UDC 004.738.5
Original Russian Text © K.S. Weber, A.A. Pimenova
The term "social network" was first coined by James Bames in 1954 in Classes and Meetings in a Norwegian Island Ward. A social network (from the English social networking service) is a platform, online service or website designed to build, reflect and organize social relationships, which are visualized by social graphs. A characteristic feature of social networks is that their content is filled by the network participants themselves, and the presence of clearly established connections between the participants.
Today there is a huge variety of online services that fit the concept of "social network". These include: Facebook, Twitter, VKontakte, My World, Instagram, Odnoklassniki, Photostrana, YouTube, LiveJournal, Dnevnik.ru, Privet.ru, Qzone, Mixi and many others. dr.
According to a poll by the Glas Runet online poll service, in which more than 2,000 active users of Runet took part, including 86% of those living in Russia and 14% abroad, the majority (66%) of the respondents are aware of the existence of the Internet social networks and take advantage of their opportunities. Among those who know about the existence of social networks, only 10% do not use them. Especially actively the opportunities of social networks are used by young people aged 16 and over. According to the research holding Romir, the most famous social networks in Russia are Odnoklassniki, VKon-
tact ”,“ My World ”, and VKontakte has a younger audience: the share of respondents from 18 to 24 years old in this network is 85%. VKontakte is the leader in terms of the activity of visiting the project: 45% of users registered on this portal visit it daily, and 70% - more often than once a day; every third VKontakte participant spends more than half an hour of his time on one visit.
In fig. 1 shows the TNS Web Index data for May 2013, which shows that the most popular social network is VKontakte, about 50 million people visit it per month. In second place is Odnoklassniki with 43 million monthly visitors.
VKontakte is the largest social network on the Runet. Established in 2006. Founder - Pavel Durov. The following options are available to VKontakte users: create a profile with information about yourself, manage the settings for accessing information on your page, interact with other users privately (through private messages) and publicly (using posts on the “wall”, as well as through the group mechanism and meetings), track the activity of friends and communities through the news feed. Also, the user can leave comments under the already published content. You can "attach" photos, audio tracks and videos, graffiti and polls to your messages.
Social network Functions VKontakte Odnoklassniki LiveJournal Facebook Twitter
Photos + + + + +
Messages + + + + +
Wall + + + + +
Videos + + + + +
Audio recordings + + - + -
Notes + - - + -
Groups + + + + -
News + + + + +
Meetings + - - + -
Applications + + - + -
Documents + - - + -
Statuses + + - + -
Subscriptions + - - + +
Friends + + + + -
Video call + + - + -
Drawing up surveys + + + + -
Odnoklassniki is a multilingual social network used to find classmates, classmates, as well as relatives and communicate with them. The project was launched on March 4, 2006 by the Russian web developer Albert Popkov. A fairly wide range of possibilities is available to users: creating personal profiles, exchanging messages, adding photos, music, videos. There are also a number of additional features such as gift exchange, photo rating, and more.
Facebook ("Facebook") is currently the largest social network in the world. It was founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and his Harvard University roommates Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskowitz and Chris Hughes. Facebook allows you to create a profile with information about yourself, invite friends, exchange messages with them, change your status, leave messages on your and someone else's "walls", upload photos, create photo albums, add videos, create communities of interest.
The user can control the level of access to information published in his profile, and determine who has access to a particular part of the page.
LiveJournal, LJ (English LiveJournal, LJ) is a blogging platform for keeping online diaries, as well as a separate personal blog hosted on this platform. The service was opened on March 18, 1999 by American programmer Brad Fitzpatrick. LiveJournal provides an opportunity to publish your own and comment on other people's records, to keep collective blogs, add other users as friends and follow their entries in the “friends' feed”.
Twitter (eng. Twitter) is a system that allows users to send short text notes (up to 140 characters) using a web interface, SMS, instant messaging or third-party client programs. A characteristic feature
Twitter is the public availability of posted messages.
Today, social media is used for more than just entertainment and communication. They are actively used, for example, in business, but we are investigating the role of social networks in education. Let us consider the functions and capabilities of the five most widespread social networks in Russia from the point of view of their use in education (Table 1).
As you can see from the table. 1, modern social networks have extensive capabilities that allow them to be adapted for educational purposes. Many large higher educational institutions in Russia already have their own profiles and pages on social networks. The largest number of functions is provided by the social networks VKontakte, Odnoklassniki and Facebook. Twitter and LiveJournal are useful because they are popular with various users: schoolchildren, students, businessmen, celebrities and government officials.
