Whether you like it or not, social media networks are taking over the world. More than 1 billion people globally have Facebook accounts, and in total nearly one in four people worldwide uses some form of social media, with those numbers continuing to grow rapidly.

With that kind of adoption, social media marketing is clearly an absolute necessity for businesses attempting to grow in today’s digital environment.

Today we’ll share some eye-opening statistics that could help inform your decision-making as you try to chart a path in the social space.

1. 40% of cell phone owners use a social network site on their phone, and 28% access one daily. [Source]

2. 80% of Pinterest users are female. [Source]

3. Every second, more than one hour of video is added to YouTube. [Source]

4. People share 700 YouTube videos on Twitter every minute. [Source]

5. Facebook’s population is more than twice that of the United States. [Source]

6. 500 million tweets are sent out daily. [Source]

7. 71% of consumers that receive a prompt response from a brand to an inquiry on social media say they would be likely to recommend that brand to others. [Source]

8. 93% of online research starts with a search engine, and 68% of users say they will check out a company’s social network pages before making a purchase. [Source]

9. Every second, 8,000 users “like” a photo on Instagram. [Source]

10. Almost 60% of all social-referred traffic comes from three platforms: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. [Source]

11. More than one-third of Fortune 500 companies have Google Plus accounts. However, 19% of those corporate accounts have not been activated. [Source]

12. Only 2% of marketers use SnapChat, and only 4% use Vine. [Source]

13. There are more than 10 million Facebook apps. [Source]

14. 23% of Facebook users check their account at least five times per day. [Source]

15. The +1 button on Google Plus is hit at least 5 billion times per day. [Source]

16. LinkedIn has more than 3 million company pages, with more than 1 billion endorsements. [Source]

17. 91% of mobile internet access is for social activities. [Source]

18. 5 million images are uploaded to Instagram daily. [Source]

19. More than half a billion Facebook users access the site only from mobile devices. [Source]

20. 50% of technology companies have acquired a customer through Twitter. [Source]

21. The fastest-growing demographic on Twitter is the 55-64 age bracket. [Source]

22. The average lifespan of a tweet is 24 minutes. The average lifespan of a Facebook post is 90 minutes. [Source]

Some of these crazy numbers should make it clearer than ever that social media marketing needs to be a priority for your business. If you’re lacking in that area, let us help. Contact Top Source Media today!