1. 6 Mind-Blowing Social Media Stats
And What They Mean for Marketers
AUGUST 2012
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2. 6 Mind-Blowing Social Media Stats
And What They Mean for Marketers
Introduction 3
STAT #1 4
STAT #2 5
STAT #3 6
STAT #4 7
STAT #5 8
STAT #6 9
Conclusion 10
Additional Resources 10
Additional Awareness Resources 10
About Awareness Inc. 11
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3. 6 Mind-Blowing Social Media Stats
And What They Mean for Marketers
INTRODUCTION
A key benefit of social marketing is the ability to measure everything that goes on, and you don’t
have to dig very deep to find some truly astounding stats on the industry. But it’s not just that these
stats are interesting; they also provide valuable information that can help shape your marketing
strategy.
Did you know one social network will account for 40% of all social media-driven purchases? What
about the leading reason that users follow brands? We scoured the Internet to bring you some of the
most jaw-dropping metrics and their practical implications. We want you to do more than impress
your friends and co-workers with the stats; we bring them to you as an opportunity to augment your
current marketing strategy. Each stat will have corresponding implications for marketers and lessons
on how to use the information.
Implement the lessons learned from these stats and you’ll have a leg-up on the competitors. After
reading this paper, marketers should be equipped with six additional tips to add to your marketing
arsenal.
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4. 6 Mind-Blowing Social Media Stats
And What They Mean for Marketers
STAT #1: 95% of all Facebook wall posts
TWEET
IT! are NOT answered by brands.
Source: All Facebook.
Implications for Marketers:
That’s an overwhelming amount of brands who aren’t responding to Facebook posts. This easily
solved problem provides an opportunity to create meaningful relationships with customers and pros-
pects. Imagine yours is the only brand in a category who engages with customers - that’s a strong
differentiator.
For example, American Airlines quickly jumps in to solve a customer issue, while one of their competi-
tors fails to solve similar issues posted on their wall. American Airlines is displaying a much stronger
commitment to customer service.
Make It Work for You:
1. Designate a response team — Empower those in your organization to take the lead on customer
responses.
2. Provide adequate training — As you would for a call center, develop approved responses to com-
mon customer inquiries. Train the response team on what they can handle, and which issues need to
be escalated.
3. Set goals — It may not be feasible to go from non-responsive to fully responsive overnight. De-
velop a staggered rollout plan and measure response rate improvement.
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5. 6 Mind-Blowing Social Media Stats
And What They Mean for Marketers
STAT #2: Pinterest is projected to account
for 40% of social media driven
TWEET
IT!
purchases by Q2 2012.
Source: The Social Skinny.
Implications for Marketers: STAT 2.1:
If social commerce is a goal for your company in 2012, make sure Buyers referred from
you have an active Pinterest presence. Partly due to its status as Pinterest are 10% more
a ‘peer recommendation’ platform (and we know 90% of consum- likely to buy something
ers trust those) and partly due to its reliance on imagery over pushy and spend an average
sales messages, Pinterest has consistently driven strong referral of 10% more than
traffic for brands that leads to sales. visitors from other social
networks.
British clothing and accessory store Bottica has seen sales jump
10% since integrating Pinterest across their website. Even more Source: The Social Skinny.
exciting, Pinterest users are spending more than double than those
who are referred from Facebook, to the tune of $105 more per aver-
age sale.
STAT 2.2:
Online stores built on
the Shopify web-based
e-commerce platform
see an average order
of $80 from Pinterest
referrals, which is double
the overall order average
from social channels.
Source: Shopify.
Make It Work for You:
1. Secure a Pinterest Presence — Create a channel and build boards featuring your products.
2. Include the Price — Studies show pins with prices are 36% more likely to outperform than pins with-
out. Display an item’s price, though we would caution you to use this feature sparingly to avoid looking
spammy.
3. Integrate Pinterest on your Website — Encourage site visitors to pin your products from your site
and follow you on Pinterest.
