanced, with slightly more male identities than female identities.
The best source for getting stats on the biggest social media platforms is direct from company statements and earning announcements.
Notably, of the top 4 social media platforms, 3 are owned by Meta. Facebook is the most-used platform in total - but as marketers, we know it's crucial to consider different trends of usage for different demographics, as we'll see below.
So, what does this mean for your social media marketing strategy?
Clearly, there are lots of opportunities to reach, interact with, convert, and engage social media users. Savvy marketers use social media across their marketing funnel, to influence journeys from product discovery, through to first purchases, loyalty, and advocacy.
Our RACE Framework has a data-driven structure that marketers can use to plan their own strategies.
This recent data from Comscore focused on the UK for Gen Z, Milennial and Gen X groups shows the wide variation in usage of social apps in the UK. In the younger age group Reddit and Discord are surprisingly important, in part because of Gaming. Facebook remains dominant in older age groups.
United States Social network popularity
The Pew Research Center news usage research is a very strong recent source showing US social media statistics trends in usage for news. Interestingly, nearly half of those surveyed used social media to get news often or sometimes.
Every marketer has limited time for social media marketing, so which fastest-growing social network should you focus your efforts on?
HubSpot has a good summary of these based on its own consumer survey - see Fastest growing US social platforms 2023 which features less well known, but growing social networks such as BeReal and Twitch.
The number of social media users globally grew from 4.72 billion in January 2023 to 5.04 billion in January 2024. This accounts for a 8% growth of +320 million users YOY. With more growth predicted over the rest of the year...
94.2% of internet users have social media identities today.
Social media platforms today are evolving and developing to meet an ever-wider variety of consumer wants and needs. Surely the value that social media usage can add to consumers' lives is more evident than ever before - social media marketers can tap into that.
2024 analysis of regional use of social media shows the wide variation of social media penetration:
One of the challenges of social media marketing is that by its nature, social media are peer-to-peer, involving conversations between friends, families and colleagues. Given this, brands must be sensitive to how they use social media.
Insight from GWI shows the important role that social media plays in influencing brand discovery and in encouraging purchase. This insight shows the relative importance of ads, recommendations and updates to business social media pages in brand discovery.
Our new Organic Social Media Learning Path modules are dedicated to helping marketers optimize their organic Instagram marketing with a strategic approach, integrated across the marketing funnel.
Our bite-sized modules contain tools and templates designed to help you address the systematic issue of businesses using social media platforms to create standalone posts rather than planning a strategy.
Our Social Media Learning Path has modules with dedicated help for:
Social media statistics benchmarking tool Rival IQ produces these useful sector-by-sector benchmarks of social media engagement metrics including:
These include useful sector benchmarks for Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter you can compare against. Here is a sample of the insights from their 2022 report.
Facebook engagement rates
The 2021 median average engagement rate per post (by follower) on Facebook is 0.064%, across all industries. Sports Teams see the highest engagement, achieving an average of 0.27%, followed by Influencers with 0.23% and Higher Education with 0.15%.
At the lower end of the spectrum, Health & Beauty, and Tech & Software receive an average 0.02% engagement rate.
Instagram engagement rates
Engagement rates are significantly higher on Instagram compared to Facebook. As you can see the 2021 average median engagement rate per post (by follower) is more than 10x higher, despite engagement on Instagram dropping approx 30% between 2020-21.
Marketers know intuitively that the right type of visuals and videos are more effective in gaining engagement.
This is supported by observed interaction rates. According to LinkedIn, Images typically result in a 2x higher comment rate and Video gets 5x more engagement on LinkedIn, Live Video gets 24x more.
This is also supported by this data from this Social Bakers social media trends report:
Videos longer than a minute achieved the highest median interactions and median reach on Facebook, according to Socialbakers data.
In fact, for both reach and interactions, there was a correlation that showed the longer a video was, the further it reached and the more interactions it received.
Socialbakers’ metrics for video length are very short (less than 11.882 seconds), short (more than 11.882 and less than 24.362 seconds), medium (more than 24.362 and less than 61.248 seconds), long (more than 61.248 seconds and less than five minutes), and very long (more than five minutes).
