Social Media
Social Media for authors
Social media is a huge part of an effective author platform. It is the place where you do outreach and try to entice people back to the hub of your platform (usually a site or a blog).
According to The London School of Economics and Political Science, as of June 2017, the world’s population stands at 7.5 billion with 3.8 billion people using the internet. Active Social Media users account for 2.89 billion people, (about 39%). Active mobile social users stand at 2.69 billion.
According to one report, product discovery on social media is a huge driver of online purchases.
Social media use by age
Using available information I have tried to break down social media use by generation and age. If you want to find more information on the approximate ages of each generation, see the rough guide to demographics in the marketing section.
Recent changes at Twitter may mean that these figures need updating.
Social media use by adults according to sproutsocial.com:
- 68% of adults use Facebook
- 35% of adults use Instagram
- 24% of adults use Twitter
- 25% of adults use LinkedIn
- 29% of adults use Pinterest
- 27% of adults use Snapchat
Social media usage highlights
- Across all of Europe, the average time spent on social media per day is just shy of two hours.
- While that time is still growing year on year, the rate of growth seems to have slowed.
- From 2015 to 2018 use of social media to find and research products increased 30%.
- Generation Z spends the most time on social media closely followed by Millennials.
- From 2015 to 2018 use of social media to follow celebrities increased 27%.
Social media usage by generation *
Key to infographic elements*
Recent changes at Twitter may mean that these figures need updating.
Social Media demographics at a glance
While this next table is purely based on American data, it is quite likely to be broadly reflective of the English-speaking world.
According to data from the Pew Research Center on Teen Social media usage, teens are substantially moving to Snapchat and Instagram while abandoning Facebook. You can see the data graphed by Flowing Data here.
Further reading
Social Media in depth
* The figures quoted in this section come from Global Web Index.