Thank you to Simon Kemp for creating this digital snapshot, it's an amazing piece of research if you are in the world of digital, like we are.

The report is available for free here and I highly recommend that you follow Simon on LinkedIn, here. 

To save you reading the report, here is my take. I have also included a number of Simon's comments. 

Nearly 60% of the world's population is now on social media

As most of the western world has reached saturation point on internet and social media usage, take up is slowing up.  We are now at 59.9% of the world's population on social media. Which is up from 59.4% in January 2023. 

As an aside, a recent report from Nielsen indicates that the number of internet users in India has now reached 720 million at the end of 2022, equating to 50.5 percent (worldwide average is 64.6%) of the country’s total inhabitants.  India have an objective to overtake the US and China and become the number one economic power, and social media adoption is going to help them do this. 

Interestingly, Nielsen’s report highlights that India’s rural areas are now home to 44 percent more internet users than its urban areas, and that rural areas are also responsible for most of the country’s internet user growth.

The main reason for using the internet?

As you can see, that one of the main reasons for using the internet, from 25 year olds upwards is to "research brands".  I'm sure for many of us, if not all of us, the first thing we think of, when we are looking for a brand is we reach for our phones or our desktop. 

But perhaps the most important takeaway for marketers in the age-specific motivations data is the extent to which older generations rely on the internet to inform their purchase decisions.

Crucially, internet users aged 55 to 64 say that researching brands is the fifth most important reason why they go online, while researching health and researching places and travel also rank in their top 10.

And somewhat surprisingly, this trend appears in people’s motivations for using social media too.

Indeed, in contrast to stereotypes, GWI’s data reveal that it’s not just young people that are influenced by marketing messages on social platforms.

Finding products to buy ranks fourth amongst the reasons why people aged 55 to 64 use social media, whereas this motivation ranks just eighth amongst users aged 16 to 64.

This trend emerges elsewhere in GWI’s survey too, with internet users aged 55 to 64 the most likely to say that they research brands, products, and services online before making a purchase.

Use of the internet for online brand research

It's interesting to see that over the age of 25, the majority of people use the internet for online brand research.  It's certainly something that we see in our customer base, where the amount of inbound has increased.  We now that an above average social seller should be getting one piece of inbound a week.  If you think this buyer will have researched the market, we would therefore expect the win rate to be higher on these deals. 

So, don’t let stereotypes fool you: online channels are just as valuable for marketing to Boomers as they are for marketing to Gen Z.

Sure, TikTok may be all the rage with younger users, but with people over the age of 50 accounting for more than half of all US consumer spend, it’s well worth investing in a diverse marketing mix that caters to the motivations and behaviours of all age groups.

Social networks are now pretty much the first place people start when looking for brands.

Buyers are using social media to contact suppliers!  - Plan for inbound

It’s also worth highlighting that social media’s role isn’t just related to outbound B2B marketing.

At a worldwide level, nearly 3 in 10 working-age professionals say that they use social media to contact suppliers, with that figure rising to nearly 4 in 10 in China.

Admittedly, figures are somewhat lower across Europe and the US, but with younger people significantly more likely to use these channels to contact potential suppliers, the importance of social media as an inbound channel looks set to grow.

The amount of time we spend on the internet has dropped for a second quarter

We suspect this is because we are becoming more discerning as to our use of the internet, most of us know what we want and know where to get it.  It's 18 minutes per day less than was reported this time last year.  We also might be using other devices, for example, we use Alexa for search at home. 

But we’re still spending an average of over 6½ hours per day using the internet, which is more than twice as much time as we spend watching television.

Moreover, the current average suggests that the world will still spend a combined total of 1.4 billion years of cumulative human existence using connected tech in 2023 alone.

So, while we may be spending less time on the internet, there’s nothing to suggest that the internet is becoming any less important in our lives.

58.1% of companies use social media for marketing

One of the findings in the report is that 58.1 of companies now use social media for some form of marketing, what is surprising is that 41.9% of companies don't. This is pretty surprising when the data clearly shows that buyers have moved to digital.  This certainly shows that there is going to be a massive shake up of companies in the analog sector as we accelerate the digital first world. 

Social media ad spend fails

Social media ad spend has dropped, not sure if this is because of the lack of ability target ads on Facebook, because of the economy or people just realising that advertising does not buy you trust, visibility or leads and meetings. 

Want to know more about social selling, check out my new book

"social selling techniques to influence buyers and changemakers - 2nd edition".

In this brand new edition, I have updated all the text, I have also got 15 practitioners, so people who are doing this already to explain how they are get (practical) business benefit. From the CEO that has been running a digital business for over 18 months to sales leaders who use social selling every day.  

Articles on how these business have and are implementing digital, from Mercer, Telstra Purple, Ring Central, Cyberhawk, Namos, Ericsson, Crux Consulting, DLA Ignite and more.

What does Mark Schaefer, Marketing guru think of the book "social selling - techniques to influence buyers and changemakers - 2nd edition"? watch the video here

It's available on Amazon worldwide.  Link to Amazon.com here and Amazon.co.uk here.