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The state of B2C Social Media 2016
Latest report shows the current state of B2C social media use in different industry sectors
Social media is today and established B2C marketing technique. Originally sold as a marketing ‘silver bullet’, we’ve seen a bit of a backlash against social media in recent years because expectations have failed to live up to reality. However, it is now an established part of brand and marketing communications and is only going to become more important with time.
When constructing your 2016 social media marketing plans it helps to have the most up to date stats to hand, and a new report from TrackMaven provides a useful breakdown of the current state of B2C social media use by industry. We give you the key insights from the report.
B2C Social Media audience size by industry
There are big differences between industries when it comes to audience size, but in large part these are probably explained by how well the industries are suited to social media . It is always going to be hard to get people to be as excited by insurance as it is by a new car or new clothes. That said, it is surprising the entertainment industry is not doing better in terms of following.
Where this graph is really interesting is in follower breakdowns by platform. These can help inform your 2016 social marketing plan by giving key platforms to concentrate on. It is clear that Facebook dominates the B2C marketing sector, taking the lions share of all industry types. Twitter is doing fairly well in some sectors but poorly in others, and LinkedIn only performs well in consumer products and hospitality. Instagram is the fastest growing platform and is becoming increasingly important. This really shows from how well it is establishing a share of the followers of apparel brands and automakers.
Where does B2C engagement come from?
Audience size is often referred to as a ‘vanity metric’ because whilst it looks impressive to have a big following, it doesn’t necessarily mean you are actually getting any ROI from your social media efforts. A better metric to review is engagement. The below chart shows the number of interactions per post per 1,000 followers:
Pinterest and Instagram really stand out when it comes to engagement, Instagram exceptionally so. Instagram leads for engagement in almost every industry, so if you haven’t yet set up an Instagram channel, 2016 may be the year to start. Twitter engagement rates are fairly dire, and LinkedIn and Facebook are little better. But to be fair it may be that many more brands are using those channels and are posting to them much more regularly, thus dragging down the stat for average engagement per post.
For industry specific breakdowns of the latest B2C social media marketing stats, download the latest report from TrackMaven.
If you’re looking for insights on consumer engagement with social media see our Social network consumer adoption research summary.
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