November 9, 2017

What Social Media Site Has The Highest User Activity?

As with anything, quantity does not necessarily mean quality when it comes to digital marketing. It can be great news to see a lot of traffic, but without engagement and conversions can you really say your marketing has been successful?

Here we take a look at the social media sites that have the largest userbases and compare these to engagement statistics.

What Social Media Platform Has the Largest User Base?

According to Statista, in August 2017 Facebook had the most active users of any social media site in the world with 2.05 billion. Instagram came in seventh with 700million monthly active users, whereas Twitter had just 328million.

However, it’s important to recognise this only refers to ‘active’ accounts. There are thousands more accounts which have been set up and abandoned for whatever reason.

Which Social Network Has the Best Engagement?

So, Facebook reigns supreme in terms of user numbers, but does it also see the highest engagement? Well, according to a study by Business Insider, yes.

In a study that examined engagement on a per-user basis, Facebook also leads the way in terms of engagement. It is followed by Snapchat in second position and then Tumblr in third.
LinkedIn proved to be the least effective and user spent the least overall time on this platform of any other social site.

How Do People Use Different Social Media Sites?

However, it is also important to look at the type of activity on each platform. As Facebook has matured, as has its users’ behaviour. Less people are now posting on Facebook and instead using it to consume and share news, memes/GIFs, videos and blog content.

Whereas Snapchat is mostly utilised for messaging and Instagram is the photo sharing social network of choice for many.

Brands may also benefit from looking at the type of user who uses each site and adapting marketing activity around this. For example, We Are Flint reports 64 per cent of 18-29 year olds in the UK use Instagram, nearly 30 per cent more than any other age group studied. These Instagram users are also more likely to be women living in an urban area.

In contrast Google+ users are more likely to be males aged 30-49 with a high disposable income.

Want to Learn More?

If you’ve found these statistics interesting and would like to learn more, sign-up to our next digital marketing event where our partners will be revealing expert insights.