Australians are even more social than ever in 2017 with nearly 80 percent of the population now on social media. That’s over 19 million of us!
This is according to Sensis, who recently published their annual report on how Australians and Australian businesses are using social media. The research is a wonderful resource for marketers – it’s packed with fantastic insights into the who, when and where of social media in Australia.
Did you know, for example, that 94 percent of Australian social-media users are on Facebook. This means you can reach millions of Australians on the same channel, and you’ll find them there every day or even several times a day. In fact, Australians are now spending more than half a day a week on Facebook alone.
And if you’re yet to investigate Facebook advertising, you might be missing a trick. It offers sophisticated targeting options to help drive the ‘right’ segment of those millions of Australian Facebook users to your page or site.
What else? Well, the number of Australians accessing social media through their smartphone continues to increase, eclipsing both desktop and tablet combined. So, there’s no point investing in online advertising if your site isn’t mobile friendly or takes just too long to download.
While Australians are going nuts for social media, what are businesses doing to capatilise on this? Well, the surprising answer is – not as much as they used to.
Less than half Australian small to medium size businesses, and around 60 percent of large businesses, have a social-media presence. The surprise is that these percentages are significantly down on last year’s numbers. So what’s going on? Why are fewer businesses investing in social media?
A possible explanation is that the amount of brand research that led to purchase has also decreased. Although, this might be a little bit ‘chicken and egg’. Has research leading to purchased decreased because fewer organisations are active on social media, or vice versa?
We’ve put together a quick infographic below with some of the more interesting bits and pieces of research (along with last year’s for comparison) which you can also download as a high-quality PDF at the top of this page. Handy if you need to convince your boss about investing in social-media marketing.
Also available for download is the full Sensis report for 2017.
If you’d like to learn more about social-media marketing, why not wander over and take a look at our Postgraduate Diploma in Digital Marketing.
Download the infographic at the top of this page.