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This post in a nutshell:
- What the top 9 growing social media platforms in the US are
- Comparison of key growth stats across the top social media platforms
- Why analyzing the growth and change of social media platform popularity is important
Social media is constantly changing and - as a business or agency owner - you need to know what's in and what's out to make sure your social media campaigns are reaching the right people.
In this post, we will take a look at the top 9 growing social media platforms in the US and how you can use this information to fuel your marketing campaigns.
1. Facebook
As of April 2023 there are over 2.9 billion active monthly users, making it not only the most widely used social platform in the US, but the world!
The US makes up 243.58 million of those users.
Though Facebook has been growing steadily over the past decade or so, last year was a turbulent year for the popular social network. A report was released in February 2022 of their revenue and user count, suggesting that it had lost 1 million active users.
Since then, Facebook made efforts to regain their growth targets and are now back on track. Though the loss in so many users over the course of one year did cause concern and would be something to look out for in the future when using this platform for marketing.
However, with the younger generation jumping ship to other platforms like Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok over recent years, Facebook's reputation is known to be a social media app for the older generation.
2. YouTube
Coming in second is YouTube with over 2.6 billion users, which is significant growth since 2012 when the social media site had around 700 million users.
Whilst India has the most YouTube users (467 million), the US is in second place with 247 million.
YouTube has been growing at a steady pace over the last decade, both in its users and revenue. A report suggests that YouTube has had a 30% growth in revenue in the past four years.
With video content becoming one of the most popular ways for to communicate with, and educate and entertain audiences, it's no surprise that YouTube is still a firm favorite for new and old users.
3. WhatsApp
Whatsapp offers features for B2B marketers such as quick replies and chat filters.
Although Whatsapp is constantly living in Facebook and Facebook Messenger's shadow, it has been ranked as one of the most preferred social media platform apps by users in the US, behind TikTok, Instagram and CashApp.
A decade ago, back in 2013, Whatsapp had 200 million users worldwide. Fast forward to today, the instant messaging platform has over 2 billion global users.
In the US, the figures stood around 68.1 million users back in 2019. The app has projected a growth in usage to be 85.8 million users in the US by the end of this year.
Among those users, the majority are between the ages 26-35.
50% of WhatsApp users in the US use the app at least once a day and of these users, with around 78% of users using the app at least once a week.
4. Instagram
As one of the most used apps in the US, Instagram is a popular platform among social media users. What once was just a photo-sharing app, has transformed into a professional networking platform where you can also promote products and services through visual content such as photo, video, Instagram Reels, Instagram Stories and Instagram Shopping.
Around the world, Instagram has a monthly online community of over 2 billion, making it a go-to social channel for social media marketers. The US makes up over 149 million of these users.
The majority of Instagram users are aged 18-24 (30.8%), with similar numbers (30.3%) for those aged 25-34. Just 8% of the total user base are aged between 13-17.
Male to female ratios are pretty evenly split on the platform with lots of non-binary users on the app as well.
5. TikTok
TikTok was first created in 2016 by the Chinese technology company ByteDance.
It is a platform where you can discover and watch millions of personalized short videos.
With lots of editing features and sharing options, it’s exciting to create and broadcast your own reels to followers and friends.
TikTok has become one of the fastest-growing social media platform in the world, with over 113 million active users in the US alone.
Because of its constant feed of content and information, around 25% of US users under 30 use TikTok as their main news source.
The app is also competing with the likes of Google to become one of the most popular search engines, with 40% of Gen Z using TikTok over Google.
Almost half (49%) of TikTok users are Gen Z (18-24), with Millennials making up the majority of the other half.
6. Snapchat
Snapchat is a visual and chat-based instant messaging service, with its short, snappy videos and posts making it easy to connect with friends. One of its most popular features is its disappearing messages, which adds a layer of exclusivity to the social networking site.
The app is know to be the app Gen Z grew up with to get away from Facebook.
