UK Social Media Statistics for 2017

The tree is down and the tinsel is wilting, so it must be time for our annual review of social media use in the UK at the start of 2017.  We do this for two reasons: one, because statistics that focus purely on UK based users can be hard to come by, and two, because it also helps us clarify our own “hunches” about how things are going for each of the major sites, and use that information when we’re working with our business and third sector clients in the UK.

There’s also some good news: UK specific statistics have become a little easier to find this year. Props must go to agency We Are Flint for carrying out their own primary research during 2016, complete with actual transparency about how the research was carried out (link below to the entire report) and Statista.com is also offering a decent amount of open source information. We’re grateful to both organisations for those contributions, as well as the other source sites linked within this post.

UK social media in 2017: general thoughts

We talked in our last annual update about the fact that the mainstream social media market is now mature. Nothing has changed there; there haven’t been any significant upsets this year, and it’s been a while since a genuinely “new” entrant offered anything different. The “Big 3″ in the UK (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) have more or less stayed static in user terms for several years. Apart from a potentially interesting Twitter vs Instagram clash, the only action is around the smaller players and ancilliary apps like Snapchat which we see more as utilities than social networks.

We’re going to kick off this year with two charts that we think contain the most crucial information for social media strategy planning if you’re a UK business: Total UK Users by Site (based on the current “best estimate” as described below, where the site has not provided figures), and the percentage of those users who log in daily.

Remember, a registered user who never goes onto the site isn’t going to be a viable target for your marketing!

UK Facebook Users 2017

So let’s kick off our indepth review with the Big Daddy, Facebook. Once again the overall number hasn’t budged all that much; we’re looking at around 32 million user accounts in the UK. That’s been pretty steady for around three years now. We Are Flint’s report puts the proportion of over 18s in the UK who use Facebook at 78% – so still, after all these years, probably the single most consolidated channel available to marketers for accessing most of the population in one place (after snail mail, which surely only those printing their own money can afford these days!).

We also have, courtesy of Statista.com. a nice breakdown of the demographics within that figure, which does offer some interesting observations. No, Facebook probably isn’t “cool” any more. My ageing Samsung Galaxy, if it was ever cool, certainly isn’t now either, but that doesn’t stop me using it constantly.

Looking at these stats, the same is true of Facebook: the largest demographic is the 20-29 year olds, clearly showing that it’s not just everyone’s Mum using Facebook these days.

With organic post reach now sitting at around a measly 10%, the major area of interest for businesses using Facebook now is the development of new types of advertising, and the fluctuation in cost. This year we’ve seen enhancements or new introductions in ever more sophisticated ad targeting – Lookalike Audiences, Dynamic Ads and a whole suite of options around remarketing to website visitors. For large ecommerce sites this is a godsend. For smaller businesses, anecdotally it seems as though the cost of reaching the standard 1,000 eyeballs, or achieving a good volume of link clicks, is on the increase. This may be partly due to the more targeted types of advertising being more costly, which is not unreasonable if the results match up to their promise.

There are numerous studies showing that social media advertising is by far the cheapest medium.  Ad Espresso tell us that overall CPM on Facebook actually declined during 2016, but there are so many factors influencing what any individual business will spend that it’s almost inevitable that your mileage will vary. As an aside, if you’re interested in what factors affect your ad spend, and how they affect it, Ad Espresso have a superb report here covering every aspect, from ad placement to the demographic being targeted, and the day and even hour that the advert runs in.

UK LinkedIn users 2017

Like all the mature sites, LinkedIn’s growth is also slowing, but there is still some growth. Last year we had a figure of around 19 million UK users; this year the figure is 21 million. You can see LinkedIn’s own global figures here.

When planning your strategy, though, it’s important to remember that the average user uses LinkedIn very different to the way Facebook’s average user uses Facebook. And that’s why you won’t see too much emphasis on metrics such as “monthly active users” or time spent on the site in an average month. Unless they are actively job hunting, or actively using LinkedIn as part of their job role (think Enterprise software sales execs), we believe that most people who are registered with LinkedIn, don’t necessarily touch that account for weeks at a time.

