Social Media Trends & Takeaways: How to Read the Numbers

By Jennifer Eenigenburg, VP, Digital Media and Shuree Jones, Director, Paid Social

The pandemic has continued to encourage consumption of social media content across social platforms, as exhibited by the chart below (source: Comscore, October 2021). Looking across social media usage of U.S. 18+ Internet users, Facebook and Instagram easily maintain the first- and second-highest reach, followed by LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit, and Tiktok.

In terms of year-over-year growth when comparing October 2021 to 2020, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Reddit are seeing the highest percentage of user growth for U.S. adults. COVID-19 is a likely cause of these growth trends: job market shifts for LinkedIn, information and hobby forums for Reddit, and entertainment for TikTok. TikTok has seen record monthly active user increases since the start of the pandemic across all demographics, including users over 65.

Where the growth is:

The takeaway? Implementing a diversification strategy with bespoke assets speaking to how audiences engage with each platform is key to capitalizing on how users are now engaging with social media. We expect to see adoption of platforms continue to be fluid as users adopt apps for various use cases and as new features launch, such as social audio.

Using paid social to boost top performing organic content, and utilizing learnings from both to feed into each channel, is also an excellent way to build holistic content strategies and speed up learnings.

This article is featured in Media Impact Report No. 31.

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