Social media is changing at a rapid pace. Here's our comprehensive social media trends report to help you succeed on social media in 2018.

1. 2018
Social Media
Trends Report

2. 10 Major Social Media Trends to Know in 2018
There are now almost 2.5 billion social media users
Social media is going mobile
Social messaging overtook social media
Chatbots are becoming the norm
Social messaging will greatly benefit businesses
Businesses can no longer afford to ignore social customer service
Organic reach and referral traffic are plummeting
Video is still the most popular content type
User-generated content can help drive reach and engagement
Businesses are pouring more money into social ads

3. 1. There are now almost 2.5
billion social media users

4. … estimated to grow to > three billion by 2021.
Source: eMarketer, taken from Statista (2017)
2.46B
3.02B
Number of social media users (in billions)

5. In comparison...
of the world population
is now on social media
1/3
Source: Wikipedia (2017)
The world population is
estimated to be 7.6 billion

6. Facebook - 2.07B MAUs
Source: Facebook, taken from Statista (2017)
Number of monthly active users (in millions)
Increasing growth
in recent years

7. Instagram - 800M MAUs
Source: TechCrunch, Instagram, taken from Statista (2017)
Number of monthly active users (in millions)
Exponential
growth

8. Twitter - 330M MAUs
Source: Twitter, taken from Statista (2017)
Number of monthly active users (in millions)
Stagnating

9. LinkedIn - 500M Members
Source: LinkedIn, taken from Statista (2017) and LinkedIn (2017)
Number of members (in millions)
Steady growth
MAU is likely lower

10. Pinterest - 200M MAUs
Source: Pinterest, TechCrunch, taken from Statista (2017)
Number of monthly active users (in millions)
Steady growth

11. Snapchat - 179M DAUs
Source: Snap Inc., taken from Statista (2017)
Number of daily active users (in millions)
Growth slowing
down in recent years

12. 2. Social media is going mobile

13. We are becoming glued to our smartphones
Source: Facebook (2017)
Facebook study: 100 people watching
TV
94 had their smartphone in their
hands
One of the top reasons they look
away from the TV is to use their
smartphone

14. … and we surf social media on our phones a lot
Source: Facebook (2017)
70%
Mobile apps
22%
Desktop
8%
Mobile web
Share of digital time spent on social networking apps

15. Facebook - 94% MAUs are mobile users
Source: Facebook, taken from Statista (2017a), Statista (2017b)

16. Instagram - Likely majority are mobile users
Mobile-first app
More features on the mobile app
than the web app
The web app is catching up but the
mobile app still feels like the priority

17. Twitter - 82% MAUs are mobile users
Source: Twitter (2013), CNET (2014), VentureBeat (2016)

18. LinkedIn - 60% mobile visiting members
Source: LinkedIn, taken from Statista (2017)

19. Pinterest - 80% of traffic is from mobile
Source: TechCrunch (2014), VentureBeat (2015)
There’s insufficient data to conclude whether the
percentage of mobile traffic has increased. Judging from the
increase in mobile usage overall, it likely has increased.

20. Snapchat - Mobile only
Mobile-only app
Snapchat rolled out a web player in
2016
Snapchat is reported to be working
on a new feature, Stories Everywhere,
which might bring Snapchat to the
web
Source: Snapchat (2017), Business Insider (2016), Cheddar (2017)

21. 3. Social messaging overtook
social media

22. Rise of social messaging
Source: Business Insider (2017) (The colors of the graph were edited to match the theme of the slide deck)
Top 4 social messaging apps: WhatsApp, Messenger, WeChat, & Viber
Top 4 social media apps: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, & LinkedIn

23. Rise of social messaging
Facebook Messenger has 1.3 billion
monthly active users
Instagram is testing a standalone
messaging app, Direct
Number of mobile messaging users
worldwide is still growing at a
significant rate
Source: TechCrunch (2017), TechCrunch (2017), eMarketer, 2017

24. 4. Social messaging will
greatly benefit businesses

25. Shift in consumer <> business communications

26. Shift in consumer <> business communications
Source: Facebook (2016)
56%
would rather message
than call a business for
customer service
61%
likes receiving
personalized messages
from businesses
>50%
prefers shopping with a
business they can
message

27. 5. Chatbots are becoming the
norm

28. Normalization of chatbots
Source: Venturebeat, 2017
Proliferation of chatbots
across platforms
Messenger bots: 33,000 to
more than 100,000 in just a
year