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6. 6 Mind-Blowing Social Media Stats
And What They Mean for Marketers
STAT #3: The average user spends 20 minutes
TWEET
IT!
per visit on Facebook.
Source: PRdaily.com.
Implications for Marketers:
Twenty minutes is a substantial amount of time – and if you multiply
Stat 3.1:
23% of Facebook’s users
that by five, it gets exponentially more appealing! As a comparison, check their account five
Google Ad Planner, which publishes approximate statistics docu- or more times every day.
menting the quantity and quality of the traffic of popular websites,
shows the average visit length of comparable sites as much lower. Source: Convince and Convert.
Twitter clocks in at 13 minutes, CNN seven and a half minutes,
Wikipedia 7:20, Pinterest 14:30, and LinkedIn with 8:00 per average
session.
For marketers, that length represents a prime opportunity to share your message with visitors. There
is an opportunity to share your message with more people per day than visit your own site. To prop-
erly capitalize on this opportunity, brands need to have a high EdgeRank, coupled with high quality
content. For more on EdgeRank, check out our paper EdgeRank: Stop Worrying About It and Love
Your Content.
Make It Work for You:
1. Post One to Two Times Per Day —
The half-life of a Facebook post is 18
hours, so limit your posting to one to
two times per day. More than that may
actually decrease engagement.
2. Include Media — Adding a photo
and video to posts increases the life of
content by 16% and 9% respectively.
Make it a goal to always support posts
with a photo (or a video, if possible).
3. Encourage Sharing — Provide
clear calls-to-action on your posts. If
you want to expand your social reach,
invite your followers to share the con-
tent with their friends.
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7. 6 Mind-Blowing Social Media Stats
And What They Mean for Marketers
STAT #4: 13% of consumers follow a brand
TWEET
IT!
on social channels because of their content.
Source: Ragan.
Content marketing is the development of non-promotional materials
that support your company’s strategic messages and provide your STAT 3.1:
prospects and customers with sticky resources. Content marketing is
just just 4% behind
For instance, leading B2B marketing automation software provider the leading reason for
Marketo develops highly useful content for marketers, focusing on the consumers to follow
themes of content marketing, lead generation and analytics. Marketo brands – learning about a
groups the content together by topic, allowing a reader to quickly jump sale, coupon, or discount.
from novice to well-read in a particular area.
Source: Ragan.
Implications for Marketers:
Mix it up. Consumers are interested in both your
content and special offers. Create a content
strategy that fulfills both expectations. Develop
interesting and valuable content that serves as a
resource to your audience, but don’t be afraid to
throw in a promotional offer.
Make It Work for You:
1. Understand your Content Marketing Needs — Start by assessing your current assets. Chances
are your internal expertise can be translated into highly valuable content assets with relative ease.
2. Spread your Wings — Seek out relevant places to share these newly developed assets. Find
targeted verticals to place educational content that cater to your specific audience.
3. Capture Leads­— Consider a mix of freely available and those that are gated to capture lead infor-
mation. Prospects who download your content should be nurtured and moved down the sales funnel.
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8. 6 Mind-Blowing Social Media Stats
And What They Mean for Marketers
STAT #5: Twitter handles more
search queries per month
TWEET
IT!
than Bing and Yahoo combined - 32 billion.
Source: com.Score
Implications for Marketers:
Millions of potential consumers are searching on Twitter. In today’s STAT 5.1:
world, it’s as important to be on social channels as it is to have a Microsoft Sites ranked
website, in most cases. Millions of searches are occurring each second with 2.7 billion
month – and they are likely your prospects, current customers or searches, followed by
unhappy customers of your competitors. Yahoo! Sites with 2.2
billion.
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Make It Work for You:
1. Analyze Trending Topics: Review trending topics to capitalize
on what’s popular and participate in ongoing conversations.
2. Practice Targeted Listening: Create monitoring streams for your
strategic keywords. Look for sales signals like ‘want’, ‘need’, ‘love’
and strategically reach out when it’s appropriate.