2. Mozhaeva G.V., Feshchenko A.V. The use of virtual social networks in the educational process // Modern education: content, technology, quality: 17 Intern. scientific method. conf. SPb .: S.-Pb. state electrotech. un-t "LETI" them. IN AND. Ulyanov (Lenin), 2011.S. 102-103.
Weber K.S., Pimenova A.A. COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL NETWORKS
The term “social network” is considered, the most popular social networks in Russia are listed, and their characteristics are given. The features and functions of social networks from the point of view of their use for educational purposes are discussed.
Key words: social network; social services; social network analysis.
Weber Ksenia Sergeevna, Tambov State University named after G.R. Derzhavina, Tambov, Russian Federation, student of the Institute of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics, e-mail: [email protected]
Weber Kseniya Sergeyevna, Tambov State University named after G.R. Derzhavin, Tambov, Russian Federation, Student of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics Institute, e-mail: [email protected]
Pimenova Anastasia Aleksandrovna, Tambov State University named after G.R. Derzhavina, Tambov, Russian Federation, student of the Institute of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics, e-mail: [email protected] Pimenova Anastasia Aleksandrovna, Tambov State University named after G.R. Derzhavin, Tambov, Russian Federation, Student of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics Institute, e-mail: [email protected]
A typical social media PR campaign involves several successive stages. Initially, it is required to develop a communication strategy based on the data obtained during the monitoring. The communication strategy should include a list of work required to achieve the goal of the PR campaign, the desired results, the planned budget, the rules for attracting and interacting with the audience.
At the next stage, a so-called brand platform is created - a set of communities in social networks that ensure the interaction of the brand with the target audience. If the brand works for several target audiences at once, for each of them you will need to create a separate community.
After the communities are created, you have to take care of filling them with content. News, videos, photos - all of this is necessary to keep the audience interested in the group and to maintain communication. At the same time, branded content should account for no more than a third of the total community content, another third should be allocated for fun content and a third for useful content.
The success of any social media strategy is ultimately determined by its ability to connect with people on a direct, human level. In linguistics, there is a phenomenon known as "code switching". That is, when a person switches from one language to another and back again during one conversation. The implications of this phenomenon applied on social media are massive. Social media is slowly but surely blurring the line between personal and professional. By linking this to “code switching”, we get a new approach to brand behavior on social media.
The fact is that SMM does not use an advertising format. The main mechanism of interaction is communication on topics that are relevant to the user and the dissemination of content that is interesting to him. Naturally, both communication and content contain a mandatory promotional link, but at the same time, unlike advertising, they are valuable for the user.
Creating a community or group is available on most social networks, most often this function is free. You can invite friends and other people interested in the company's products or products to the created groups. Next, you should take care of organizing communication between users in a group: create interesting topics, through the creation of artificial profiles to simulate a discussion between real users. Interested users can be brought by searching by interests in similar groups of other services. Provide complete answers to users' questions as much as possible.
Creation of public pages (fan page). Promotion methods in such pages resemble promotion in communities and groups.
The use of media content (pictures, audio, video), where you can insert the brand name, website address, etc. The most popular network for this is YouTube.
Targeted advertising is aimed at a specific category of users. The most common among the methods of paid promotion on social networks. This can include advertising for a specific city, country, for people with a certain age, interests.
Conducting contests, promotions, discounts for the target audience with prizes for the winners.
VKontakte (VK)
VKontakte (http://vk.com) is a social network for fast and convenient communication between people around the world. The task of VKontakte is to remain the most modern, fast and aesthetic way of communication on the Internet at any given moment. The site has over 290 million registered users. More than 69 million visitors visit the site every day. More than 3,000,000,000 pages are opened daily. Approximately 65% of visitors live in Russia. More than 56% of site users are over 25 years old.
VKontakte evokes positive emotions in its visitors, because most often they use the resource for communication and entertainment. This creates high user loyalty.
There are two main formats for working on VKontakte.
The second option is to “transfer” users to an external Internet resource. This option is suitable for companies that carry out basic transactions (ordering goods or services) on their website, and not through social networks. If the site is informational (blog or thematic portal), there visitors from social networks read materials about the company and products. And in this case, the community on the social network is an additional source of traffic for the main project.
Which option to choose depends on the initial conditions. Both formats are valid and can produce results. The second option is especially relevant for those who make money on their sites by selling ads, in particular for all kinds of media. Sometimes the formats are mixed: for example, all information materials are posted in the community, and sales are carried out only on the site.
Any project on VKontakte solves two main tasks: increasing profits and customer feedback. Either way, it all comes down to this. On the other hand, the task of increasing profits can be solved both directly - direct sales of goods or services, and indirectly - by increasing brand awareness, increasing its reputation and, accordingly, general loyalty to the company.