It has over 750 monthly active users, with almost 30% of those users located in the US.
The social media channel has a fairly even split when it comes to the male/female ratio, with 55% being women.
18-25 year olds are the largest age group to use the social networking platform, making up 39% of all users.
7. Pinterest
Pinterest is a visual discovery tool that was first launched in 2010 by Google employees: Ben Silbermann, Evan Sharp and Paul Sciarra.
From 2020 projected into 2025, Pinterest has seen steady growth.
There are over 445 million Pinterest active fans worldwide, with almost 85 million of those located in the US.
The majority of users are Millennials but the social media network is steadily gaining traction among its Gen Z user base.
In 2020, the social media platform had 16.7 million Gen Z users in the US, in 2021 it went up to 18.9 million, 2022 saw 20.9 million, and now there's around 23 million Gen Z users in the United States.
It’s projected that in 2025, Pinterest will grow to 26.1 million Gen Z users.
Whilst Millennials are the main target audience, it's clear that Gen Z's usage on the platform could take over that of the Millennials. So, targeting Gen Z with Pinterest ads might not be a bad idea!
76% of Pinterest's audience is women but male users are slowly climbing the ranks, so there's still massive growth potential for businesses to tailor content towards males too.
8. LinkedIn
Officially launching two decades ago, LinkedIn is a platform used for job searching and professional networking.
LinkedIn has seen a lot of success targeting B2B marketers who use the platform to post their B2B content and network with other professionals. It’s the second most successful platform in the B2B space besides Facebook.
While the platform has around 900 million users worldwide, roughly 425 million of them are monthly active users.
The majority of these users (57.8%) are male, while the 42.2% identify as female.
The US is LinkedIn's biggest market - over 194 million of its users are located there.
Almost 60% of its users are adults aged between 25-34, with the second largest group of users between 18 and 24.
9. Twitter
Twitter has had an interesting year to say the least. Having been taken over by Elon Musk, the platform has seen some big (and often controversial!) changes. Most notably being the Twitter Blue subscription, where users pay a monthly fee to access the network's most premium features.
While Musk is trying to revolutionize the micro-blogging site, not all of his updates have been welcome, which has seen the growth status of the platform turn negative, and that's only predicted to get worse in the future. In fact, it's projected that by 2025, Twitter will lose around 1.1 million monthly US users.
As of 2023, there are roughly 353 million Twitter users, a drop from last year's figure of 368 million.
Almost 60% of Twitter's audience are aged between 25 and 49.
This decline in usage has urged some companies to let go of social media strategies related to Twitter.
Companies like Lush have pulled back from using Twitter in their social media strategy. On the flip side, sticking with social media marketing has actually seen augmented success because of the competition from other platforms that want to bring on new users.
Social Media Platform Trends & Marketing Strategy
If you are a small company starting out, social media is the best way to interact with your audience and 93.8% of marketers worldwide will continue to use social media marketing this year and beyond.
Knowing market trends and stats when it comes to social media platforms is extremely useful and should be included in your social media marketing strategy.
Analyzing the growth trends of a specific app over the course of at least 5 years can help you determine what type of content and strategy to include in your marketing campaign and where your audience is hanging out these days.
For example, knowing that Pinterest is on a steady growth trajectory means it's a great idea to post some evergreen pins to the best pages on your website. In contrast, Twitter's future is uncertain - so if you're currently building an audience on Twitter, make sure to invest into other platforms as well.
Are you a social media or digital marketing agency owner?
Analyzing growth trends will also help you to make strategic decisions around the growth of your social media marketing agency, as well as around what kind of content you create for yourself and for your clients.
If you need help with executing a social media strategy, either for your own agency or for your clients, MixBloom can help!
We offer custom, scalable social media management specifically for agencies. We provide high quality content created by a team of talented and reliable 100% native English speaking social media managers - plus a customizable content management dashboard and unlimited revisions!
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