As Social Media Become More Powerful, the Key Players Shift Positions

As social media become more and more important to marketers, the key players are shifting positions. A new study in the UK showed LinkedIn eclipsing Twitter as the number one social network for content marketing, with 96% of respondents saying they used LinkedIn to distribute content in 2014. Twitter was 7 points behind, with 89% saying they used the micro-blogging platform to distribute content. Only 69% of respondents said they used Facebook to distribute content in 2014. A separate study from GlobalWedIndex found that although Facebook has more than 1.3 billion monthly users, just half (52%) describe themselves as “active” on the platform in late 2014, compared with 70% in late 2012.
 
One interesting finding is that time spent on a social media platform did not correlate with the use of the platform for content distribution. According to research from Harris Interactive UK, social network users in the UK spent just 30 minutes daily on LinkedIn but devoted nearly four times the number of minutes to Facebook each day. One reason for the discrepancy might be that Facebook is seen as a “personal” social platform while LinkedIn seems more suited to business. Trustworthiness is another factor: In an April 2014 poll conducted by YouGov, LinkedIn was the highest-ranked of the social networks for trustworthiness.
 
In our 2014 Social Media News Survey, we also found a huge spike in the usage and importance of LinkedIn, suggesting that LinkedIn is becoming a key platform for sharing and spreading business news and information among working professionals. To learn more about the latest trends in social media, download our 2014 Social Media News Survey Report Today.