The pace of modern life is faster than ever, and social media seems to evolve at the speed of light.  If you are like most business owners and marketers, your life is fast-paced and always busy.  Because your available time is finite, it is crucial to invest in your social media presence in ways that will yield the greatest ROI.  The social mediasocial-media-marketing-statistics landscape can change dramatically in a relatively short period of time.  To excel at social media marketing, you need the latest, most relevant data at your fingertips to make informed decisions and create captivating, information-rich content.  Jeff Bullas recently published statistics that provide valuable snapshots of current social media trends, which I will share and discuss now.

Big-Picture Statistics

Social media use is now widespread, mainstream, and more influential than ever.  With social signals increasingly influencing search rankings, expanding and enhancing your social media presence can significantly amplify your reach and rate of lead generation.

  • 72% of all Internet users are now active on social media

  • 89% of those between 18 and 29 years old are social media users

  • 72% of individuals aged 30 to 49 are engaged in social media

  • 60% of people between 50 to 60 years old are active on social media

  • 43% of those 65 years old and above are engaged in social media

  • 71% of users access social media from a mobile device

Facebook Statistics

Many prospects may not even take a company seriously, if it does not have a presence on Facebook.  Sharing captivating, relevant and information-rich content—full of deep industry insight and valuable solutions—on your Brand Page is the primary way to increase traffic and leads to your website via Facebook.  Although Facebook still dominates in terms of sheer size and rate of social sharing, Twitter and Google+ may very well be nipping at Facebook’s heels in 2014.

  • Facebook now has over 1.15 billion users

  • One million webpages can be accessed with the “Login with Facebook” feature

  • 23% of Facebook users login at least 5 times daily

  • 47% of Americans say Facebook is the top influencer of their buying decisions

  • On average, Americans spend %16 of each online hour on Facebook.

  • 70% of marketers acquire new customers through Facebook

Twitter Statistics

As the fastest growing social network, Twitter can seriously impact your business.  Twitter now captures the power of images and video—making it even more influential.  Strategic use of Twitter can significantly enhance social engagement, amplify brand exposure, increase lead generation, help you gain status as an industry thought leader, and achieve more new business.

  • Twitter now has over 550 million registered users and 215 million monthly active users

  • Between 2012 and 2014, Twitter achieved a growth rate of 44%

  • 34% of marketers use Twitter for lead generation

Google+ Statistics

Google+ is the social network powered by Google—the most influential and important search engine around.  When Google changes its search algorithms, marketers, content creators and any company with a website should take notice and update their content and SEO strategies accordingly.  Google+ is all the more powerful due to its increasing influence on search rankings with the social signals of +1s and AuthorRank.  With only three years on the social media scene, Google+ has made a huge impact and changed the nature of content marketing.

  • Google+ now has over 1 billion enabled accounts and 359 million active monthly users

  • Google+ is has a growth rate of 33% per year

  • People aged 45 to 54 years old have increased their Google+ usage by 56% since 2012

Visual Social Media Statistics

Visual media is becoming more influential across all social networks, and social networks devoted solely to images or video, such as Pinterest, YouTube and Instagram, are primed to reach new heights in 2014.

  • YouTube has over one billion monthly active users

  • Pinterest has 20 million monthly active users

  • Instagram has 150 million monthly active users

Use these statistics to help you make informed decisions about how to invest your social media capital in 2014.  Social media can incite serious marketing and sales results.  However, real social media success happens, when your social media presence works in concert with your content creation, email marketing, CTAs and strategic website design.  Each facet of your marketing counts and influences the others.  A complete inbound marketing strategy can address all your marketing needs—helping you realize real social media and business success.