2012: the year in social media
2012 was the year of Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Google+ hangouts, LinkedIn, Anonymous, Windows 7, Kony, Instagram, Obama, Pop Benedict XVI, and Gangnam Style.
More in this infograph:
Overview of LinkedIn’s most recent new features
LinkedIn Products: Class of 2012 takes a look back at a year of new products and enhancements on LinkedIn. For example: new designs for profiles, the homepage, LinkedIn Today, and company pages; more language options, better "people you may know" recommendations; and the launch of influencers, endorsements, mobile phone and iPad interfaces.
Best LinkedIn Company Pages of 2012
Earlier this week LinkedIn released a SlideShare presentation highlighting the best company pages of 2012 and offering some tips on making your company or client’s page better.
LinkedIn's adds 4 tips for a successful Linkedin Company page:
- Add an image that welcomes visitors to your page and showcases your brand.
- Post status updates to start a conversation with your target audience.
- Add your products or services so your target audience can learn about what you have to offer. And don’t forget to gather recommendations to bring your products and services to life.
- Feature relevant groups to attract a broader audience and extend your reach.
More tips from Hubspot:
- Visuals are crucial, of course–these pages look great. Our advice: take some nice personalized pics to show visitors what your brand is all about.
- Brands MUST make regular updates—here’s a nice guide to getting started. While we’ve yet to hear of an option allowing you to automate your status updates to coincide with posts on your company blog, we have no doubt that this option is coming.
- Add “brands and services” to help visitors understand exactly what you’re selling.
- Feature relevant groups on your page to expand your audience.
- Use the “targeted audience” option to help you make sure your updates are reaching the right people.
- Check out the Company Buzz app to find out what people are saying about your company.
Infographic: Social media statistics and facts 2012
Go-Globe.com's Infographic "Social Media Statistics and Facts 2012" covers statistics and facts of all major social media platform including - Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Youtube and blogging.
Some interesting facts:
- 350 million plus users suffer from “Facebook addiction syndrome”
- If Twitter was a country it would be the 12th largest in the world
- LinkedIn signs up 2 new members every second
- The average visitor spends 15 minutes a day on YouTube
- Three million new blogs come online every month
- 97% of the fans on Pinterest’s Facebook page are women
- 5 million images are uploaded to Instagram every day
- The Google +1 button is used 5 billion times every day
Social media in Belgium: a quick snapshot of their relative audience size
Bad news for users of Google's Ad Planner tool to research audience data for popular websites, including Facebook.com, Twitter.com and LinkedIn.com. Starting September 5th, 2012, you can no longer research domains or ad placements that are not part of the Google Display Network.
In 2012, only two social media platforms are really mainstream in Belgium: Facebook and YouTube. There are no public data available (yet) for Belgian YouTube users, but here's a quick overview of some of the data that are still public. At least, until the 5th of September.
Facebook is still the biggest social media platform:
- 82% reach in Belgium (up from 74,8% in March)
- 6.8M unique visitors a month (up from 6,1M in March)
- 6.5B pageviews a month (down from 8.6B in March
French video sharing service website Dailymotion has surpassed LinkedIn in terms of pageviews:
- 9.2% reach in Belgium (down from 10% in March)
- 760K unique visitors a month (down from 820K in March)
- 18M pageviews a month (up from 16M in March)
LinkedIn has lost part of its audience in terms of unique visitors and pageviews:
- 9.2% reach in Belgium (down from 11.2% in March)
- 760K unique visitors a month (down from 920K in March)
- 21M pageviews a month (down from 26M in March)
Twitter has moved up to the 4th position, where Netlog used to be:
- 9.1% reach in Belgium
- 750K unique visitors a month
- 21M pageviews a month
Social sign-in: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn
From Social login @ wikipedia.org:
Social login, also known as social sign-in, is a form of single sign-on using existing login information from a social networking service such as Facebook or Twitter to sign into a third party website in lieu of creating a new login account specifically for that website. It is designed to simplify logins for end users as well as provide more and more reliable demographic information to web developers.
In reality, it's often a tradeoff between rich profile information and streamlined registrations.
According to research from Gigya [.pdf], web users who log into 3rd party sites with Facebook’s Graph API spend 50% more time on those sites, and view twice as many pages. Facebook is also most often used as a social login:
Facebook however, provides the fewest data fields by default:
Image source: What Can You Learn from Social Sign-On? [GRAPHIC] @ http://blog.eloqua.com/:
What can you do with LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is the largest business-related social networking site.
Although it can boast an impressive amount of users in each country, the visitor numbers are still relatively low. Note, however, the exceptionally high reach in the Netherlands:
- Members: 1M (Belgium), 2M (Netherlands), 2M (France), 135M (global)
- Unique visitors: 1.8M (Belgium), 8.2M (Netherlands), 5.6M (France), 250M (global)
- Page views: 23M (Belgium), 130M (Netherlands), 60M (France), 3B (global)
- Reach 8.9% (Belgium), 21% (Netherlands), 4,6% (France), 5.0% (global)
- Avg time on site: 7:20 (Belgium), 8:00 (Netherlands), 7:20 (France), 8:50 (global)
(Source: Google Ad Planner, infographiclabs)
What can you do with LinkedIn?
From How Linkedin works, an infographic by infographiclabs:
- Establish your professional profile: career info, position, experience, skills. Tip: Custom public profile URLs are changeable on a first come, first served basis.
- Find experts and ideas and resolve a unique business challenge. Tip: You can also discover which skills you'll need to succeed.
- Stay in touch with colleagues and friends.
- Explore opportunities e.g. by seeing detailed statistical information on the companies' business page, or by following interesting companies' hiring info.
Social media in Belgium: who’s got the biggest audience?
Curious about the audience size of some of the most popular social media platforms in Belgium?
You can use Google's Doubleclick Ad Planner for that.
To illustrate:
Facebook is obviously the biggest social media platform:
- 74,8% reach in Belgium
- 6,1M unique visitors a month
- 8.6B pageviews a month
Second is LinkedIn:
- 11,2% reach in Belgium
- 920K unique visitors a month
- 26M pageviews a month
Third is French video sharing service website Dailymotion:
- 10% reach in Belgium
- 820K unique visitors a month
- 16M pageviews a month
Still trying to find a way to include YouTube, Picasa en Google Plus numbers into the Media Plan tool - any help is welcome!
ComScore: In Belgium 93% of online population uses social media
In their annual report global management firm comScore released some striking stats on the penetration and usage of social media platforms throughout the world.
Regardless of how open or closed a society may be, it is safe to assume that more than half of local online populations are engaging in online social networking, making the practice comparatively ubiquitous around the world.
In Europe, for example, 98% of the online population in the U.K. is active on social networks.
Further reading:
- It’s a Social World: Top 10 Need-to-Knows About Social Networking and Where It’s Headed @ comscore.com
- ComScore’s 2011 Social Report: Facebook Leading, Microblogging Growing, World Connecting @ techcrunch.com