Social media channels drive traffic, interested target audiences, and real buyers. Information technology companySimilarWeb conducted a study, during which 5 key indicators of the social networking industry were identified. Data will help not only to establish your own position in the market but also to get ahead of your competitors.
Social networks have become an integral part of not only ordinary users but also a channel for business promotion. Now no one can imagine life without Facebook, Instagram and others. On the platforms, users get to know each other, communicate, exchange the main news in life and buy goods. According to forecasts e-commerce will soon give way to the leading position of social commerce. What metrics should be monitored to ensure business success?
1. Social media rating
To determine the most effective channel for your business, you need to understand who is in the TOP leaders on social platforms. The COVID-19 pandemic has contributed to the high growth in the popularity of social networks. However, now experts notice a slight decline. During the quarantine period, the Internet has replaced live communication for users. As time passed, people began to return to “normal life”, which means that the time spent on social networks began to decrease.
SimilarWeb provides a graph of how the level of traffic has changed on different social media sites and claims that at least 4 out of 10 platforms have lost a share of traffic over the past month.
However, according to a study for February 2022, the numbers for visiting are noted:
Facebook – 18.8 billion
Twitter – 6.5 billion
Instagram – 6 billion
TikTok – 1.5 billion
It is important to understand these indicators and know which social networks remain the leader, where you can safely allocate the budget and launch advertising campaigns.
2. Target audience – followers (followers)
Knowing and understanding your target audience on social media is a key success factor for a business. It is important to answer questions about who enters: men or women, age from and to, geography, and in which regions your competitors are superior to you. You can include education, income, and demographics that affect engagement. According to SimilarWeb research, men are more likely to visit social networks (57%), unlike women (44%).
Detailed information will allow for a detailed analysis of not only the audience but also an analysis of the performance of the site.
3. Lifestyle and device choice
The distribution of users by type of device is important for understanding what is better to offer the client and in what form. Who prefers the desktop version or the smartphone? This fact will tell more about the lifestyle of “your” user, which will further optimize the work, and “force” to become more familiar with the brand.
Device distribution provides valuable insight into audience behavior that can later be used to optimize the site accordingly. You may need to create a new mobile-only signup process or redesign your desktop website to be more user-friendly.
According to the data, the difference between the desktop and mobile web is negligible. However, the mobile network has a slight advantage and it is important to consider that the flow of mobile traffic is increasing every year. Users access the site both from their phones and from a computer, so both versions must be fully optimized and regularly analyzed.
4. FOMO as an influencing factor
FOMO or Fear of Missing Out is a syndrome of missed profits. The concept is well-known in marketing, especially given the rapid spread of social networks. In business, the term is projected into the fear of missing out on a profitable opportunity.
To get rid of this fear, SimilarWeb experts advise monitoring how users get to your social network page. If you don’t know which channels are performing well, you are automatically missing out on traffic share and views.
For example, direct and organic search are the most influential marketing channels for driving social media traffic. It accounts for 75.8% and 16.3% of traffic worldwide between December 2021 and February 2022.
Despite this, there may be opportunities to divert traffic away from competitors in areas that are underused by the industry as a whole, such as display advertising or referrals.
The rest of the traffic is divided into:
- Email – 1.2%,
- Referrals – 3.1%,
- Social networks – 3.5%,
- Paid search – 0.1%
- Media advertising – 0.1%.
5. Engagement rate
Measuring the level of engagement on a site will tell you a lot about how you can improve the user experience. Start by benchmarking average session length, pages per visit, click-through rate, and bounce rate against industry standards.
These metrics give an idea of how engaged visitors are with the platform. Are they just browsing or are they sharing what they see? Tracking key engagement metrics can help you measure success.
Social networks are almost synonymous with mobile applications. It’s important to include app benchmarks in any digital strategy. You can also compare your own performance against leading industry leaders or more niche competitors.
So, if you have these indicators on hand, you will be literally “armed”. A detailed analysis will help you monitor performance, identify weaknesses and areas for improvement, and provide growth prospects and growth opportunities for your business.