As you can see, different platforms offer different opportunities for capturing different audiences. The trick is finding the right techniques to that to your channel goals.
If you're looking for one simple reference guide which contains all the social media channel updates in an easy-to-track format, look no further than our digital media updates tracker, which is updated quarterly, to make sure our Business Members never miss a trick.
Testing different frequencies of updates and timing is another aspect of social media optimization based on consumer behaviour.
Each network tends to have a ‘sweet spot’ for frequency based on its algorithms. It used to be beneficial to post several times a day on Facebook for many brands, but with decreased organic reach, a single update tends to be more effective. We find a higher frequency on LinkedIn or Twitter tends to be more effective.
Sprout Social's 2022 social media strategy builder compares the best times to post on social media. Compare these to your patterns of posting and consider how you could post differently.
Each network tends to have a ‘sweet spot’ for frequency based on their algorithm and the most common times for consumer usage. It used to be beneficial to post several times a day on Facebook for many brands, but with decreased organic reach, a single update tends to be more effective.
We find a higher frequency on LinkedIn or Twitter tends to be more effective. The results from Instagram and Facebook show a clear preference for around midweek at midday, so you should consider this when scheduling your post updates.
https://tinyurl.com/mpm4jsh4
What's the right image size?
That question can vex social media marketers, considering there are now so many different platforms with so many different placements.
To help you navigate the maze of size requirements, Hootsuite created a guide for 2024.
An infographic (below) from Red Website Design summarizes thsy guidance.
It covers the image sizes for common placements on Instagram, Twitter/X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, and TikTok.
The life of a social media marketer can often feel overwhelming.
There are so many tasks—from posting content to monitoring competitors—that need to be tackled at different cadences... simply keeping track of them all can be daunting.
To help bring some order to the chaos, JumpFly created a simple checklist (below).
It covers the core social media to-dos that should be carried out each week, month, and quarter, with a particular focus on the essential paid media tasks for marketers.
If you have an upcoming marketing campaign for a new product feature, or a holiday promotion that you want to capitalize on, or maybe you’re releasing a brand-new product, you will want to plan a social media marketing campaign to help spread the word.
But in order to make sure your social media marketing is as successful as possible, you need to plan and strategize the campaign in advance and consider how it integrates with other campaign activity.
Ideally, the social elements of the campaign will be part of a broader marketing campaign plan - our companion post and members' marketing campaign plan template recommend you structure your campaign using these key campaign elements:
Social media covers a range of digital media enabling audience participation, interaction, sharing, and creation of user-generated content (UGC) on social networks.
Social media is both an art and a science. It’s a science because you need to test and learn what is effective on different social platforms. You need to test the techniques that gain maximum engagement and amplification on each platform by using the latest organic and paid tactics.
An integrated approach towards marketing through social media tools to monitor and facilitate interaction, participation and sharing within online communities. Commercial value can be achieved by encouraging and managing both positive and negative sentiments toward your company and its brands.
Having a social media campaign strategy aligned with your marketing campaign plan means you will action a defined and consistent process for planning and measuring your social media marketing activities, with defined objectives structured around the campaign.
When planning your social media marketing campaign strategy, we suggest you focus on one of two key social media campaign objectives:
When it comes to planning your social media strategy, we strongly recommend integrating your activities on these channels across your wider digital marketing strategies - to consolidate your efforts, avoid duplication, and align your customers' journeys to and across your site.
At Smart Insights, we have a wealth of free and premium social media resources to help marketers, managers, and business owners elevate their digital and social media strategies using data and best practices.
In the blog below, we will explore 7 steps to creating your social media marketing campaign plan.
The first question you need to ask before a campaign is: why am I running this campaign? Answering this question will determine other steps you take during your campaign.
However, after setting these goals, you need to be specific. What level of brand awareness do you want to achieve with your campaigns? More website traffic? 2,000 new followers?
To set effective goals, they need to be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART).
Then, after setting your goals, it's vital to state the metrics you'll use to measure the achievement of your goals.
