Week 9- Current State of Social Media

Social media is a large part of everyday life not only in America, but all over the world. It is becoming more and more of a norm for people to be enveloped by social media. Throughout the world, there is an array of information and graphs to show exactly how much time and effort people put into social media. After looking through the data, some of the numbers are shocking to say the least. Not only the quantity of people that are using social media, but also the amount of time that people are spending on these different forms is ridiculous. 

Out of all of the continents in the world, Asia racks up the total number of people that use social media by a landslide. Asia totals around 1.2 billion people that are active social media users. This means that 1.2 billion people are at least on one form of social media. Europe comes in a far second with around 400 million active users. North America has around 213 million users. These numbers are staggering, and the numbers show that of all of the different forms of social media, Facebook is the most popular out of all of the different forms. Studies show that around 1.6 billion people are active users of Facebook. The next biggest form of social media is WhatsApp with just about 1 billion active users. But these forms of social media aren't only used for leisure, but businesses also use them to promote their products. 

Businesses also use social media both to help connect to other businesses and consumers. The top four platforms for business to business marketing are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Above 80% of businesses use the first three forms of social media to connect with other businesses. But when it comes to business to consumer marketing Facebook and Twitter are the only big players in terms of percentages of businesses that use them to market. Due to what form of social media Facebook and Twitter are, it is easier for a business to market through them, since they easily connect businesses to consumers very rapidly and make communication between the two simple. 

Finally, the amount of time that marketers spend using social media is staggering. 34% of marketers say that they spend one to five hours a week dedicated to social media marketing. 24% say that they spend six to ten hours weekly. The third biggest bracket is 21% spending eleven to twenty hours weekly. These numbers show that there is a growing importance of social media marketing. 

Marketers realize that this isn't a trend that will go away, but a lifestyle that needs to be adapted to in order to stay on top of certain markets. With the advances in technology and growing importance of electronics and on the go lifestyles, social media marketing is here to stay. For more information about the current state of Social Media Marketing, use the following link to see all of the information available. 

http://www.marketingprofs.com/chirp/2016/30655/the-state-of-social-media-marketing-infographic