1. The top social sites<\/h2>\n
Before we dive into the specific metrics that you should be benchmarking against, let\u2019s take a look at how the social networking industry is performing<\/a> as a whole, including data on some of your strongest competitors.<\/p>\n Despite the impressive growth amid COVID-19, total visits to social networking sites are now beginning to slowly decline.<\/p>\n With face-to-face interactions canceled and in-person events postponed, the whole world turned to the internet for human connection. Between February 2020 and February 2021, the social media industry saw a 17.0% jump in total visits, rising from 41.0 billion to 47.9 billion.<\/p>\n However, with life slowly returning to “normal”, we\u2019ve seen a slight decrease with 47.4 billion visits to social networks in February 2022: This is a 1.1% decrease year-over-year (YoY).<\/p>\n Even with this small decline, the industry retains its popularity. Here\u2019s a current leaderboard of the top 10 social networks<\/a> and communities worldwide:<\/p>\n Now let\u2019s take a look at how these top influencers\u2019 traffic has changed YoY. How do your social media benchmarks compare?<\/p>\n It\u2019s important to note that in the last month, four of the top 10 social media websites lost traffic share<\/a> worldwide. This suggests that there is room in the market for smaller, more niche websites to win back some of the traffic share and draw more readers to their websites.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The five most popular social media websites in the United States<\/a> differ slightly from the global standard. Facebook.com, twitter.com, and instagram.com are still in the top three spots, however, reddit.com comes in fourth in the U.S., followed by discord.com. Given that whatsapp.com is one of the most popular messaging apps<\/a> outside of the United States, it makes sense that we don\u2019t see it appear on the leaderboard here.<\/p>\n Facebook.com earned 3.4 billion monthly visits (37.1% of the traffic share) in the U.S. in February 2022. Its closest competitor, twitter.com earned 1.4 billion (14.8% of the traffic share).<\/p>\n For social networks, defining your target audience<\/a> is the key to success. Are most of the people coming to your website in their twenties? Are they predominantly identifying as male, female, or nonbinary? What about geography? In which regions are you the strongest and where do your competitors outperform?<\/p>\n These are all questions that benchmarking website performance<\/a> and audience analysis<\/a> can provide you.<\/p>\n For social networks and online communities, 10 countries make up approximately 53% of the market share<\/a> for the top 100 websites, indicating that traffic to online communities is split equally across the world. Visitors in these countries account for approximately 37.5 billion total visits from December 2021 \u2013 February 2022.<\/p>\n\n Other audience demographics<\/a> to track include age, gender, education, income, and more. How do these demographics impact engagement?<\/p>\n Males are more likely to visit social media networks than females (57% vs. 44%).<\/strong> And age distribution for this industry skews noticeably younger with 60% of the audience falling between 18\u201334 years old.<\/p>\n Now let\u2019s turn to audience loyalty<\/a>. With so many different options for sharing pictures, creating new content, and posting life updates, loyal and engaged users are key growth drivers for social media platforms. The more loyal your audience, the more likely they are to invite and tag their family and friends.<\/p>\n Benchmarking the stickiness of your website is one clear way to gauge audience loyalty. Website stickiness<\/a> is calculated by dividing the average number of unique visitors<\/a> by the average total monthly visits and is a good indicator of how loyal your fans are, and how likely they are to recommend you to others and keep coming back for more.<\/p>\n Top 100 websites in the category, February 2022, worldwide:<\/strong><\/p>\n Top 25 websites in the category, June 2021, worldwide::<\/strong><\/p>\n Top 10 websites in the category, June 2021, worldwide:<\/strong><\/p>\n On average, social media websites have a stickiness level higher than 14%. Keep this benchmark in mind as you try to come up with new ways to convert new users into returning visitors<\/a>.<\/p>\n Are users tweeting from their phones or desktop more? And why does it matter?<\/p>\n Not only does this tell you about user preferences and lifestyle, but it also helps you optimize their experience (and keep them scrolling for longer).<\/p>\n Device distribution<\/a> gives you important insight into your audience behavior<\/a> and you can use this information to optimize your website accordingly. Maybe you\u2019ll create a new sign-up flow just for mobile users or redesign your desktop website for a more seamless experience.