21 Social Media Statistics For B2B Marketers

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21 Social Media Statistics for B2B Marketers

As millennials, who are completely at home with social media, become the primary purchase decision makers in many businesses, it is imperative that B2B brands become equally comfortable with using social media to distribute content.

After all, 73 percent of millennial workers are involved in decisions to purchase products or services for their companies, and as many as 84 percent of CEOs and VPs say they use social media to make purchasing decisions.

Are you providing the content they need?

Consider the 21 additional statistics below as you fold social media into the rest of your B2B content marketing strategy.

When it comes to social media for B2B marketing use, LinkedIn is the favored platform, and for good reason. With its business and career focus, there is less clutter and a smaller amount of content overall to compete with, while delivering a platform focused primarily on the demographic groups most likely to be involved in B2B business decision making.

LinkedIn has more than 720 million users with more than 260 million active users.
There are more than 50 million companies listed on LinkedIn.
More than half of all U.S. adults with college degrees use LinkedIn.
Nearly half of U.S. adults with an annual income over $75,000 use LinkedIn.
LinkedIn generates almost 3 times more leads than either Twitter or Facebook, with a visitor-to-lead conversion rate of 2.74 percent according to HubSpot.
B2B marketers report that more than 80 percent of their social media leads come from LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is responsible for 64 percent of all visitors from social media channels to corporate websites.

With statistics like that showing the strength of LinkedIn as a platform for not only developing your brand position, but also driving actual traffic, leads and sales, it pays to pay attention to how you use it. Find best practices for using LinkedIn for B2B marketing here: Your LinkedIn Business Posting Guide.

While LinkedIn is the leader among B2B users, Facebook is still one of the most-used of all social media channels, more than 15 years after its debut. Other platforms have made inroads amongst certain groups or for specific content such as images or videos, but Facebook is one place all businesses should be.

Facebook remains the most widely used across all demographics, used by nearly 7 in 10 adults in the United States.
More than 80 million small businesses use Facebook’s free business tools.
Facebook is the primary content distribution channel for marketers today.
18 percent of marketers currently use Facebook Groups.
79 percent of video marketers use Facebook as a video marketing channel.
Business decision makers spend 74 percent more time on Facebook than other people on the platform.
Business decision makers, regardless of industry, spend about 60 percent of their Facebook time on mobile.

Facebook obviously still plays a major role in reaching business decision makers, and while desktop use is higher among businesspeople than average users, the shift to mobile continues to require more and more thought into creating Facebook content that users can consume anywhere and everywhere. Get more best practices for using Facebook for business in this blog post.

Other channels can and should also play a role in many B2B marketers' social media strategies, including YouTube, a quasi-social platform that effectively serves as the second-largest search engine on the web. Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, or even Snapchat may have a place in your arsenal, but consider carefully your bandwidth, budget and target audience in deciding whether and how to add these to your marketing mix.

There are 2 billion unique YouTube users every month.
64 percent of B2B marketers increased their use of audio/visual content like webinars and live-streaming between 2018 and 2019, and 2020 has likely sent that number even higher as companies pivoted to virtual ways of connecting with leads and customers.
Twitter is among the top three social channels used by marketers with the highest ROI.
67 percent of all B2B businesses are using Twitter as a digital marketing tool.
With more than 60 percent of Americans ages 18-29 using Instragram, it can be a perfect platform to companies to reach potential employees in that age bracket by showcasing corporate culture.
Instagram offers higher engagement rates than other platforms, even for B2B brands, which average 22.53 interactions per 1000 followers per post.
Nearly 8 in 10 senior executives report that they use a smartphone for at least part of their research on products or services for their business.

No, that last statistic isn’t specifically social media related, but it is important because social media platforms are the most used digital channels on mobile devices. If you are using social media correctly, you are likely reaching your audience through the device they spend the most time on.

As you use social media for your B2B marketing, remember that it should not be a separate entity. Don’t make the mistake of expecting it to simply stand on its own—instead, use it to drive website traffic and online lead generation. Here’s why: Social Media Problem & Solution: Using Social Media To Drive Website Traffic. You’ll also find best practices for using all of these channels, along with how to hashtag for business, in our Complete Social Media Guide For Business.

If you’d like to chat about how your company can make the most of its social media presence to support inbound marketing, schedule a no-obligation consultation with me here.

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