Make no mistake, goals are extremely important. In a CoSchedule survey, it was found that marketers who set goals were 376% more likely to report success.
Moreso, it affects every aspect of your social media campaign and helps to determine its success or failure.
Even if you create the best campaign content ever, if you're not targeting the right audience with your content, the campaign will likely fail. That's why you need to understand your ideal target before a campaign.
A buyer persona is a document that contains extensive details of your ideal customers. This helps you to create messages in your campaigns that can resonate with your target audience.
Some details to have in your buyer persona include:
Knowing these details will help you create messages to build trust and convince your prospects to take action.
With a tool like Facebook Audience Insights, you can input a few details and then get more details from Facebook's huge database.
When running a social media campaign, you're likely to get better results when you focus on a few social media channels.
From your buyer persona, you have an idea of your ideal audience's favourite social media channels. Most times, it also depends on the type of product or service you're offering. For instance, LinkedIn is a popular network for B2B companies because many decision-makers are present on the platform.
Another way to select social media channels for your campaign is to look at past results on your website analytics. Which channels have referred more visitors to your website in the past? Which channels have brought in more leads? Are there any quick fixes you can make?
Stating these channels will affect your campaign as each channel has its best practices. Furthermore, each channel has its best content type and posting frequency. For example, what works on Twitter won’t necessarily work on Instagram and there’s a huge difference between LinkedIn and most other major social networks.
When you run a social media campaign, timing is very important.
Using a social media calendar, you can outline your content from the beginning of your campaign to the end. A social media calendar is similar to a broader marketing campaign or editorial calendar, but focusing on social media activities and posts.
With a calendar in place, your team can focus on what needs to be done at a particular time. Some important tasks to have in your calendar include:
Your social media calendar will help ensure that you don’t miss any important steps in your strategy, while also helping you be more productive with your time.
If you're running a social media campaign, you'll inevitably need tools at various stages of your campaign. You can increase your chances of success if you have a list of the tools you want to use at each stage of your social media campaign.
Here are some aspects where tools are vital:
Content is key. There's no point defining your audience and planning your distribution if you then post the wrong thing.
Did you know, for example, in Instagram Reels gain an average engagement rate of 1.95%, which is at least double compared to the other post types on Instagram.
Therefore, you need to make sure you are creating the right type of content to delight your audience.
A popular tool you can use to create simple images and moving graphics for your campaign is Canva. It provides templates of the ideal image size for various channels. For your videos, a tool that makes the process easy is Animoto. AI is now available to support text and image creation for social media. Canva has some of the best free options Our article on Trends and Tools for AI in marketing highlights the latest developments.
To meet your content needs on social media, you'll need more than the content you produce. Sharing relevant content from other sources will help keep your audience engaged during your campaign.
One problem though is that sourcing these pieces of content manually is ineffective and a time drain. A tool such as Quuu or Curata can find relevant content for your pages.
Tasks such as sharing updates, scheduling updates, social listening, collaborating with team members, and others can be accomplished through a social media management tool.
Consequently, you and your team members can carry out your social tasks on a single platform and save a lot of time. Agorapulse is an effective tool for social media management that can meet your team’s needs.
You need social media analytics tools from the start of your campaign; once you know what your KPIs (key performance indicators) are, use social analytics tools to track them and see how your campaign is evolving.
With this data, you can then adjust and optimize your campaign for maximized results. To help, tools like Cyfe allow you to connect your different social network analytics, along with your website traffic so that you can track all of your results in one place.
Performing competitive analysis can help you understand what your competitors’ strategy is like as well as see what tactics and channels work for them and which don’t. This activity should inform all aspects of your integrated marketing strategy.
Some vital parts to watch from your competitors are:
Apart from watching your competitors for their great practices, you also need to watch out for their mistakes. Thereby, you can exploit them to gain an edge over your competitors.
You can benchmark against competitors to learn from their approaches to inform your campaign using a tool such as RivalIQ which is a paid social media competitor analaysi service, but includes free tools for 'head-to-head analysis'. You can also use tools made available by the social networks. Linked has a useful Competitor Analytics tool and Meta business suite offers Facebook benchmarking business insights to compare competitor pages to yours.
