70+ Social Media Marketing Statistics for 2020

As a marketer, social media sites offer fast-growing opportunities. Because these platforms reach so many consumers today, marketers can use them to generate leads, create brand awareness, gather data about their audience and industry, share news, create content, and engage with their community.

In fact, there are over 3.8B social media users — that number is growing fast. GSMA Intelligence reported 5.16 billion unique mobile users at the start of April 2020, meaning that roughly two-thirds of the world’s total population uses a mobile phone today. 

What does all this mean? Well, with the number of people using social media, it's clear marketers need to rely on data they trust to plan campaigns, budget, and predict social media marketing efforts, and secure stakeholder buy-ins. 

And as marketers ourselves, we know it can be overwhelming to search for the correct social media statistics. So we created a source of truth where we share the essential facts and statistics that you need to know about social media in 2020.

73 Social Media Facts You Should Know Right Now

Did you know that Facebook is still the top social media platform? And that digital ad spending is increasing by 20%? Or that consumers trust brands more if they have interacted with them on social media?

These are things you need to know, so here are 73 social media statistics to keep in mind as you create your social media plan for 2020 and beyond!

1. General Social Media Facts
2. LinkedIn Stats
3. Facebook Stats
4. Twitter Stats
5. Pinterest Stats
6. Snapchat Stats

General Social Media Facts

1. Top social media networks: Facebook (95%), Twitter (84%), Instagram (74%), LinkedIn (62%), and YouTube (61%) (Hootsuite)
2. People spend 2 hours and 23 minutes daily on social media browsing and messaging (GlobalWebIndex). Additionally, 98.55% of people use at least four social media channels daily (GoodFirms).
3. Gen Z logs on to social media for an average of two hours and 55 minutes. (World Economic Forum)
4. Total active social media users: 3.484 billion (We Are Social)
5. 321 million new people joined social media in 2019, which brought the total from 3.48 billion to 3.8 billion social media users (an increase of 9%) in 2020. (Hootsuite)
6. According to the same Hootsuite study, 90% of brands want to build brand awareness through social media. 77% of them use it to maintain brand reputation, while 71% of them use it for building and managing an engaged community. (Hootsuite)
7. Videos are the #1 branded content used by marketers. Nearly 93% of marketers say that they’ve landed a customer thanks to videos on social media. Additionally, 63% of them say that it generates the best ROI on social media too. (Animoto)
8. B2B organizations prefer LinkedIn (86%) and B2C companies choose to use Facebook (98%) for social media marketing. (Hootsuite) 
9. 58% of businesses find it challenging to measure the ROI of their social media marketing efforts. The other challenges include lack of time (56%), lack of budget (51%), and staying up-to-date on social trends (50%). (Hootsuite)
10. 76% of American consumers purchased a product after seeing a brand’s social post. (Curalate) 
11. 39% of customers only trust brands if they have interacted with them on social platforms. (Edelman)
12. 80% of American customers say speed, convenience, knowledgeable help, and friendly service are must-haves for a social experience to be termed “positive.” (PwC)
13. 17% of customers will walk away from a brand they love if they have even a single bad experience with it on social media. (Influencer Marketing Hub)
14. 90% of brands use social media to build brand awareness, 77% to manage brand reputation, and 61% to increase conversions and sales (Hootsuite)
15. 73% of marketers believe that their efforts through social media marketing have been “somewhat effective” or “very effective” for their business (Buffer).
16. 54% of social browsers use social media to research products (GlobalWebIndex).
17. 71% of consumers who have had a positive experience with a brand on social media are likely to recommend the brand to their friends and family (Lyfemarketing)
18. YouTube is the second-largest search engine globally. (HubSpot)
19. Reddit is predominantly male. 15% of male internet users between 18 and 29 say they use Reddit. (Pew Research Center)
20. 94% of marketers use social media for content distribution. (SEMrush, 2019) (HubSpot)
21. Blogs are among the primary three forms of media used in content strategies today. (HubSpot, 2020)
22. Social ad spending is forecast to increase by 20% to $43 billion USD in 2020 (HubSpot)
23. Social ad impressions are up 20%, year over year (HubSpot)
24. Social posts containing or featuring UGC have a 4.5% higher conversion rate than non-UGC posts. (SocialPilot)
25. 72% of B2B marketers who use paid channels online use paid social (Hootsuite)

