There's no question that social media plays a bigger part in business every day, with new ideas, trends, and platforms appearing constantly. Here are some recent trends that are making an impact on businesses using social media to reach their audience.

Facebook's Members Keep Growing, But Instagram May Offer More Opportunity

As most of us have noticed, Facebook has taken over the world. Almost everyone you know has a Facebook page and its numbers and revenue just keep growing. However, when it comes to engaging users Instagram is king of the castle. User interaction on Instagram is far greater than Facebook in both comments and likes (10x greater, in fact). This is making it easier to determine how well your social media efforts are paying off. If you aren't using Instagram yet, consider it's benefits: it's user-friendly, clean, growing in popularity, and extremely visual (great for real estate). In a 2016 report, Instagram had 28% of adult internet users and 24% of the entire population. And in case you're thinking it's just for kids, the same report stated that 44% of users were over the age of 30.

Interactions Are Decreasing

Across all social media platforms, engagement is decreasing. Facebook's interactions alone have taken an 8.76% hit. This doesn't always mean that your message isn't being received. However, some platforms are making adjustments to their algorithms, making business page posts work harder to get to a user's front page without advertising. The good news is that advertising on social media is still more affordable than many other forms of advertisement. The bad news is that costs may continue to climb.

Videos Reign

Video popularity keeps growing. And live videos are more commonplace than ever. Many platforms have live video options, and there are even some platforms that focus solely on live feeds, like Periscope.  Considering these video statistics from Facebook: engagement on videos is 135% higher than on posts and images and on average, users watch a live video 3 minutes longer than they'd spend on a video that wasn't live.  

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Sources and Further Reading: https://www.skyword.com/contentstandard/marketing/the-top-10-stats-from-2016-that-will-jumpstart-your-social-media-marketing-strategy/ http://trackmaven.com/blog/2016/07/social-media-marketing-strategy-report/ http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/08/19/the-demographics-of-social-media-users/ http://www.socialmediatoday.com/marketing/top-5-facebook-video-statistics-2016-infographic