Again we’re going on anecdotal evidence with a pinch of common sense – by its very nature, LinkedIn’s content offering doesn’t begin to compare with how compelling Facebook’s is, where users are on the site multiple times each day exchanging banter with their social networks or just surfing for something to cheer themselves up.

UK Instagram Users 2017

Instagram themselves haven’t released any new data since that which we used in last year’s report, giving us 14 million Monthly Active Users in the UK, from a global MAU figure of 300 million. The global figure was updated in December 2016 to an impressive 600 million, but it would basically be a total guess as to whether the UK’s growth has kept pace with the global growth.

It’s hard to tell at this point whether Instagram is continuing to cannibalise Twitter’s market, particularly among the younger demographic – that seemed to be the case in previous years, but the research that we’re referencing here doesn’t really support it.  Which is good from a marketing point of view, because the lack of native “retweet” function and inability to include links in a post, means that driving anything other than general brand awareness is harder work on Instagram!

The We Are Flint survey suggested that 29% of UK adults use Instagram, which would give us a figure around the 19 million mark.  The same report also gives a proportion of 64% of users as being under 30 – but gives the same figure for Twitter, which has generally been considered to be an older demographic thus far. Even more interestingly, Instagram has something of a peak in the higher income brackets (though not as much as Twitter does); 46% of users reported a household income of over £48k per annum.

From a general strategy point of view, Instagram has joined Facebook and Twitter this year in filtering which of your followed accounts’ posts you actually see. That seems a clear pointer that in the not too distant future, you can expect to be paying Instagram for any kind of guaranteed reach at all, in the same way we now have to pay for reach on Facebook.

UK Pinterest Users 2017

We’ve not had anything directly from Pinterest this year on the subject of UK user numbers, so the stats below come from third party research.

All the indications though are that Pinterest’s early period of stellar growth has definitely stalled.  Although Pinterest did tell us that their global MAU figure was up to 150 million in October of 2016, just 5% of the UK population log in to Pinterest on a daily basis.

Interestingly, at some point the Pinterest user demographic has got a LOT younger. In the US, and in the early days of UK use, older (as well as more affluent) users were in the majority. In 2017 however, research from both Statista and We Are Flint suggests that 50%+ of Pinterest users are in the 18-29 age bracket.

The female gender bias has persisted however, with 38% of women who are online reporting that they use Pinterest, whereas only 20% of men say the same thing.

In terms of how people are actually using the site (which should give you some clues as to whether your business will be commercially successful there), here’s a useful summary from Pinterest’s CEO, Ben Silbermann :

Pinterest is more of a personal tool than a social one. People don’t come to see what their friends are doing. (There are lots of other great places out there for that!) Instead, they come to Pinterest to find ideas to try, figure out which ones they love, and learn a little bit about themselves in the process.

UK Twitter Users 2017

Twitter did provide a very minimal status update around the middle of last year, which gave a global MAU figure of 313 million, and 79% of those accounts being outside the US. That would be sufficient to keep them ahead of Instagram in the global rankings, just.

Other independent research gives us figures of 45% of UK Online Adults using Twitter, with 37% of those account holders logging in daily.  Using the ONS figure of 45.9 million for the UK’s online population, that would give us a user base of around 20 million.  That seems plausible, if maybe a little generous, compared to the last “official” UK figure of 13 million which was provided in 2013.

The same research reports a surprisingly young demographic, too: 64% of users are 18-29, 57% 30-49, and 33% 50-61.  The more affluent citizens are also over-represented on Twitter, with 62% in the 48K+ household income bracket – bearing in mind that the median UK household income this year was just over £26k.

If you’re interested in how people are actually using Twitter, there’s a really good, and up to date, report here from the BBC.  From that we learn that a relatively small number of highly active users dominate in terms of posting content – 1% of accounts are responsible for 20% of all tweets, and 85% of all tweets are accounted for by just 15% of total accounts.

The number of actual tweets sent each day has remained almost constant since 2013, despite increases in monthly active users. So, if you’re planning a campaign on Twitter, be aware that there are a *lot* of users out there who read but never post!