The functionality of the group is, in principle, not great. Through the "Discussions" section, you can create a small forum on a given topic for members / subscribers of the community, and the "Wall" of the group serves as an information platform where administrators and moderators of the group can post information and entertainment content. Another possibility is to send invitations to subscribers and other users of the social network to events that take place in real time and are organized by the company that owns the group.
In addition to the fact that VKontakte allows direct sales, any community has the opportunity to make repeat sales. To some extent, working with a group in modern conditions resembles e-mail marketing. Only in the case of the latter do people receive news on their e-mail, and on social networks, contact with subscribers in the news feed is constant. But the essence is the same: a community (base of potential customers) is formed and constant interaction with them is maintained. Unlike the audience that comes from search engines and most often does not return, people on social networks are constantly in touch, as they become members of the community and receive news about all new publications on its wall.
In addition, the community can act as "technical support". As practice shows, it is more convenient for many users to ask a question through the community than to call a number that still needs to be found out, or "reach out" to an online consultant on the site, if there is one. With the help of properly built communication with customers, it is possible to significantly reduce negativity and increase overall loyalty to the company.
Thanks to the section "community statistics" you can always find out about the audience of the community and its activity. There are several tabs in this section. In the "Attendance" tab, you can see the number of unique visitors and views. There is data per day and per month, plus a lot of additional factors: gender and age of visitors; geography (country and city); referral sources (where visitors came from to your community); the number of visitors who left or joined the group; which sections the visitors viewed: videos, photo albums, discussions, audio recordings.
The next Reach tab is for users who have viewed community posts on the wall or in the My News section. There is also additional data on gender, age and geography.
And the “Activity” tab contains the following data: how many users “liked” the record, that is, clicked the “Like” button; how many users have repost, that is, clicked the "Share with friends" button; how many users have mentioned the group page; how many users have hidden the group from news; the total number of comments left; in addition, this tab contains information about the number of comments for specific sections: discussions, photos or videos. The feedback graph is also presented here. It takes into account not only the actions of users made directly on the wall of the group or page, but also the entire further path of the message. If a user posts a link to a message on his page using the "tell friends" function, the reaction of other users to such a copy is also taken into account.
Any project can be present on VKontakte in three main formats: public page (public), group or profile. Each format has its own characteristics.
The main differences between a public page and a group are their functionality. In public, content is in the foreground. There is a microblogging right under the description of the community. And unlike groups in publics above the "wall" there is no block with photos and a news block.
On public pages, users can “suggest” their posts using the “Suggest News” function. In some cases, this eliminates the need to lead your community, since users themselves generate content.
An extremely important nuance, the public page is in the block of interesting pages on the user's page. In fact, these are five advertising banners in the most prominent place of the profile. If the account owner is subscribed to a public page and regularly visits it or reposts public records from the news feed, the public will be in this block permanently.
Unlike public pages in groups, the main emphasis is on communication between users. This is facilitated by:
1. Block "Discussions", which can be fixed above the "wall" of the group, immediately after the news block. This is an analogue of a forum.
2. In a group, visitors can communicate directly on the "wall". For example, ask your own questions. This increases the communicative effect, but so does the amount of spam.
3. In the group, in the "News" block, there is a wiki markup, which allows you to create a beautiful additional menu.
SMM specialists in choosing between a group or a public cannot come to a single decision. So, for example, Dmitry Rumyantsev in his work "Business Promotion on VKontakte" writes that the most effective for most niches for July 2013 is the promotion of a public page. ADAMIR Khalilov in his book "Marketing in Social Networks" argues that the fundamental difference, which use the format, no, since there are not many differences in the functionality. But users are more accustomed to groups and are more willing to join them.
Standard text and graphic block with payment for impressions or for clicks;
Exclusive banner 90 * 160 for premium brands with pay per impressions;
Offers with payment by CPA model;
The average lifespan of one ad on a social network is 3 days.
Also, since August 2014, VKontakte has allowed advertising through verified communities. The main feature is mandatory pre-moderation for all advertising posts. In the opinion of Roem.ru, checking advertising posts from the exchange will help to achieve uniformity in advertising publications. This, in turn, will help advertisers achieve a predictable effect from ad placement, and administrators will publish ads in their own format.
New ads cannot be added indefinitely, there are some restrictions. First, this is rule number 5:
"Creation of more than three ads targeting the same audience and advertising the same object, or the creation of several absolutely identical ads, including within the framework of different advertising campaigns, is regarded as an attempt to spam."