3. Participate in Conversations that Align with your Brand: It
BILLION
doesn’t have to be all sales all the time. One Chicago-based com-
pany Foiled Cupcakes has developed 94% of her clientele through
social media. Her strategy? Join conversations that the target
market is having, specifically around shoes and chocolates and then
convert those prospects into sales.
2.7 2.2
2.7 2.2
2.2
.
Source: Wikipedia.
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9. 6 Mind-Blowing Social Media Stats
And What They Mean for Marketers
STAT #6: 20% of Google searches each day
TWEET
IT! have never been searched for before.
Source: HubSpot.
Implications for Marketers:
Gone are the days when your content strategy was as simple as ‘set it and forget it’. Your content
strategy needs to be much more dynamic, reflecting what searches are driving visitors to your site.
Develop content that answers their questions and positions you as a resource.
Make It Work for You:
1. Explore Analytics for Content
Ideas — Dig into an analytics tool,
like Google Analytics, regularly to
determine what new keywords and
key phrases are driving visitors to your
site.
2. Keep it fresh — Stay in-line with
industry trends. As your industry
evolves, consider writing response
pieces to trending topics.
3. Find your sweet spot — Identify
the overlap between the content your
prospects want and what best serves
your companies’ interests. Develop
content that achieves both.
Content Strategy
What Target What You What
Prospects Need To Serves Your
Want Deliver Interest
Source: Holland Mark.
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10. 6 Mind-Blowing Social Media Stats
And What They Mean for Marketers
Conclusion
The social landscape is constantly evolving and the rate of change is always accelerating. In order
to survive, marketers must embrace this dynamic world of social business, and find opportunities
hidden behind each new statistic.
We encourage you to pull out the best practices from this whitepaper and put them to use. The
content and the resources highlighted below are meant to serve as a guide on this (ever-changing)
social journey.
Additional Resources
All Facebook Jeff Bullas
Business2Community MediaPost
com.Score Nielsen
Convince and Convert PRdaily.com
Holland Mark Ragan
HubSpot The Social Skinny
Additional Awareness Resources
EdgeRank: Stop Worrying About It and Love Your Content
This free ebook will teach you how Facebook’s EdgeRank works and provides tips for brands to increase
their score
Five Killer Strategies to Dominate Social Media’s Big 3: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube
Even with the increasing number of social networks, most experts still recognize that successful social
marketing revolves around the Big 3: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
How to Audit Your Social Marketing Efforts
Learn how to evaluate the effectiveness of your current social marketing strategy. Identify new ways to
improve the return on your social marketing investment.
Social Commerce Lessons: The 6 Social Principles that Increase Sales
Learn more about content strategies and driving sales.
Actionable Social Analytics
A detailed guide on how to approach your social analytics process.
The Social Funnel: Driving Business Value with Social Marketing
For a detailed discussion on how to effectively measure your social marketing initiatives, download our
free e-book.
The State of Social Media Marketing: Top Areas For Social Marketing Investment and Biggest
Social Marketing Challenges in 2012
Learn how leaders allocate resources, discover the top social platforms and social media management
tools they use, social marketing investment priorities, and the practices companies will adopt in 2012.
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11. 6 Mind-Blowing Social Media Stats
And What They Mean for Marketers
About Awareness
Awareness Inc. is the leading provider of enterprise-class, on-demand social marketing management
software (SMMS) for marketers to publish and manage social content, engage with their audience
and measure the effectiveness of their social media activities across multiple social media channels.
The Awareness Social Marketing Hub is built upon Awareness’ expertise with some of the world’s
leading brands and marketing agencies including MLB, Sony Pictures, Comcast, Likeable Media,
Associated Press, Cox Communications, Mindjumpers and American Cancer Society.
The Awareness Social Marketing Hub is built to address the challenges marketers face managing
multiple social channels. The Social Marketing Hub is the first enterprise-class application for serious
marketers who want to plan, implement and measure meaningful social media strategies across the
organization.
Get Connected:
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@awarenessinc
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