Facebook accounts for 83.41% of total January visits | The implication for digital marketing

Stats Counter reports that Facebook was the most visited social media platform in Nigeria in January, accounting for 83.41 percent of total January visits.

This figure is a 6.6% decline from the total monthly visit of 90.01 percent recorded for the previous month of December 2021, but the company maintains a comfortable lead over all other social media platforms that had recorded a combined 16.59 percent.

According to details from the report, Facebook views have witnessed a steady upward trajectory in the last couple of months as competing social media platforms like Twitter have suffered a steep drop in their numbers.

The recent upward trend in Facebook’s views is particularly noticeable to have commenced since May 2021, and the numbers continued in the same vein until a slight drop in November 2021, when the first major decline of 5.83 percent was recorded.

Twitter was a close competitor to Facebook at the start of the same period under review, but its number of visits dropped to as low as 0.19 percent in November 2021, due to the country’s ban, among other factors.

The report also positions Facebook as the most visited social media platform on a global scale, accounting for 76.95 percent of total January visits. This was followed by Twitter, which accounted for 7.1% of total views for the month.

Looking beyond the past

Reports by global social trends 2022 surveys have indicated that organisations are looking beyond and are aiming to achieve more with social media than they considered in the past.

The survey report shows that 53 percent of organisations are now actively making use of social networks for creating brand awareness, in addition to increasingly adopting social media for customer acquisitions and driving conversions, as these remain the top 3 priorities.

Without a doubt, the increased use of social networks means that organisations will face competition in the space, leading to a decline in organic reach for small and medium-sized businesses and the need to increase paid budgets.

Hootsuite in its reports has shown that, similar to last year, experimenting with new content and ad formats was ranked as the most exciting opportunity, especially among managers and practitioners.

Opportunities beyond Facebook

The effectiveness of social media networks has grown dramatically beyond Facebook and Instagram, with the reports proving that. This is in line with Meta revealing that it lost about half a million global daily members in the fourth quarter of 2021 compared to the previous quarter in the same year.

Facebook and Instagram have previously held on to positions as the most effective platforms, but that is about to change as TikTok, Pinterest, and Snapchat’s perceived effectiveness are on the rise and have recently increased from single digits to double digits.

TikTok, in particular, is seen to soar to the top of the list, surpassing WhatsApp and Pinterest. According to further details from the report, TikTok’s perceived efficiency is seen to increase by 700 percent from the 3 percent observed the previous year to its present 24 percent.

Social marketers were observed to aim to increase their investment in Instagram this year, as they did last year but the effectiveness of the efforts remain uncertain. The report suggest Instagram as the leader, with a 48 percent share, albeit by a narrow margin.

Despite Instagram’s leading market share, many individuals and businesses are increasingly aiming to also boost their expenses on Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn, which had all recorded a significant share of 47 percent, 44 percent, and 43 percent, respectively.

However, TikTok will see the greatest rise in spending as 36 percent of marketers will raise their investment with the social network and 38 percent planning to keep their already existing promotional campaign on the network.

Social marketing behaviours will change alongside a perceived change in the effectiveness of social networks. The reports suggest a 28 percent of social advertising strategies will be completely integrated with other marketing activities, a significant increase from the 19 percent recorded last year.

Nonetheless, the report finds that 53 percent of small and medium-sized businesses are the least likely to integrate organic and paid social media to their marketing efforts compared to a 44 percent it suggest for mid-sized companies.

There is a growing interest in the use of third party tools to collect and integrate data greater than experienced in the previous year. About 46 percent of marketers still retains the use of native platforms to collect and integrate data, a large drop from the 62 percent recorded in 2021.