Odnoklassniki (OK)
The Classmates.com site was launched on March 4, 2006 and immediately became very popular. The emphasis was placed on the audience, which recently entered the university, but does not want to lose touch with the school past. The secret of success was that parents of teenagers quite quickly "get hooked" on the search for their classmates, whom they had not seen for decades. Here's a viral effect.
Currently, Odnoklassniki has 220 million registered users, and the monthly audience is about 41 million. On average, a user spends 17 minutes a day on the site. And the predominant audience by age criterion: women (55%) 25-54 years old (67%).
The developers of the Odnoklassniki.ru social network position their resource as a platform for finding classmates and friends, to correspond with them, view their photos and organize meetings with them. A not very wide range of functions, however, still allows people in our time of excessive employment to maintain relationships with friends and acquaintances, to keep abreast of the events of their lives and see (from photographs) the current state of the person of interest.
The most common activities on Odnoklassniki are the publication of statuses and messages. Also, users are very fond of audio and especially visual content: they post photos, comment on pictures of friends, give ratings. In addition, watching videos and, of course, social games can be attributed to popular activities on Odnoklassniki.
The ad targeting capabilities of this social network are very similar to any other network. Just like on VKontakte, display ads on the Odnoklassniki website are placed on a paid basis. Until the advertisement appears in front of users, it is moderated by the resource workers. The process takes about five business days.
The promotion of the same group takes much more time and requires more effort than on VKontakte. This is due to the less functionality available in groups on the Odnoklassniki network.
Odnoklassniki strictly follow the policy of deactivating unauthorized or illegal methods of promoting groups, so success can only be achieved through permitted content and buying advertising from donors
There are two types of groups in Odnoklassniki: business groups and interest groups. In groups, you can find useful information, find friends with the same interests, and also make purchases. Groups of brands can be given an "official status" that is able to protect them from clones.
The main source of advertising in Odnoklassniki is the news feed. Unlike competitors, Odnoklassniki decided to limit the number of posts from one community per day so that the feed does not turn into a dense stream of content, where it is impossible to concentrate attention at all. This practice made it possible to slow down the "nimble" community administrators and steadily keep a high proportion of users' attention to the advertising post. To date, the feed algorithm is configured in such a way that each group has sixteen posts that will definitely fall into the feed of the members of this group. After the sixteenth post, a certain filter is turned on, which analyzes the feed of each specific user and, in the future, either lets or does not let the post go there. Both the seventeenth and eighteenth posts will also get into the users' feed, but not all 100% of the group members will see them.
The number of user invitations to a particular group is also limited, but this indicator is "floating" and depends on many different factors. This was done to combat spam.
The difference from other sites in the nature of the brand's interaction with the audience. As a rule, followers are very active in all events related to the brand, because they know this brand, use it in their real life. Odnoklassniki has a mass market audience, and the brand needs to adapt to its interests and preferences. To promote on Odnoklassniki, it is more effective to use interactive and game mechanics: games, polls and contests.
Today in the social network Odnoklassniki more than 1000 groups have over 1000 members. This is a very average value because there are dozens of groups with over 1 million followers. These are groups related to cooking, coffee brands and, for example, our official Odnoklassniki group (2.7 million users). At the same time, for several years, the M & M’S brand group remains the leader in terms of the number of subscribers in the social network.
Odnoklassniki also provide free statistics on groups with the ability to upload data in the form of graphs. For example, you can see information about the number of users who visited the group, their engagement, the relevance of the content, and you can also find out where they went to the group, demographics and geography of users, analytics of the popularity of content in groups.
There are many types of advertising tools in Odnoklassniki, the most accessible of them are the following: targeted advertising (text and graphic blocks), display advertising (banner, video ads, non-standard projects for solving media problems) and advertising in groups.
In addition, there is mobile advertising. Mobile advertising is native, that is, it is presented directly in the news feed. On the one hand, it does not take up static screen space, on the other hand, it occupies a larger percentage of the screen area compared to the web version (this significantly increased the CTR of advertisements). There are a huge number of users who log into Odnoklassniki mainly from mobile phones. Now the daily audience of the mobile version of Odnoklassniki is 16.5 million visitors.
Another option for promoting a brand / company is a branded application and placing it on the portal. The cost of "shareware" placement is 140 thousand rubles per month, which are spent on media and / or targeted advertising, and the placement itself, it turns out, costs nothing.
According to the study, most of the users of "My World" are Russians (58.7%), and every fifth is a resident of Kazakhstan (19%). The third largest population is occupied by Ukrainians (8.7%).
Among the users of My World there are more women (64%) than men (36%). The core of the audience is young men and women 18–34 years old: there are 43% of them on the social network.