Tracking performance for your campaign helps to determine the success or failure of your campaigns. More so, it can provide insights to help adjust your social media strategy even while a campaign is still running.
Another benefit you get from tracking your metrics is that it can necessitate changes for your future campaigns. It's vital to note though, that the metrics you track for your campaigns will depend on your goals.
For instance, you can use UTM parameters to track traffic from your campaign to your website. A tool such as Google Analytics will provide details about traffic from a source and its behavior on your website.
To increase the chances of success for your social media marketing campaign, you need a robust plan in place before you start.
This starts with setting your goals. Then, you need to understand your audience, use a social content calendar to plan the actual content, use the right tools to run your campaign, and track your campaign performance throughout.
By following these steps, you’re well on your way to developing a successful social media campaign.
By Lilach Bullock
https://www.smartinsights.com/
Yes, you can post images and videos on Instagram from your PC, however, there are some limitations to keep in mind. The desktop version only allows for posting to your profile, meaning you can't post Instagram Stories, IGTV posts, or Reels from a PC at this time. Live video is also not supported from the web version of Instagram.
Instagram is a popular social media network for sharing photos that's most commonly accessed through a mobile app. It offers a web version that makes it easy to post assets you may only have on your laptop and not your phone.
Here are some reasons why you should consider posting from your computer:
If you manage multiple Instagram accounts, it's much easier to switch between accounts on your computer.
For example, let's say you're a social media manager for a prominent brand. The last thing you want to do is have an absentminded mishap where you accidentally post brand content to your personal Instagram account (or, worse, vice versa) simply because you're logged into both on your phone.
For those who already work on their desktop for most of the day, it might be easier to upload company posts and videos via your desktop, rather than having your smartphone open at work.
Plus, your company's files might be more easily accessible via desktop than mobile. For instance, if you use Photoshop to edit company photos, it's likely easier to click "Upload" from your desktop when you're done editing, rather than sending that same photo or video to your personal phone.
Typing out long captions can be very tedious, especially when using a smartphone. Having access to a keyboard makes crafting your captions and hashtags a lot easier — and quicker.
Using a desktop also means you don't have to worry about your phone accidentally auto-correcting your caption. Plus, you can run your caption through an AI writing assistant, like Grammarly, to ensure your captions are free of spelling and grammar mistakes.
Perhaps you simply prefer the larger screen of a desktop. Or, maybe you don't have access to a smartphone so you can't download the app on your phone. Either way, working with a larger screen can be more convenient for those who want to see their picture or videos in greater detail before posting.
You can use Instagram on a PC. Simply access the Instagram website at instagram.com and login using your phone number, username, email, or Facebook account. On Instagram's web version, you can browse your feed, reply to direct messages (DMs), view your notifications, post photos and videos to your profile, and more.
While the social platform is primarily meant to be consumed in-app, it offers a nearly identical experience if you access it on your computer.
On Instagram's web version, you can:
In other words — Yes, you can post to Instagram from your PC or Mac desktop instead of on your mobile device's app or browser.
Now, let's explore how you can post images and videos from your desktop computer.
Whether you use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or another application, the first thing you need to do is open your web browser.
Next, go to https://www.instagram.com by typing it into your navigation bar.
Then, log in to your Instagram account through your Facebook credentials or by inputting your phone number, username, or email.
Once you're logged in, find the navigation bar, which includes a search bar, a home symbol, a DM symbol, a plus sign, a heart, and a circle with your profile picture. Click on the plus sign.
A pop-up box will appear with a blue button that says "Select from computer." You can either click on the button to select your file, or you can drag and drop images from your desktop into the pop-up box.
If you opt to click the "Select from computer" button, browse through your files until you find the image you want. Click on the image file, then select "Open."
Instagram gives you several options for editing images prior to publication.
You can change the aspect ratio, zoom in, or add more media to the same post. You can find aspect ratio and zoom-in icons on the lower left corner of the image editor:
Once you're done, click "Next" on the top right corner of the image editor.
When you're done editing, click "Next."