So there we have it: the social media landscape for the UK in 2017. As ever, we hope it’ll help you plan your strategy – and if you need some help figuring out what you should be using and how, get in touch!

Credits

https://weareflint.co.uk/uk-social-media-demographics-2016

www.statista.com

www.social-media-co.uk

But although they are both visual platforms, there are important differences that need to be understood if you want to make the most of each of them. The way they work, who uses them and what for, will all affect the kind of content that is most effective.

So in this post, we’re going to highlight the differences you should consider when building your Pinterest and / or Instagram strategy. No matter what your business is, by the end of this article you should be able to figure out which content to put on each platform.

Pinterest vs Instagram: Who’s using them?

Although we don’t have tons of detail about the user base of either Pinterest or Instagram – particularly for the UK – there are some broad differences that are fairly well documented.

On the whole, Pinterest users tend to be relatively affluent, of working age, and there is a strong bias towards female rather than male users.

Instagram use is more evenly split between men and women, and the users are often younger – teenagers up to mid 30s are the most strongly represented.

Pinterest vs Instagram: What are they using them for?

Understanding the way that consumers (note – not businesses, we are getting “inside the head” of your customers here!) use each platform, and the mindset with which they approach each, is particularly key to using them smartly. Some areas to think about:

– Curation vs publishing. While some users will upload their own content to Pinterest, it’s more common for them to collect and share other people’s. The themed “board” structure of Pinterest really encourages this, whereas Instagram has no equivalent; it’s not possible to save images against different topic areas in the same way.

Instagram is the direct opposite in this respect. It’s impossible to create permanent collections of images. It’s difficult even to share other people’s content at all: there’s no native “regram” function currently, which would be the equivalent of a Twitter retweet or a Facebook Share, although workarounds are possible. So, the vast majority of content in any user’s published stream will be generated by them directly.

-active vs passive consumption. The different ways that users relate to content on the two sites are also mirrored by the way they consume other people’s content. Curation implies actively searching out relevant content, whereas the constantly updating Instagram feed encourages the user to sit back and enjoy the ride.

Pinterest also has a more comprehensive search function, which again encourages more active and engaged use of content.

– shopping vs browsing. There’s good evidence that many users on Pinterest are in “buying” mode – they are actively looking for something specific (a scarf, a holiday resort, a gift) and will often click through to the item’s website and complete a purchase.

Again, the Pinterest Search function supports this, as does the ability to link images directly back to a sales page on a website; on Instagram, the only place you can put clickable links is in your biography, and then only the one.

Pinterest vs Instagram: the Time Factor

The other major difference between the two platforms is the way that they handle chronology.

On Pinterest, the “age” of an image is of almost no significance; it will still be available to view whether it was uploaded a year or a minute ago, and provided it’s being actively shared, is still likely to be being shown to additional users.

On Instagram, the likelihood of an image remaining “active” – being viewed, shared or commented on – beyond a roughly 5 hour period is pretty small. That in turn impacts on the kind of images you find on each platform; if a shot of your hotel’s Bridal Suite is going to be passed around the site potentially for years, you better make sure it’s the best it can be. Hence Pinterest images are often that bit more polished and professional. If the same shot is only going to be in circulation for a few hours, then a quick snapshot of the housekeeping team putting the final touches in place before the bride and groom arrive is entirely appropriate, and provides a more fun and informal insight into your hotel.

Pinterest vs Instagram: which content do I use where?

So, hopefully you’re already seeing how you should split your content across the two sites. There’ll be some images, for sure, which are absolutely suitable for both, and we’d never say that you can’t cross post. But if you’re using the same content in both places the whole time, you’re probably not going to engage your audiences as effectively as you could.

To sum up, the key things to consider when deciding where to put an image:

– Does it have a “lifespan”? A beautiful, professional shot of your people, products, or services in action, deserves a permanent home on Pinterest. There’s no harm in Instagramming it too, but that’s a better place for those “snapshot” insights into your brand or world.