Users play games more, post content and comment in groups, communicate less through chats and messages. At the same time, a user who starts buying something in games spends, on average, more on games than the same user on other social networks.
The activity of the MM audience is 2.5 times higher than in similar groups of other social networks.
According to Artem Ovechkin, Development Director of the Internet Marketing Agency Matik, there are several reasons for this:
1. Company budgets
3. Lack of PR on the part of MM
4. Competition with social networks VK and Odnoklassniki, which are similar in audience composition.
Most of medium and small companies allocate not the largest budgets for SMM. Monthly expenses for this area are in the range from 25 to 60 thousand rubles. Obviously, with such amounts, it is impossible to qualitatively cover all social networks, so things don't go further than FaceBook and VKontakte.
Of course, only large companies can widely spread their corporate "tentacles", but even they are expanding their reach through Twitter, Odnoklassniki, Youtube and only in the last place look towards "My World". Among the social media buttons that hang on many sites: My World icons are rare.
The second reason is the lack of promotion of this social network, multiplied by limited budgets and, in general, a test attitude towards SMM on the part of most companies. They reason like this: why spend money on social networks of the "second echelon" when not everything is clear with the first one?
Among the advantages, it can be noted that there are managers who work personally with each specific group. If a group has good content, then there is the possibility of its free promotion - this is not the case with other social networks.
Also, My World adheres to the policy that there should not be two identical groups, and therefore the clones are removed.
In My World, display advertising is placed, and there is also a wide range of Target options. In addition, you can place ads in pre-rolls for the video. Moreover, MM can give free initial traffic, raise it in the catalog or in the "We recommend" block. Of course, this applies to good products with high retention. The same applies to groups with interesting, regularly updated content.
The ability to create groups in MM appeared only in May 2013. Today, My World has hundreds of thousands of communities that unite users by interest. For ease of search, there is a directory that breaks down all communities into thematic groups.
Audience: over 800 million users. There are more than 9.3 million users in Russia. The monthly increase is 20 million people (in the world). If Facebook were a country, it would be the third most populous country after China and India.
There are many Facebook users: businessmen, entrepreneurs, marketers; bloggers, geeks, webmasters; people who have acquaintances abroad.
Main activities: reading comments (68%); chat (62%); commenting (59%); view / read recommended (38%); apps, videos (33%); visits to brand pages (12%).
Many brands use Facebook groups for: team communication, customer feedback, ideas sharing, word of mouth.
On pages, the administrator usually communicates with subscribers on behalf of the company, hiding under the "page name", while groups suggest a more intimate conversation, where the user immediately sees who he is dealing with. In addition to publications, there is a built-in search, file sharing, convenient moderation.
The distinctive tool is the banner (cover) at the top, it can display the brand logo, or if you do not download the banner, then the profile pictures of the group members will be displayed instead.
Other tools include events, files, notifications (user activity in a group). In a group, any member can upload files up to 25 mb.
You can set up a group so that none of the members can invite other users without the administrator's knowledge. The main point of groups is precisely to establish closer ties between users, united by one interest.
In addition, the group can serve as a collector of information: for example, you can start an event, publish it in the group and invite participants to register, leaving contact information (for example, an email to receive a reminder or additional information).
Today social networks are so firmly rooted in our lives that the composition of the five most popular social platforms practically does not change from year to year. However, the extent of penetration and use of these social networks differs depending on geography and demographic factors. Understanding these differences plays a big role when targeting a specific audience. When comparing the most popular social networks, it is important to pay attention not to the number of registered accounts, but to the number of active users. From the review, you will find out which social networks are growing faster than others, and which are now in decline.
Most popular social platforms
The chart, produced by analytical agency Statista, gives a clear idea of the number of active users (in millions) on the most popular social networks in the world. Tops the Facebook list. This can hardly surprise anyone. Facebook has a large market share with over 2 billion active users. In January 2017, the giant's closest competitor was WhatsApp, which is also owned by Facebook. Then he was in second place. Today, YouTube is on the second line with 1.5 billion active users. Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp come in third and fourth places, respectively.
They are followed by platforms, the majority of whose audience is located in the Asia-Pacific region. These are QQ, WeChat and Qzone (with over 600 million active users). This shows that there are a number of popular social media in the Asia-Pacific region. After them, we see a cluster of sites popular mainly in the West - Tumblr, Instagram and Twitter.
And what about Russia?
In Russia, the penetration of social networks is estimated at 47%; 67.8 million Russians have accounts in them. According to Statista, YouTube is the most active in Russia (63% of respondents), followed by VKontakte - 61%. The global leader Facebook is only on the fourth line with an indicator of 35%. Skype and WhatsApp dominate messengers (38% each).