On the next page, you'll be able to add a caption for your post.
On the same page, you'll also be able to add a location, alt text, tag other accounts, or turn off commenting.
Once your post is ready to go, click "Share" on the top right corner of the screen.
Now that you know to post on Instagram from a PC, we'll discuss how to do it on:
Once we discuss how you can post photos, we'll also discuss how to upload a video to Instagram from your desktop.
The first thing you'll want to do is open up Google Chrome. If you're on Windows, you can do so by clicking the Windows icon in your taskbar. Then, search through the applications you've already installed on your computer until you find Chrome.
Next, navigate to https://www.instagram.com by typing it into the navigation bar. Log in using your Facebook credentials or by inputting your email, phone number, or username. If you've logged into Instagram's web version before, it might include an option to "Continue as [username]," and you'll be able to automatically log in.
Once you're logged into Instagram on your Chrome browser, you can upload to Instagram just as you would on any Desktop PC browser. Click the "+" button, select the file you want to upload, edit the photo however you like, write a caption and alt text, add a tag and location, and then click "Share" when you're ready to upload.
The first thing you'll want to do is open up Safari. To do so, open up Launchpad and find Safari in your list of applications. Alternatively, if you have it pinned in your taskbar, you can open it from there.
Next, navigate to https://www.instagram.com by typing it into Safari's navigation bar. If you visit the site often enough, Safari may also have a shortcut in your "New tab" page.
Once you get there, login with your preferred credentials. If you've already used the web version in the past, Instagram will allow you to log in with one click.
Once you are able to view Instagram from your Safari browser, you can upload an Instagram post the same way you would on Chrome — by clicking the "+" button, adding a filter or editing the photo, adding a location and caption, and clicking "Share" when you're ready for your post to go live.
Want to upload a video instead?
You can upload videos to Instagram from your desktop — which makes it easy to share professionally-shot videos that may not be readily available on your phone. That means you can share marketing videos and shoots you received from a freelancer or your in-house videographer.
Here's how to post a video to Instagram on any web browser.
Once you're there, log in using your credentials.
Just like you would if you were posting a photo, click the + button in the top navigation bar of your Instagram feed.
Select your video file from the computer. We recommend uploading an MP4 file to avoid compatibility issues.
If your video is less than 10 minutes long, your file size should be no bigger than 650 MB. For videos between 10 minutes and 60 minutes (which is the maximum length), you should aim for a file size smaller than 3.6GB. Read more about Instagram's video requirements here.
Instagram gives you two options for adjusting your video: Changing the aspect ratio and adding more media. For photos, Instagram also allows you to zoom into the picture. The option isn't available for videos.
If you're uploading a horizontal video, we recommend using a 16:9 aspect ratio so that it's not cut off. If you're worried about the aesthetics of your feed, stick to a 1:1 ratio. That way, there isn't any white space when visitors visit your profile.
Next, you can choose a cover photo (the image users will see before they click "Play"). You have the option of uploading a custom cover photo for the video, and you can also trim the video and turn the sound off if desired.
In the next screen, you can write a caption for your video, tag anyone who appears in the video, add alt text, and disable commenting.
Done! You've now posted your video on Instagram.
You don't have to access Instagram's web version to post on Instagram. If you find the web version to be too lacking for your day-to-day tasks, especially if you're a social media manager, you can use a third-party service that offers social media scheduling software.
HubSpot's social media management tool is one of the best options you can use to schedule Instagram posts from your desktop — no need to access the Instagram app or website itself.
Here's one example of us scheduling a video post for Instagram using Social Inbox:
The great benefit of using this method is that you can schedule posts well in advance. You don't have to access Instagram every time you want to add new media to your profile.
If you're doing this regularly for your job, it might be worthwhile to explore all the social media scheduling tools at your disposal to choose the one best-suited for your business' needs.
Now that you don't have to worry about transferring photos to your mobile device or juggling your work's social media account on your own device, you'll be able to grow on Instagram efficiently and effectively. From there, the sky is the limit for creating posts and growing your audience in a scalable way.
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/post-to-instagram-from-computer
