We’d like to share some recent insight we gathered as part of a website project.
We know facebook and Twitter lead on social media take up in most countries from a general consumer perspective, but what about B2B? Forrester research among business people paints a very different picture:
Social media platforms used primarily for business
Source: Forrester Research, Inc (2013) Base: 382 US and European business decision makers at companies +100 employees
LinkedIn dominates business use, whether you look at business use alone, or business and personal use combined. And facebook – always in the lead with Twitter in a consumer context – diminishes in importance.
To put these figures into context, the highest ranking information source for business people (81%) is independent (non-brand) communities or forums. So if you’re writing content for social media, consider the news angle too and offer it up to news site distribution sites.
Social media use: business and personal combined
Source: Forrester Research, Inc (2013) Base: 382 US and European business decision makers at companies +100 employees
Also worth considering is how platforms are growing. We couldn’t find growth statistics for the above four in one place. So the growth graphic below features latest figures taken from Search Engine Journal (UK and US statistics for facebook, Twitter and Google+) and Statista (Global internet users aged 16-64, excluding China) for LinkedIn.
If anyone has current statistics from one source for all four, please share it with us!
Social media growth statistics
It’s early days for Google+ but it looks set to succeed, whilst Twitter continues to fly.
According to globalwebindex, Google+ (launched 2011) now has as many active users worldwide as YouTube (launched 2005) and Twitter (launched 2006).
We hope you found this useful. Please share your thoughts.