Social networks that grow faster than others
Marketers usually don't spend a lot of time on SMM. What social network should you focus your efforts on? Twitter, which managed to reach an audience of 313 million users from 2010 to 2017, showed the slowest growth rates compared to its largest competitors Facebook, WhatsApp and China's WeChat. Founded in 2013, Instagram surpassed Twitter in terms of audience size by 2014.
New research from Statista found Twitter lagged far behind its rivals in 2017. It showed the lowest monthly active audience growth, which was only 23 million from Q3 2015 to Q3 2017. Facebook, meanwhile, grew by 461 million.
How users interact with brands on social media
Knowing how to behave and what publications to make in social media is also important, because it forms the image of your brand and, as a result, encourages users to buy your products or, on the contrary, unsubscribe from your groups. Social media is increasingly used as a platform for working with customers, where customers, existing and potential, want to get answers to their questions in real time. A chart from the Sprout Social report shows that 48% of users can be persuaded to buy by quickly answering questions in a group. 46% respond positively to promotions, and 42% can choose a brand product if its page contains educational content. 27% of surveyed users admitted that they would want to make a purchase if they were shown materials that usually remain behind the scenes.
Half of Sprout Social survey participants said they would unsubscribe from the brand community if they post annoying content there, and 27% said they would flag the brand and its page as spam and block it. This is why publishing relevant and engaging content that resonates with your target audience is so important to reach and engage your potential customers.
Social networks with the most active audience
An important factor that influences how much time we should devote to SMM on a particular social network is the level of audience engagement. Here again, Facebook dominates, and also has the highest engagement by time, according to data collected by analyst comScore from a survey of a group of US consumers.
Facebook's success is amazing. In addition to the social network itself occupying the top spot, other platforms owned by the corporation also occupied the second and third places. The penetration rate of Facebook Messenger is 47%, with Instagram following right behind it.
From the fresh data from Pew Internet, shown in the diagram below, we can see that Facebook is also leading in terms of the number of active audience per day. 76% of users go to the social network every day, on Instagram this figure is 51%. Only 42% of Twitter users check it daily, almost half of Facebook's.
The average daily duration of using social networks in the United States is 2 hours 1 minute, in Russia users spend a little more time on social media - 2 hours 19 minutes.
Engagement rates across different social media
Analytical marketing firm TrackMaven analyzed 51 million posts from various companies across 130 industries to find out which social media has the highest engagement rates. The results showed that Instagram is the absolute leader in terms of engagement per 1000 subscribers. This is so much higher than other social networks that I had to draw up a separate diagram to illustrate the difference between Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
As you can see in the second graph, Facebook is well ahead of Twitter and LinkedIn. The reason for this is largely because more posts are being published on Twitter, because there is no algorithm here to show content to only a small portion of the audience. Because of this, brands have to bombard their feeds with posts to break through the information noise. This, in turn, lowers the response rate to publications. Below is the average daily number of posts per account in three social networks.
General statistics on the use of social networks around the world
Every year, WeAreSocial updates its comprehensive statistical report, the Global Digital Report, which brings together useful data on social media around the world. From it you can find out how differently social platforms are used in different parts of the world. Surprisingly, Western countries are seriously lagging behind in terms of social media penetration.
Below are the main findings of the research.
- The number of Internet users in 2018 reached 4.021 billion people, which is 7 percent more compared to the data a year ago.
- The audience of social networks in 2018 totals 3.196 billion people, which is 13% higher than last year's figure.
- The number of mobile phone users is 5.135 billion, which means 4% more than last year.
The numbers are growing rapidly, especially for active users of social networks from mobile devices - the penetration rate is 39%, which is 5% more than in 2017.
If we talk about the structure of web traffic depending on the type of device, then mobile users generate the most traffic (52%, which is 4% higher than last year). Only 43% of all web pages are visited from desktops, which is 3% less than last year.
North, Western and Southern Europe, as well as North America, boast the highest Internet penetration rates - 74% -94% of the total population use the World Wide Web. In Russia, 110 million people use the Internet - 76% of the total population.
The global social media audience has grown by 13% since January 2017. The fastest growing user base is in Saudi Arabia. Since January 2017, their number has increased by 32%, with a global average of 17%. Other countries with the highest growth rates are India, Indonesia and Ghana. The reason for the leap was the development of technology, which made it easier for the population to access social sites. The slowest growing social networks were in the UAE, South Korea and the UK -<5%. В России пользователей соцсетей стало на 8 826 000 человек больше (+15% к прошлогоднему значению).