– Can people buy it? If you’re looking to drive sales directly, you’re much more likely to do that with a well-crafted Pin (take a look here for our guide to optimising Pinterest) than an Instagram shot. Your instagram feed should be working hard for you to develop your brand image and associations rather than direct sales; you can publish a volume of content on Instagram that’d be bewildering on a Pinterest account, so that’s a the place to run wild with your aspirational / cool / inspiring but not-directly-related-to-products pictures.

– Who do you want to see it? You’ll more likely hit a young, male, urban audience on Instagram.

– Are you looking for a conversation? Instagram, in the main, is a little “chattier” than Pinterest; perhaps partly because of the lack of sharing options, users may be more inclined to comment directly on an image. That can be useful if you’re looking for feedback.

– Are you developing a theme or telling a story? This is much more effective on Instagram. A linked series of  real time images can be very powerful in creating a sense of place or ambience, or building excitement, and that effect is a great deal stronger in an up to the minute feed than pinned to a board.

We hope that’s helped you understand the “under the surface” differences between Instagram and Pinterest, and how to apply those to your business content!

For this article we’re going to be looking at getting your business, and more importantly your products, found on Pinterest.

Why does Pinterest searching matter so much?

We know that many consumers use Pinterest as a shopping source; it’s been proven to drive more direct sales than any other social media site.

So, people are often going to Pinterest with the intention of searching for a specific type of item. You need to make sure that if it’s your product they’re looking for, you show up in the search results ahead of the competition.

And although we all think of Pinterest as being about images, the thing you need to remember here is that being found is ALL ABOUT THE WORDS. Almost all, anyway.

Pinterest SEO

Just like Google, Pinterest has its own algorithm which determines the order of results when someone performs a search. And just like Google, we don’t know exactly how it works.

But, there are many things that you can do which have been proven to be effective in helping people find a product.

There are two areas you need to think about: your business profile, and how you optimise individual product pins (and the Boards you put them on).

Optimising your Pinterest Profile for search

Unless you’re a household name, the majority of consumers on Pinterest will be looking for what you “do” rather than who you are  – ie, they’re unlikely to be searching for your company name specifically. The key to helping these people find your company is smart use of keywords. So:

Describe what you do. A little more detail here on style wouldn’t hurt!

Optimising your Pins for search

Next, you need to attend to each and every Pin that you create. Starting with the best possible image of each item is important, but isn’t enough to get you across the finish line of Search results!

As a final note, now that you’ve got your product Pins to the top of the search results for exactly what your searching consumer wants,  you need to make it easy to buy.

Make sure your Pins do link directly back to the appropriate sales page on your website, or if you’re not selling online, to a page with very clear information about how the consumer can buy (nearest stockist, mail order etc). If you just upload your images directly to Pinterest and don’t link them, or have them on a hosting site like Photobucket, you’re losing a huge part of the opportunity that Pinterest gives you.

So, now you’re getting a ton of Pinterest traffic with Special Offers and great positioning in the search results. In the next post, we’re going to look at our final technique for pulling in the buyers: running brilliant Competitions on Pinterest.

Actually using Pinterest effectively, and getting past the “sticking some images up and hoping for the best” stage, is something we’ve been working on with a few customers lately. Unlike the other big social media sites where the line from interacting to actual sales can be a little vague, Pinterest is like one great big shop window. If you’re in a “product” based business – anything from curtains to tiaras, but the more visually engaging the better – or a service business where the outcome is interesting to look at (makeup artist, costume designer) then Pinterest should be a key part of your social media presence.

As the site has grown, so have the functions on offer, apps which can help you, and ingenious ways of making use of both. So we thought it was time for a little mini-series on some of the more advanced ways that Pinterest can be used. All of them are directly focused on helping you to make more sales through Pinterest.

We’re assuming that you already have the basics down – verified Business account, quality images, responsive customer service, and so on. Over the next couple of weeks we’ll show you how to take that to the next level.

Here’s your Pinterest “To Do” list!

First up: 3 steps to killing it with Special Offers.