29. Normalization of chatbots
Source: Business Insider (2016), Business Insider (2017), The Next Web (2017)
> 50% of Americans between the
age of 18 & 55 have used chatbots
before
5,000-people survey by
LivePerson:
38% felt positive about
their chatbot
experiences VS only 11%
felt negative
Oracle survey:
80% of senior marketing
& sales executives
worldwide are already
using chatbots for their
business or plans to use
them by 2020

30. 6. Businesses can no longer afford
to ignore social customer service

31. Social media = Public customer service
Source: Sprout Social (2017), Sprout Social (2016)
1,000-people Sprout Social survey:
46% have “called out” or complained
about a business on social media
Ability to re-share a social media
posts enables complaints to be
amplified and “go viral”
Social media is now the top choice
for customer service

32. Social customer service consequences
Source: Sprout Social (2017)
When shunned on social media… When responded to on social media…
30%
will go to a competitor
26%
will less likely use the
company’s product or
service
70%
more likely to use your
product or service
75%
likely to share the good
experience on their own
social media profile

33. Social customer service tools

34. 7. Organic reach & referral traffic
are plummeting

35. Social media organic traffic
Source: social@Oglivy (2014)
Likely even low as Facebook
algorithm prioritizes posts
from family and friends over
Pages
Instagram, Twitter → Timeline
algorithm

36. Referral traffic
Source: Parse.ly (2017)
Referral traffic to more than 2,500 online media sites
Tiny amount of traffic
from other sources

37. Social media used to be a megaphone. Now, it’s
becoming a conversation.
4 reasons why this shift might be true…
Low organic reach and referral traffic
Rise of social messaging (and chatbots)
People use social media to reach brands
Algorithms prioritize engagement
We think that organic social media is increasingly
becoming a channel for engagement and brand
building, not referral traffic or revenue.

38. 8. Video is still the most popular
content type

39. 2018 will again be the year of video
Source: Buzzsumo (2017)
> 2X overall
average
Average engagement by Facebook post type

40. New video features everywhere
Source: The Body Coach (2017), Paul Thomson (2017)
Stories Live videos LinkedIn native videos

41. Stories’ rocket growth
Source: TechCrunch (2017a), TechCrunch (2017b)
300M
Instagram Stories DAUs
in 15 months
300M
WhatsApp Stories DAUs
in 9 months
70M
Messenger Day DAUs
in 6 months

42. Increasing video ad spending
Source: Animoto, taken from eMarketer (2017)
“Marketers are more confident in video content on Facebook
and YouTube when it comes to driving views, engagements
and purchases. But videos placed on Instagram and Twitter
are not that far behind, Animoto found.”
U.S. marketers’ video ad spending (current and next 12 months)

43. 9. User-generated content can help
drive reach & engagement

44. Effectiveness of user-generated content
Source: Starbucks (2017), Marvck (2016), Olapia (2016)
7x
higher engagement than
brand-generated
Facebook posts
7x
more trust than ads
45%
look at user-generated
images for inspiration at
least once a day
56%
more likely to buy a
product after seeing a
positive customer-
generated post of it

45. Businesses are tapping into the power of their
customers and influencers
Source: Starbucks (2017)
Brand
Customers
Influencers

46. 10. Businesses are pouring more
money into social ads

47. … to combat falling organic reach
Source: Facebook (2017), Instagram (2017)
6M
Facebook advertisers
2M
Instagram advertisers
(the second million advertisers
joined in just six months)

48. Social media ad spending on the rise
Source: eMarketer (2016), Zenith Optimedia, taken from Fortune (2016)
> 20% annual growth rate until
at least 2018
By then, it’ll account for
20% of digital ad spending &
45% of display ad spending
Expected to overtake
newspaper ad spending by
2020

49. Social media advertising
Source: eMarketer (2016), Zenith Optimedia, taken from Fortune (2016)
High growth in the number
of social media advertisers
and social media ad
spending
Effectiveness (or necessity)
of social media ads for
businesses
indicates

50. Recap
There are now almost 2.5 billion social media users
Social media is going mobile
Social messaging overtook social media
Chatbots are becoming the norm
Social messaging will greatly benefit businesses
Businesses can no longer afford to ignore social customer service
Organic reach and referral traffic are plummeting
Video is still the most popular content type
User-generated content can help drive reach and engagement
Businesses are pouring more money into social ads

51. What other social media trends
have you spotted?
Check out the full post here
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