Study: Brands should understand users' goal of using social platforms

The number of global social media users continues to rise as there are a total of 4.65 billion people using social platforms. Although the size of it is massive, brands still need to understand social users' preferences since they tend to go to a particular social platform that suits their needs.

This year's DataReportal’s new Digital 2022 April Global Statshot report, compiled in collaboration with We Are Social and Hootsuite, examined people’s activities across different social media platforms. For example, seven in 10 Facebook users said that they had used the platform to communicate with friends and family, making this the most popular activity on Facebook. However, only 15% of TikTok users said that they had used the platform for this kind of communication. Instead, TikTok was an entertainment channel, with a massive 77% of the platform’s users saying that they had used it to look for fun and entertaining content.

Meanwhile, Instagram and Snapchat users appeared to be most interested in publishing their content. Almost seven in 10 Instagram users (69.9%) said that they had published photos and videos to Instagram, compared with just one in three TikTok users (33.9%) who said that they had posted videos to TikTok.

Another takeaway for marketers was that Pinterest users seemed to be particularly interested in brand-related content, with 37.9% of the platform’s users saying that they had used the platform to follow or research brands. Staying up to date with news and current events was the top platform activity amongst users of both LinkedIn and Twitter.The report also examined the prevalence of social platforms across the globe. There were a total of 4.65 billion social media users globally, increasing by 7.5% year-on-year and accounting for 58.7% of the total population. In April, global social media users spent two hours and 29 minutes on social platforms daily, up from two hours and 22 minutes last year.The number of global social media users increased significantly. In April 2020, only 3.81 billion people were using social platforms. In just two years, it increased by more than 22% to 4.65 billion. About 40% of social media users were from East Asia (27.7%) and Southeast Asia (11.6%). According to the latest report from the China Network Information Centre (CNNIC), there were more than one billion people in China now using social media and messenger platforms. CNNIC’s data showed that the number of social media users in the country grew by 2.6% in 2021, reaching 1.007 billion by the end of the year.The latest figures suggested that about 70% of the country’s total population now uses social media regularly, but 97.5% of the country’s internet users were already active on social platforms. However, data also revealed that there were 440 million people in China who did not use social media. There’s still plenty of room left for growth in the country’s social media population.

A decade ago, there were only 415 million social media users in the country, meaning that the number of social media users increased by 142.7%.

When it comes to users' habits, females tended to spend more time on social platforms compared to men across all age groups. Female users aged 16 to 24 spent three hours and 11 minutes on social platforms daily, while their male counterparts only spent two hours and 40 minutes; Female users aged 25 to 34 spent two hours and 52 minutes on social platforms, but male social users only spent two hours and 34 minutes.The report also examined the reasons for using social media. Keeping in touch with friends and family was the main (47.5%) reason for using social platforms, followed by filling spare time (36.6%), reading news stories (34.8%) and finding content including articles and videos (31%).

Unsurprisingly, Facebook was still the most used social platform as it boasted 2.91 billion global active users. YouTube (2.56 billion) and WhastApp (2 billion) were ranked second and third respectively, followed by Instagram (1.45 billion) and WeChat (1.27 billion).

Finding information about brands and products was also common among social media users. 75.4% of users aged 16 to 64 leveraged any kind of social platform to conduct brand research. Social networks were the most common method (42.7%), followed by question and answer sites such as Quora (21.6%) and forums and message boards (17.2%).

Related articles
Top 5 companies in HK acing social media
Study: APAC marketers least confident in measuring social media ROI
PCPD Study: Social media users should be wary of privacy policies and settings
10 definite impacts on social media marketers need to brace for