Digital 2022 Report Takeaways
Ready to have a social media strategy that’ll blow your competitors out of the water in 2022? Our Digital 2022 report is packed with the latest data and freshest stats and insights to help you develop your media strategy this year. In partnership with We Are Social, we’re delighted to bring you the most notable global findings on digital trends and social media.
I’m excited to be kicking off a new series of blog posts where we highlight insights from Hootsuite’s social marketing experts that we’ll be publishing on our LinkedIn channel with every quarterly report.
This year’s flagship report houses some fantastic data. Let’s get right into it.
Pandemic-initiated social user growth keeps going strong
Social media has been a key fixture in our lives for over a decade now, and its adoption is growing at an incredible rate.
Social media users continue to grow faster than they did before the pandemic. They grew at a rate of more than 10% in 2021, taking the worldwide total to 4.62 billion in early 2022. That’s 58% of the world’s population and 13 new users every second.
If that’s not enough of an indication of where we all need to be, I don’t know what is. I urge all brands to get onboard.
Increasingly, consumers connect with brands in the same way they do with their friends and family members: via social and messaging apps.
The onset of the pandemic has only accelerated this shift, as stores closed and regulations were put in place, causing more brands to move their customer engagement efforts online and on social media.
Based on the data, we can also expect the total number of social media users to reach 60% of the world’s population within the next few months—it’s critical now more than ever that brands be where their customers are.
Social platforms focused on video dominate our time
Data uncovered in this report goes a long way in discovering which audiences live on different social media platforms. Spoiler alert—it’s not always what you think, so I encourage you not to get stuck on stereotypes.
Organizations who make sweeping assumptions and generalizations about who is on social media and where they are will miss a great opportunity to build connections with overlooked demographics..
Internet users across the board have become more digitally savvy. Baby boomers are a prime example of a lucrative demographic who increasingly took to social media through the pandemic and have the disposable income to shop online.
But they’re not the only ones. People are spending more time on social media each day than they did last year. The average daily time now clocks in at 2 hours and 27 minutes.
YouTube accounts for the greatest share of our social media time. While the time spent on both YouTube and Facebook remained relatively stable over the past year, the average time on TikTok has jumped by 48% (foreshadowing a point I’ll make later).
In other news, WhatsApp remains the world’s favorite social platform, accounting for nearly 16% of the vote at a global level.
Consumers love the immediacy of social media and messaging apps, with the ability to have more control over the interaction, compared to the days of waiting on hold. People also want to interact with brands on their own terms and on the channels where they already spend time—social and messaging.
Social media becomes an even more integral part of the marketing mix
The pandemic has brought to light how social media is intrinsically intertwined with how we live, work, operate, and shop.
In a time when social distance regulations and non-essential business closures are having massive impacts, social commerce is often the only way for brands to stay open and connected with their customers. If brands and organizations want to remain relevant, they will need to digitize and implement a social commerce strategy.
In our report, we see ecommerce adoption rates continue to climb. Nearly six in 10 working-age internet users (58.4%) now buy something online every week, and we anticipate that will rise in the coming year.
The report also highlights the role of social media advertising, with more than one in four internet users (27.6%) saying that they discover new brands, products, and services via social media ads. This is a great opportunity for brands to meet their customers where they are, and start considering social media a vital part of the marketing mix, instead of a separate small department.
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Brands spent more than $150 billion on social media ads in 2021 which is 17% more than they spent in 2020. In fact, social media ads now account for roughly one-third of digital ad spending.
We’re also seeing trends in virtual and live shopping as well, and I’m excited to see how brands pivot to create new experiences for their audiences through social.
Only 17% of people feel represented in ads
Our report finds that a paltry one in six working-age internet users say that they feel represented in the advertising that they see, regardless of the medium or channel.
And older users feel especially detached from advertising. Only one in nine global internet users aged 55 to 64 say that they recognize themselves in advertising.
It’s clear that there’s still a lot more work to do on this front. As marketing professionals, we sit in a unique position. We have a responsibility to help our industry create content that’s inclusive.
It's a critical endeavor, so let’s all keep pushing forward.
TikTok’s 7.3% increase in reach indicates a high rise of social creators
As a marketing professional, the rise of new social platforms—particularly TikTok—and the growth of the creator economy are especially exciting to me.
According to our Digital 2022 report, TikTok’s reach increased by 7.3% (60 million users) in the past 90 days alone, taking TikTok’s worldwide ad reach amongst audiences aged 18 and above to roughly 885 million.
This is HUGE.
As TikTok’s numbers continue to grow, I anticipate that we’ll see more brands join the platform and work with more creators in the process.
For years, influencers with massive followings have dominated the social landscape. Many influencers have sold brands on the idea of reaching large audiences through simple product placements or mentions in social posts.
But, over the past few years, we’ve seen something new emerge. Some call it the creator economy, others the passion economy, but it’s a bit of a different approach. And, brands are catching up.
As brand leaders, if the past year and a half taught us anything, it’s that brands have discovered the power of social and are finding new and innovative ways to interact with their audience through both paid and organic content.
To drive meaningful engagement with our audiences, we need to challenge ourselves and push the boundaries to redefine what it means to be a part of a community. Creators are a key way for brands to reach niche communities.
So have conversations with creators to find individuals that are relevant, have the appropriate reach, and resonate with your audience. Be creative, have fun, and collaborate closely with the creator to learn what is important in the community. (We shared some great recommendations around this in our Social Trends 2022 report.)
TikTok is a great example of a platform where brands are leveraging creators. Some brands have already taken steps on this front, such as Starface and Chipotle. These examples speak to how customer relationships are being built: through authenticity, creativity, engagement, and likeability.
Brands are starting to take the idea of key opinion leaders and influencers very seriously, and it’s evolving at an incredibly rapid pace.
And finally… a few fun facts for good measure
I hope these insights were helpful to you as you develop your social strategies for the next year. It’ll be interesting to see how the social media space changes in the upcoming year, with new user growth, and how brand and influencer content changes in brands’ marketing mix going forward. If you’re interested in learning more, check out the full Digital 2022 report. I’d love to hear what data from our report resonated with you the most—drop your comments down below.