<\/p>\n There is an almost even split between desktop and mobile web for social media websites, with mobile web having a slight advantage. This means that your users are likely accessing your website both from their phones and desktop and both versions should be fully optimized and analyzed regularly. Here are higher-level stats on the social media industry:<\/p>\n Top 10 websites in the category<\/strong><\/p>\n Top 100 websites in the category:<\/strong><\/p>\n Figuring out how your followers are getting to your social media website is an important step in competitive benchmarking<\/a>. You don\u2019t want to be missing out on a chance to score traffic and page views<\/a> simply because you don\u2019t know which of your channels is performing well (or not well enough) compared to the industry.<\/p>\n Case in point, direct and organic search are the most influential marketing channels<\/a> for driving traffic to social media websites, responsible for 75.8% and 16.3% of traffic share worldwide between December 2021\u2013 February 2022. This makes sense given that most of the social media platforms discussed in this blog are household names that people would just search for directly on their browsers.<\/p>\n Although these two marketing channels currently dominate, it means that there might be opportunities to draw traffic away from competitors in areas that are underutilized by the industry as a whole, for example, display ads or referrals.<\/p>\n The remaining traffic is split: email (1.2%), referrals (3.1%), social (3.5%), paid search (0.1%), and display ads (0.1%).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Last on our list of social media benchmarks is user engagement rate<\/a>. I don\u2019t want to say that we saved the best for last, but measuring your visitors\u2019 on-site engagement rates can tell you a lot about how you can improve user experience. Start by benchmarking your average session duration<\/a>, pages per visit<\/a>, click-through rate<\/a>, and bounce rate<\/a> to industry standards.<\/p>\n These metrics give you an idea of how engaged your visitors are with your platform. Are they browsing multiple pages and sharing the content they see? Maybe you\u2019ll notice that one of your competitors stands out with a significantly lower bounce rate<\/a> than the industry. See what they\u2019re doing to keep users interested and try to implement the same into your strategy.<\/p>\n Tracking key engagement metrics<\/a><\/strong> can help you benchmark for success.<\/p>\n See how you compare to the engagement benchmarks for social media websites globally, as well as in the U.S. and the U.K. (December 2021 \u2013 February 2022)<\/p>\n Top 100 websites in the category globally, all traffic<\/strong><\/p>\n Top 100 websites in the category in the U.S., all traffic<\/strong><\/p>\n Top 100 websites in the category in the U.K., all traffic<\/strong><\/p>\n For a more granular view, take a look at how the top five social networks compare to the overall industry. Twitter.com has strong engagement metrics, with Instagram taking the lead in pages per visit. Whatsapp.com\u2019s high bounce rate can be attributed to it being used primarily for communication unlike browsing, which is typical behavior in social media feeds.<\/p>\n Social media is almost synonymous with mobile apps. There\u2019s literally an app for everything.<\/p>\n Because most of your competitors will also offer a mobile app version of their social media website, it\u2019s important that you include benchmarking app data in any digital strategy<\/a>. You can choose to benchmark the top industry leaders<\/a> or your more niche competitors.<\/p>\n Take a look at our breakdown of the top mobile apps<\/a> in Google Store\u2019s Social category, including key performance indicators you should be measuring.<\/p>\n Not sure what you\u2019re measuring? Here\u2019s a summary of the app metrics analyzed:<\/p>\n How do your social media benchmarks compare? Benchmarking plays an integral role in helping you track your performance, identify areas for improvement, and ultimately secure better business opportunities.<\/p>\n For a deeper analysis of your position in the market, try Similarweb\u2019s Research Intelligence free<\/a> and enjoy access to real-time data and insights on-demand.<\/p>\n\n
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<\/p>\n2. Define your #followers<\/h2>\n
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3. Device split: it\u2019s a #lifestyle choice<\/h2>\n
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4. Eliminate marketing channel FOMO<\/h2>\n
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<\/p>\n5. Keep \u2018em clicking<\/h2>\n
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There\u2019s an app for that<\/h2>\n
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Start slaying<\/h2>\n
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