Discounts, offers, and coupons are pretty popular on Pinterest. Everyone likes to save money, and savvy Pinterest users know that sharing a really great offer with their network is a shortcut to kudos!

There are two reasons why Special Offers travel faster on Pinterest than on, say, Facebook. Firstly, the visual format makes it easy to create an eyecatching image and convey an offer instantly.

Secondly, and most importantly, many people actively curate all the special offers they can find into Pinterest boards. Take a look at the screenshot below – and this was just the first of many pages which came up under a Board search for Special Offer:

So,  regularly preparing Pinterest-friendly special deals, and having a Pinterest board just for those is a great idea to increase your following and skyrocket shopper traffic to your site.

Here’s how an organic holiday company does it:

and another, for a Stationary company:

Doing it brilliantly:

3 steps for making sure your Special Offers fly out the door.

Step 1: Make it stand out

Ensure that the “whole deal” – ie, the thing you’re discounting, and what the special offer is – is clear from the image alone.

It needs to stand out as users scroll through their Pinterest stream, and although the human brain can take in information incredibly quickly, it won’t do that if you’ve put the deal in some small print.

So, doing it right:

Not so great – offer hidden in the small text:

Step 2: Good links

Make sure that your image links directly to the relevant page on your website, if you’re selling online. Don’t just take people to the Home page and expect them to figure it out from there.

Step 3: a bit of proactive promotion

Take some time to search out Pinterest users who are heavily into collecting offers for your sector.

Leave a comment on one of their existing pins telling them about your offer. If it’s good enough and they think their followers would like it, they’ll pin it themselves. They might even invite you to collaborate on their boards, so that you can add future offers directly.

Aaaand….GO! Get those offers up and sending you traffic. Next week, we’ll be looking at getting your products found ahead of the competition on Pinterest.

Their latest offering is a function to help you do exactly that – the “Interests” option. This is being rolled out gradually but we’re seeing it in the UK already, so go and take a look!

What is the Interest function?

Basically, it’s a way of both grouping related content together, but in a way that gives more sophisticated and “fuzzy” results than a standard topic search, and allows Pinterest to put content in front of the user which they might not otherwise see. So when a user goes into the Interests area, they will see content that’s related to their own pins, but not necessarily on identical topics.

So for example, a user who’s Pinned images of Namibia on a “dream travel” board might get suggested content around “Deserts”, because one of Namibia’s key tourist attractions is their amazing red dunes.

Does it work?

The feature’s somewhat in its infancy at the moment, and also it’s one of those areas where what you put in very much affects what you get out. If you’re a heavy Pinterest user, then you’ll have given the site plenty of clues about what might amuse you, and your results are likely to be better. If you’ve only got a few pins currently, the Interest section may be more hit and miss.

However, compared to the old Related Pins option, which never seemed to work that well, Interests is getting rave reviews from users:

What’s the significance for business users?

Firstly, that this should be a good opportunity for enhanced visibility. Anything which brings stuff outside their current “bubble” to the attention of users, has got to be a good thing.

Secondly, it also means that thinking laterally about the interests you have in common with your customers (rather than just what your immediate products are) is even more important. Providing related content gives you a chance to get in front of a whole new set of potential customers.

We’d also recommend thinking a bit cleverly about how you can provide content which conveys your USP’s as a company, and your brand values. As an example: if you’re running a travel company at the more budget end of the market, there’s a LOT of competition.
If your “above and beyond” service is what sets you apart from the competition, how about sourcing images of great, value range bikinis / skiwear / whatever and posting them under the slogan “we want every part of your holiday to be perfect”. Every time those images are re-pinned (shared), your brand – and your USP – goes with them.

Until now, there’s only been one kind of account on Pinterest, but that’s just changed. There’s now a Pinterest Business home page, which allows you to join up as a business or convert your existing account if you already have one.

What’s new?

As far as we can see, nothing really fancy at present, but there are a couple of things definitely worth knowing about – and the launch of business accounts no doubt signals Pinterest’s intention to do more with businesses and brands in the future.

For the time being, it’s worth converting your account if you’re using Pinterest for a business – just go to the Business Home Page and click  the “Convert your existing account” button.