Since the largest proportion of users are on Facebook, it would be helpful to know how the content you post will perform on this social network and what features to use to increase its reach. According to the statistics of the social network, the average coverage of a publication is 10.7%, while organic posts have 8% (organic coverage in Russia is 11.3%), and for paid posts this value is 26.8% (27.4% in Russia) ... Organic and paid Facebook posts have huge potential. It is important to correctly target publications in order to receive high-quality leads.
You can get a more complete picture of the state of the global digital market in 2018 by studying our review of the Internet 2017-2018 in the world and in Russia: statistics and trends, which we prepared based on the Global Digital 2018 study.
Popularity of social networks by country
The graph from the GlobalWebIndex report below, based on a survey of Internet users, perfectly reflects the popularity of various social networks by country. Indonesia, the Philippines, Mexico, India and Brazil are among the ten most active audiences for each of the social networks, and are significantly ahead of the US, UK and European countries.
Of the four social networks represented (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Google+), Russians are the most active users of the video service. Twitter and Google+ are relatively often used by only 20% of our compatriots, while Facebook is regularly viewed by just over 40%.
Demographic statistics of social media usage
As can be seen from the graph, a similar pattern of social media use is observed in different age groups. This suggests that social media has reached a stage of maturity where it can be used to reach all demographic groups, regardless of age and gender. The exceptions are Instagram and Tumblr, with a younger audience.
Social media audience engagement strategies
According to a study by The State of Social 2018, 96% of brands have a presence on Facebook.
At the same time, only half of the respondents have a documented SMM strategy. Big business is a little more responsible in this matter than small companies (60% stated that they have such a document).
When it comes to the types of content brands publish, images, links, and copy are leading the way. While video posts tend to get the most engagement, video content only ranks fourth here. This is primarily due to the complexity of creating such materials.
At the end of 2017, Smart Insights, together with Clutch, conducted a survey among business representatives, in which they asked which of the social networks are of the greatest value to them. It turned out that among B2C companies, Facebook is considered the most effective (93% of respondents), and most B2B companies prefer LinkedIn (93%).
The value of social media for brands in 2018
- If you think that your target audience is not sitting in social networks, you are mistaken.
Through social networks, you can reach any audience, regardless of gender, age, social status. 98% of online consumers are registered on social networks, quite a large part of them are adults 55-64 years old.
- A third of all time on the Internet, people devote to social networks.
The average user spends 2 hours 15 minutes a day flipping through the feed and chatting on social platforms, while young people aged 16-24 spend almost three hours. If you do not consider SMM as a channel for attracting customers, then you voluntarily cede the attention of your target audience to competitors.
- Half of all social media users follow brand pages.
4 out of 10 Internet users follow their favorite companies' social media pages, and a quarter follow brands when they plan to buy something. People have a positive attitude towards such content, so an active social media presence is of great value for companies.
- Social media is the main source of information for consumers.
People aged 16-24 prefer to search for brand information on social media rather than search engines. A quarter of users in this age group admit that a large number of likes on a brand page can lead them to buy. In the 35-44 age group, 20% of the respondents stated the same. Social commerce can be considered one of the main channels for generating profit, which means that it is important to diversify efforts, and not rely on advertising alone.
- Watching videos is a favorite activity on social networks.
Facebook is the largest social network in terms of the number of users, but YouTube takes the first place in terms of traffic, and the reason is precisely in the video. Video posts receive the most active response, which is why leading brands are constantly posting videos on their pages.
In preparing the article, the following materials were used:
- Global Social Media Research Summary 2018 by Smart Insights
- Report The State of Social 2018 by Social Media Week
- The Biggest Social Media Trends Shaping 2018 article published on the GlobalWebIndex blog
- Social Networks Study: How social networks were used in 2017 by Metricool analytical agency
- Global Digital 2018 Report Pack by WeAreSocial Analytical Agency
Do you want to order the maintenance of your company's communities on social networks? Contact us by phone:
We all know the popular and our favorite types of social networks, such as Vkontakte, Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. But there are many other social networks that are important not only for communication, but also for business development.
Depending on their purpose, there are the following types of social networks:
Social networks for communication and friendship
Well-known Odnoklassniki, Vkontakte, Facebook, Moi Mir - these social networks are the most attractive for business promotion. As a rule, in such social networks one person has one account (profile, page) with all personal information. Based on the data of the user profile, you can determine which target audience this person belongs to.
But there are also users - avid gamers who develop a gaming profile in social networks for communication, creating fake friends in order to receive bonuses, assistants and other nuances to achieve unprecedented heights in games without spending money.