LinkedIn Facts

1. There are 303 million monthly active users on LinkedIn. (99 Firms)
2. 57% of LinkedIn traffic is from mobile devices. (HubSpot)
3. There are 9 billion content impressions on LinkedIn feeds every week. (LinkedIn)
4. HubSpot found that traffic from LinkedIn generated the highest visitor-to-lead conversion rate at 2.74%, almost 277% higher than Facebook and Twitter. (HubSpot)
5. Only 1% of users post content weekly on LinkedIn, though 91% of marketing executives use LinkedIn as a content source. (SocialPilot)
6. LinkedIn is generating revenue for 38% of B2B marketers. (FoundationInc)
7. Long-form content gets the most shares on LinkedIn, so aiming for between 1700 & 2100 words should give your content a boost. (SocialPilot)
8. Links to Youtube video plays directly in the LinkedIn feed and typically gives a 75% higher share rate. (LinkedIn)

Facebook Facts

1. Facebook video ads have the lowest CPC with an average CPC of $0.97. (WebFX)
2. 69% of all adults in the US are using Facebook. (SocialPilot)
3. Women between 18 - 24 and Males between 25 -34 constituted the biggest demographic group of Facebook users. (Statista) 
4. 500 million Facebook stories are shared daily. (SocialPilot)
5. Facebook users spend 38 minutes per day using the platform. (SocialPilot)
6. Branded Facebook pages only reach about 2% of fans with organic posts. (SocialPilot)
7. 72% of online users of income more than $75K are on Facebook. (SocialPilot)
8. 43% of users get their news from Facebook. (SocialPilot)
9. 140 million people daily, now spend at least one-minute consuming Watch content on Facebook. (CNBC)

Twitter Facts

1. Twitter ads with video are 50% cheaper in cost-per-engagement. (SocialPilot)
2. 34% of Twitter users are female and 66% of users are men. (SocialPilot)
3. Twitter has 134 million daily active users. (SocialPilot)
4. Twitter users spent an average of 3.39 minutes on the social networking platform per session. (SocialPilot)
5. 25% of Twitter’s most prolific users use scheduling software. (SocialPilot)
6. Companies using Twitter for customer service see a 19% lift in customer satisfaction.  (SocialPilot)
7. Twitter’s site referral traffic is up 6%, year-over-year. (SocialPilot)
8. Tweets with images receive 18% more click-throughs, 89% more likes, and 150% more retweets. (SocialPilot)

Instagram Facts

1. 24% of US teens cite Instagram as their favorite social network. (SocialPilot)
2. The projected number of US Instagram users by 2023 is 125.5 million. (SocialPilot)
3. The Instagram Like button is hit by an average of 4.2 billion times per day. (SocialPilot)
4. 63% of Instagram users visit the social platform daily. (SocialPilot)
5. 33% of B2B businesses, 71% of businesses, and 98% of fashion brands use Instagram. (Exalted Digital)
6. 130 million Instagram users tap on shopping posts every month. (SocialPilot)
7. U.S. marketers spend 31% of their Instagram ad budget on Stories and the rest 69% for newsfeed. (SocialPilot)
8. 40% of Instagram posts contain no hashtags. (SocialPilot)
9. Instagram videos receive 21.2% higher interactions than single photos, and 18.6% more interactions than carousels. (SocialPilot)

Pinterest Facts

1. 85% of its users access Pinterest through a mobile device. (SocialPilot)
2. U.S Pinterest users spend an average of 5.29 minutes per mobile app session. (SocialPilot)
3. 48% of Pinterest users in the US use the platform to shop. (Hootsuite)
4. Pinterest drives 33% more traffic to shopping sites than Facebook. (SocialPilot)
5. Pinterest’s popular categories for men are food, drink, and technology. (Hootsuite)
6. Visual searches on Pinterest have more than doubled in one year. (SocialPilot)

Snapchat Facts

1. Snapchat had 238 million daily active users (DAUs) in the first half of 2020 (Statista)
2. Snapchat saw an increase of 13% YoY growth in daily active users since 2018. (SocialPilot)
3. Snapchat users open the app over 18 times daily. (SocialPilot)

TikTok Facts

1. 41 % of TikTok users are aged between 16 and 24. (SocialPilot)
2. U.S. users open TikTok 8 times a day and individual sessions on the app are the longest at 4.9 minutes - Facebook (4.7 minutes), Instagram (3.1 minutes), and Snapchat (1.6 minutes) rank lower. (SocialPilot)
3. Americans have spent over $23.1 million on in-app TikTok purchases so far. (SocialPilot)

Social Media Top Brands

1. McDonald's Facebook page has 80 million likes.
2. The most followed brand on Instagram is Nike with 96.9 million followers.
3. Playstation’s Twitter profile reigns as the most-followed brand with 17.5 million followers.
4. On LinkedIn, Ted Conferences has 14.9 million followers.
5. Flighthouse is the third and final brand account to crack the top 10 most followed TikTok accounts with 20.6 million followers.