Verifying your Pinterest Business Page

The next feature is that you get the ability to verify your account against your web domain. This means that your full web address will be displayed on the top of your home page, along with the Pinterest red tick of approval:

The verification process is likely to be a minor challenge for those not keen on delving into their web server, as it requires the upload of a small html file to the root of your domain. The file should be browseable via www.yourdomain/[pinterest verification filename, in our case]pinterest-2963b. You’ll need FTP access to your web server, and may need to speak with your hosting company about where to put the file.

For our site, running WordPress installed directly to the root domain, the folder we needed was “public_html”, but your mileage may vary!

Once you’ve uploaded the file there’s a link on the Pinterest screen prompting them to check for it, and provided you’ve got the location right then you’re all set.

If you’re stuck, Pinterest’s own blog post about website verification is here, including a link to their support team.

New ways to promote your Pinterest account

There are also some new shiny toys in the Goodies section of the site. These include code for a Pinterest “follow” button which can be added to your website, which should definitely be added to your social media links if you’re using Pinterest for curation:

There’s also a rather nifty Board Builder which helps you display up to 30 of your favourite board’s most recent pins from within your website, via an iframe. This can be found here – we’re already finding these things tricky to navigate, so hopefully they’ll all be rationalised into an easy to use Business menu soon.

Given all the excitement about sharing and conversion rates via Pinterest, we’d expect some form of analytics to follow the new business page rollout reasonably soon. In the mean time, some apps like Reachli (formerly Pinerly) are filling the gap.

Our shiny new Pinterest business page is at https://pinterest.com/RMSocialMedia/ – do leave yours in the comments below if you’re curating some interesting stuff!

In the course of exploring this idea for a client, we thought we’d have a little fun with it for our own brand. Our social media services aren’t a natural source of eye-catching material; most of what we do is verbal and text-heavy.

Hence our 30-minute lunchtime challenge:  to create something that was shareable on Pinterest, but still relevant to our company values and the messages we want to get across.

Here’s the result…

Why that?

We know people love to share things that make them smile. We also realised, from an analysis of what was coming up as popular on our Pinterest home feed, that you don’t absolutely have to exclude words – in fact a good proportion of the popular stuff is pithy, often slightly edgy, quotations.

Finally, one of the messages we want to get across to prospective customers is that we pride ourselves on quality and attention to detail, so this quote works perfectly to support that.

Did it work?

We saw an immediate impact from this approach, yes. The image was shared more than anything else we’d previously posted, we picked up some new followers, and most importantly we saw Pinterest.com show up in the referral stats (Google Analytics)  for our website for the first time ever. So, people were curious enough about what we do to come over to the website and find out more.

Applying it to your business

A few thoughts about what we learned from the experiment:

You don’t *have* to have stunning visuals to make an impact. We probably could have increased the impact more with some illustration – if we’d had a bit longer, something along the lines of one of those retro cowboy drawings, and a quick google for “surprised horse” might have been fun. But you CAN do without it – if you don’t have graphic design skills or budget to buy them in, you can manage without.

Be appropriate for the site. There are a small (and hopefully dwindling) number of people out there who might consider this wildly inappropriate for a business communication, or even be offended by it. Would we have posted it on LinkedIn? Probably not. But it’s in keeping with the tone of humour on Pinterest; frankly a large number of users there would very likely be “offended” by standard marketing. If that doesn’t sit comfortably with your brand then it’s best to skip this kind of site altogether.

Think a bit out of the box…. or whatever non-Apprentice speak you prefer for “trying a different approach”!

Don’t lose sight of your brand. It’s tempting to chase the crowd here by just posting up anything you think might be popular – and to an extent, that approach may work. A few eyeballs might end up on your site as a byproduct of idle curiousity. But it’s so much more powerful if you can keep a link to your marketing messages AND create some popular content.

Want to play?

If you’re on Pinterest, come and find us here. If you’re not and would like to be, leave a comment asking for an invite and we’ll send you one (we’ll get your email address  to send the invite to, but it won’t be published or used for any other purpose!)