In such cases, information on social networks about users is inaccurate, and communication with fakes is a waste of time. If we take into account that we choose our interlocutors ourselves, then we can limit ourselves from fakes and receive only positive emotions from communication in social networks.
Sharing news, impressions, playing games, discussing on forums - it is very easy to do all this, avoiding annoying and unpleasant interlocutors. Indeed, in social networks, you can send any unwanted “friend” to “ignore”, or simply not answer him. Which is not always possible to do in real life.
Signing up on social networks is mostly free, but for security, you need to register an account with your mobile phone number. Although this rule does not restrict anyone from creating fake pages, you can buy as many unregistered SIM cards as you like.
Professional social networks
These are networks of business contacts (LinkedIn, Xing), social networks of various universities and other sites of all kinds of professional directions for the development of business relations. Here one user can register in several categories, depending on his skills and professions.
Social networks for dating
The most famous among them is the worldwide social network for dating - Loveplanet, the popular social network of the Runet - Photostrana. In such social networks, you can find a friend, hobby or even a life partner. It provides a search for users by various criteria - gender, age, city, marital status, religion, interests, habits and preferences.
In social networks for communication and development of relationships, there are various communities for women, according to the directions of social networks.
There are communities for business women, communities for single and married women, communities for cooking and handicrafts, arts, style and beauty, young mothers and socialites, and many other virtual organizations.
Infographics are always simple and beautiful. Even a person who does not know English with ease will be able to understand it. Today I want to tell you about a study from the company GO-Gulf.com - Web Design Company which they posted on their blog. I will try to present its main theses in Russian.
So, the infographic is built on the five most popular social networks today - Facebook, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.
It is in this order that these networks are located in accordance with the number of registered users:
1. Facebook - 901 million users,
2. Twitter - 555 million users,
3. Google - 170 million users,
4. LinkedIn - 150 million users,
5. Pinterest - 11.7 million users.
This is followed by such an indicator as the number of unique visitors per month:
1. Facebook - 7012.9 million,
2. Twitter - 182.1 million,
3. Pinterest - 104.4 million,
4. LinkedIn - 85.7 million,
5. Google - 61.0 million
The next metric by which these social networks were compared is male to female ratio in them (I am a man and therefore they are located in descending order of the percentage of men in them):
1. Google - 63% of men and 37% of women,
2. LinkedIn - 55% and 45%, respectively,
3. Twitter - 43% and 57%,
4. Facebook - 40% and 60%,
5. Pinterest - 31.8% and 68.2%.
As you can see, the vast majority of men prefer Google and LinkedIn, while women use Pinterest the most. In general, I advise those who are not familiar with this social network to get acquainted. A very interesting and promising service in my opinion.
This is followed by such an important indicator as the average amount of time spent on the social network per user(min per month):
1. Facebook - 405,
2. Pinterest - 89,
3. Twitter - 21,
4. LinkedIn - 17,
5. Google - 3.
As you can see, most of the time users spend on Facebook and Pinterest.
Followed by age characteristics of social media users... It's probably not worth listing all the categories, because everything is already clear on the Infographics, but it's still worth pointing out the peak values:
1. Facebook.
29% of the users of this social network are between the ages of 18 and 25, and 23% are between the ages of 26 and 34. Using simple mathematical calculations, we find that 62% of Facebook users are people between the ages of 18 and 34.
2. Twitter.
30% of Twitter users are between 26 and 34 years old, 27% of users are between 35 and 44 years old. Here we can already see the shift of the main user mass to the more age category - from 26 to 44 years old - 57% of users.
3. Google.
The ratio of age categories of users of this social network is very similar to the ratio on Facebook, but the numbers are still different: 23% between the ages of 18 to 25 and 35% - between the ages of 26 and 34. In total, these two categories unite 58% of this social network.
4. LinkedIn.
A very close percentage of the bulk of users to Twitter: 31.2% of users aged 26 to 34 and 24.8% of users aged 35 to 44. The total number of users in the combined age range from 26 to 44 will be 56%.
5. Pinterest.
And finally, a dark horse (for someone else, and I'm just starting to get to know her) - Pinterest. In it, users are distributed almost evenly in three age categories - from 26 to 34 years old (28%), from 35 to 44 years old (28%) and from 45 to 54 years old (25%). And here we already see that the majority of users (81% in total) are distributed based on their age in a much wider range (from 26 to 54 years).
And finally, the last point that we are offered in the framework of this study is the estimated value of users of social media data:
1. Facebook - $ 118
2. Twitter - $ 71.43
3. LinkedIn - $ 71
4. Pinterest - $ 28.09
Missing from this Google metric for some reason.
Well, below is the infographic itself and a link to the company's website.